Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is our hometown NBA hero

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is officially the best thing to happen to Canadian basketball since Steve Nash. On Sunday night, the Toronto-born, Hamilton-raised baller capped off one of the most dominant seasons by an individual athlete in NBA history, leading the Oklahoma City Thunder to a Game 7 victory over the Indiana Pacers and taking home the NBA Finals MVP award—the first Canadian to ever do so.

The 26-year-old logged 29 points and 12 assists in the deciding game. SGA also snagged the regular season MVP in May, joining hall of famers Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Shaquille O’Neal and Michael Jordan as the fourth player to win both MVP trophies in the same year.

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Gilgeous-Alexander celebrated by taking some adorable photos with his wife, fellow Hamiltonian athlete Hailey Summers, and their one-year-old son, Ares—who nearly knocked over the trophy while playing around. Ares, we get you: these are exciting times.

Gilgeous-Alexander spent the first 11 years of his life in Toronto before moving to Hamilton with his mother after his parents separated. He comes from serious athletic stock: his mother, Charmaine Gilgeous, was an Olympic sprinter for Antigua and Barbuda; his father, Vaughn Alexander, led his Toronto high school, Georges Vanier Secondary, to a citywide basketball title. He’s also cousins with Minnesota Timberwolves star and fellow Team Canada member Nickeil Alexander-Walker.

In Hamilton, the undersized Gilgeous-Alexander—only five foot seven at age 13—developed a fierce work ethic. He trained daily at 6 a.m. before school and pored over hours of footage of star point guards like Chris Paul and fellow Canadian Steve Nash, mimicking their movements on the court.

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Hamilton also gave him an all-too-common jealousy of big-city Toronto. “Hamilton is an under the radar, blue-collar city,” he told the Hamilton Spectator in May. “Growing up, the teams from Toronto, the GTA, they had all the hype. We were overlooked.” Working in Toronto’s shadow, he said, gave him a chip on his shoulder that carried over into his playing style.

That hard work, plus a well-timed growth spurt that saw him eventually shoot up to his full height of six foot six, paid off. At 17, he made the Canadian senior national team. That same year, he moved to the US for a stint at a Tennessee prep school, which led to a scholarship at the University of Kentucky and being picked in the first round of the 2018 NBA draft.

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Fast forward to 2025, and Gilgeous-Alexander has become arguably the best player in the NBA, known for a style that’s nimble, relentless and surgically precise, especially from the mid-range. That skill set has made him a Team Canada fixture, a three-time All-Star and this season’s scoring champ, averaging 32.7 points per game as the driving force of a Thunder squad that led the NBA with 68 wins.

Meanwhile, the Raptors just wrapped their third straight season without a playoff appearance. But let’s not talk about that. And we’re also not going to talk about how Gilgeous-Alexander was on the Raptors’ radar ahead of the 2018 draft—only for them to miss the chance to trade for a homegrown superstar.

Today, Gilgeous-Alexander still summers in Hamilton, where he keeps up his 6 a.m. training sessions with his high school friends. He even flies his hometown barber to Oklahoma City every few weeks for a fresh cut.

Which makes sense considering that he may be the most stylish athlete in sports: his endorsement deals include Converse, Canada Goose and Kim Kardashian’s Skims. His fashion sense first drew attention in 2018, when he took the NBA draft stage in a champagne-coloured suit made from fabric he picked out himself.

But, beyond the fashion statements, Gilgeous-Alexander had something else to say that day—something about Canadian basketball. “The world is starting to realize how good we are,” he said. “I think this is just the beginning.”

Seven years later, he’s making good on that promise.