By Bruce Arthur
Oh, did Kobe Bryant want to be Michael Jordan. He would study Jordan’s footwork and even his interviews, and early in his career Kobe’s cadence, even his head tilt, was eerily familiar. Kobe could never measure up — too many low-percentage hero shots, a self-belief that could result in self-sabotage — but he became an icon anyway, and inspired a generation. Including, of course, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Kobe was his idol.
Sunday, Shai and the Oklahoma City Thunder will play the Indiana Pacers in Game 7 for the NBA title to cap a fabulous series. Game 7s are so hard; they compress the nerves and weigh on the mind.
And whatever happens, Shai has ascended into the heavens in these playoffs. Four players have scored 30 points or more 15 times in a single post-season: Jordan, Hakeem Olajuwon, Kobe and Shai. Only Wilt Chamberlain had ever scored at least 30 in 10 straight playoff home games, and then Shai did it 11 straight times. Only 11 players had ever scored a combined 3,000 points, regular and playoffs, in a season. Shai made it 12.
But for all the growth of forward Jalen Williams as a truly capable No. 2 option, and for all the defensive weapons on this OKC team, Shai remains the centre of their solar system and will walk into Game 7 with MVP weight on his shoulders. As Steve Nash said of Shai, “I think there’s a reluctance, out of respect and admiration, to say names like Jordan and Kobe or whoever, but he does the same thing they do. If you look at the numbers and you break it down, there’s a lot of things he does that are greater than everyone that’s even close to those type of players. So he’s ascending towards that category.”
Game 7 will play a part, in a post-season where Shai has been somewhere between a prime Kobe and a classic Jordan. Not in style, of course. Jordan and Kobe’s predatory manias were legendary for a reason, and Shai doesn’t walk into the area wanting — as John Salley once said of Jordan — to kill you, bring you back to life and kill you again.
Shai is more like water than fire: he probes relentlessly and fills the holes. Even in a series where fellow Canadian Andrew Nembhard knows all his moves — Nembhard guards his fellow Canadian almost as well as you can, anticipating and disrupting his footwork and flow, and the Pacers team concepts are marvellous — Shai has been a superstar. Game 6 was his first genuine stumble: eight turnovers, but more a glimpse of the Shai who was too passive to stop France from overwhelming Canada in the Olympic quarterfinal in Paris. Shai couldn’t grab the game by its shoulders and turn it in the other direction. Indiana forced Game 7.
Which is where Shai could be Jordan, because in sheer playoff production he’s already been close. The game has become much faster in the modern, pace-and-space era. In Jordan’s final year in Chicago, NBA teams produced 85.9 possessions per 48 minutes in the playoffs and scored 105.6 points per 100 possessions, and this year those numbers have been 95.7 and 113.1.
And of course, basketball is an evolution. Shai takes about twice as many threes as Jordan did while playing a style, in the three-point era, that evokes a throwback mid-range game. The game has changed all over.
“I mean, that’s why we can’t really compare eras, because they all build on each other,” said Nash, back when Shai won the regular-season MVP. “But I just look at what he does and the numbers push you to see better in a way. Like, look past biases of the way certain guys would take off and dunk over the whole team. Although he can do that in a way at times.”
Nash is right. Ignore the esthetic and focus on impact. Per 100 possessions in the playoffs, Michael Jordan was unreal: 43.3 points (tops all-time), 8.3 rebounds, 7.4 assists, 2.7 steals, 1.1 blocks, 4.0 turnovers. He shot .487 on a record 32.5 attempts, .503 on a record 29.3 two-pointers per 100, .332 from three-point range and .828 on 12.8 attempts per 100 from the line. His true shooting number was .568.
How he played — that furious poise, culminating in The Shot to end the 1998 Finals in Salt Lake City — is reflected there. Jordan wasn’t perfect — and he didn’t produce across the board the way bigger superstars like LeBron James or Nikola Jokic can — but he was as close to perfect as the modern game has allowed.
And per 100 possessions this year — a far smaller sample size, obviously — Shai is averaging 39.3 points, 7.0 rebounds, 8.2 assists, 2.2 steals, 1.1 blocks and 3.5 turnovers. He has shot .472 from the field on 28.6 shot attempts per 100, .519 on 22.4 two-pointers per 100, .297 on twice as many three-point attempts and .873 on 12.2 attempts per 100 from the line. His true shooting number is .581, right on his career playoff average.
Kobe? His career numbers are skewed by deferring to Shaquille O’Neal in the first half of his career, but in his final two title runs (at ages 30 and 31) Kobe averaged 39 points per 100 possessions, 7.5 rebounds, 7.2 assists, 1.9 steals, one block and 3.9 turnovers. He shot .457 from the field on 29.7 attempts, .484 on 23 two-pointers per 100, .362 on a Shai-like number of three-point attempts and .865 on 10.8 attempts per 100 at the line. In those two runs, Kobe was remarkably close to Jordan — a true shooting number of .570 to Jordan’s career .568 — but Shai has been even more efficient than that.
And while he hasn’t matched Tyrese Haliburton’s unprecedented series of clutch shots, Shai has delivered when needed. In just over 35 clutch minutes in these playoffs, with the score within five in the final five minutes, Shai is 14-for-28 from the field, 2-for-8 from three, and 16-for-17 from the line for 46 points. Among players who played at least 10 games in these playoffs, only Jalen Brunson of the New York Knicks scored more per possession, though less efficiently. And of course, Haliburton has clearly been the most clutch player in the post-season, maybe ever.
But Shai has put together an all-time season and an all-time post-season, and there’s only one more thing left to do. As great as he has been, the 26-year-old is still figuring out the balance between being a passer and a shooter — he was a little too aggressive in Game 1, too passive in Games 3 and 5, a clutch killer who turned Game 4, and a balanced scorer and distributor in Game 5. And this Indiana team has been gloriously tough, and is capable of producing beautiful Pacers chaos in Game 7. You can’t count Indiana out.
So Shai has to figure out the moment. He can’t settle too much, but he also can’t force Kobe hero shots; Kobe went 6-for-24 in his one Finals Game 7, a win over Boston. And as Game 6 showed, Shai has to get his teammates involved, because sometimes they fade. It’s a hell of a task in what has been the season of Shai, end to end. Jordan, of course, never played Game 7 in an NBA Finals. Sunday, Shai gets his chance.