Net Wins Is Still Counting Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. The Trajectory Is Alarming.
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There is a version of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander that the league did not see coming. Not because he lacked talent everyone who watched him at Kentucky in 2017-18 knew what was there but because the path from 11th pick to back-to-back MVP, from a team that won 22 games to a championship franchise, required something that cannot be scouted or projected. It required a particular kind of patience combined with a particular kind of competitive intensity that only shows itself under pressure.
The formula currently ranks him 142nd all time after eight seasons. That number is about to become obsolete.
What the Formula Sees
Regular season: +67.2 net wins Playoffs: +16.8 net wins Combined: +84.0 Seasons: 8 Avg/season: +8.40 Peak: +15.59 (2024-25, 68-14 Thunder) Top-3 avg: +13.72 Current rank: 142nd
The career average of +8.40 is already elite. Unlike the old formula, which produced negative numbers in the tank years, V2 sees every SGA season as a positive contribution. The two seasons on 22 and 24-win OKC teams produced +2.44 and +3.51 respectively modest numbers reflecting the limited winning context, but positive ones. A player this good, even surrounded by a deliberate rebuild, still converts his contributions into wins. There just were not many wins to be had.
Strip those two seasons out and his six-season average on teams that were genuinely competitive is +10.20. Among active players, that ranks near the top of the database.
The more important number is the trajectory. His last four seasons average +12.38 net wins per year. He is 27 years old.
From Hamilton to the 11th Pick
He was born in Toronto and raised in Hamilton, Ontario. His mother Charmaine is a former Olympic track athlete, which explains the footwork and the first step that guards have spent years trying to solve and have not. He moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee for high school, one season at Kentucky, and then the 2018 draft where the Charlotte Hornets took him 11th and immediately traded him to the Los Angeles Clippers.
The Clippers season was a quiet revelation to people paying attention. He averaged 10.8 points per game as a rookie on a 48-win team, shot 47.6% from the field, and produced +4.42 net wins in a supporting role. Then the Thunder traded for him in July 2019 and the rebuilding process began.
What followed for two seasons was the NBA’s version of the minor leagues. OKC was not trying to win. Sam Presti was accumulating draft picks and assets. SGA was accumulating basketball. He was posting scoring totals that would have made him an All-Star on most teams, on franchises that were going 22-50 and 24-58, and the formula recorded modest positives because even on those rosters, what he did still moved the needle toward winning.
The question those seasons answered was not whether he was good. It was whether he was the kind of player who keeps getting better when nobody is watching. The answer was yes.
The Climb
The season log makes the case without commentary:
2018-19 (LAC, 48-34): +4.42 2019-20 (OKC, 44-28): +7.31 2020-21 (OKC, 22-50): +2.44 2021-22 (OKC, 24-58): +3.51 2022-23 (OKC, 40-42): +8.35 2023-24 (OKC, 57-25): +12.49 2024-25 (OKC, 68-14): +15.59 2025-26 (OKC, 64-18): +13.08
The two modest seasons in the middle are the tank years. Every other season is positive and the four most recent average +12.38. The jump from +8.35 in 2022-23 to +12.49 in 2023-24 to +15.59 in 2024-25 is three consecutive seasons of elite-level improvement.
His 2024-25 season produced the scoring title, the MVP award, and the NBA championship. The formula recorded +15.59, placing that season in the highest tier of individual performance in the guard position across the entire database.
That comparison is worth making precisely. Among all guards in the database by single-season peak:
Jordan, 1995-96 (72-10 Bulls): +18.81 Oscar Robertson, 1963-64 (55-25 Royals): +16.41 Magic Johnson, 1986-87 (65-17 Lakers): +15.94 Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, 2024-25 (68-14 Thunder): +15.59 Russell Westbrook, 2016-17 (47-35 Thunder): +15.12 Chris Paul, 2008-09 (49-33 Hornets): +14.83 Derrick Rose, 2010-11 (62-20 Bulls): +13.92
SGA’s peak season is the fourth-highest single-season performance by a guard in the history of the database. He is behind Jordan, Oscar Robertson, and Magic Johnson. He is ahead of every other guard who ever played. Westbrook, CP3, Rose, Payton, Wade, Nash, Stockton all of them. The season was not a mirage inflated by foul-drawing. On a 68-win team with the full statistical record available, the formula sees +15.59.
The Canada Detour Worth Mentioning
In 2023, Gilgeous-Alexander led Canada to a bronze medal at the FIBA Basketball World Cup, the first medal in the history of the Canadian men’s program. Canada had never won a medal at the World Cup. They did it with SGA as the clear best player on the roster, playing with the same relentlessness he brings to OKC games, in a tournament where most American-based stars find reasons not to participate.
He also represented Canada at the 2024 Paris Olympics in a run that ended against the United States. The willingness to show up for his country in international competition when he could easily have opted out is a detail about his character that the formula cannot measure but that the basketball community noticed.
The Holmgren Context
SGA and Wembanyama are playing each other right now in the Western Conference Finals. The article on Wembanyama covered the rivalry from Wemby’s side. From SGA’s side, the context is different.
Holmgren won a championship in OKC in 2025 alongside SGA. The two have co-existed on the same franchise through one of the most successful rebuilds in recent NBA history. The rivalry is not internal - it is the franchise versus Wembanyama and the Spurs, and SGA is the engine of that franchise.
When Wembanyama said in December 2025 that OKC played “isolation ball” and “forced basketball” without variety, SGA’s response was characteristically quiet. He did not say anything publicly. He produced +13.08 that season on a 64-win team. The formula said more than he needed to.
The Criticism Worth Addressing
No profile of SGA is complete without acknowledging the most persistent knock on his game: the accusations of flopping and manufacturing foul contact to get to the free throw line.
The criticism is not baseless. He leads the league in free throw attempts most seasons. He has an extraordinary ability to draw contact, some of it genuine and some of it, depending on your view, manufactured through off-ball movement and body positioning that exploits the rulebook rather than the defender. He has been called for flopping violations. Opposing coaches have complained about it publicly.
The formula does not take a position on this. Free throws attempted are not in the formula. Made free throws generate points in the positive column and missed free throws count as negative actions, but the act of drawing fouls is neither credited nor penalized. What the formula sees is the output.
What is worth saying plainly is that his efficiency numbers - field goal percentages climbing from 47.6% in his rookie year to 55.3% in 2025-26, the turnover rates, the shooting splits - are all consistent with a player who is genuinely elite rather than a player whose numbers are inflated by cheap trips to the line. +15.59 on a 68-win team is not a foul-drawing artifact.
142nd, For Now
The current ranking of 142nd reflects eight seasons including two on sub-25-win teams and one shortened by injury. The players around him in the database Richard Jefferson, Klay Thompson, George Gervin all played 10 to 17 seasons. SGA has eight, and his last four average +12.38.
For context, Tony Parker’s career combined total is +147.0 across 18 seasons at an average of +6.98 per year. Parker won four championships alongside Duncan and is one of the better point guards in modern NBA history. SGA, averaging +12.38 over his last four years at age 27, is on a trajectory that would exceed Parker’s career total in roughly five more full seasons at his current rate.
Project forward conservatively. If he averages +11 net wins per season for ten more years, his career combined lands around +194. That places him near or above Kevin Garnett, Shaq, and Jordan in the all-time rankings. At +12 per year for ten seasons, he approaches +204. At +13 the average of his last four seasons he reaches +214, which would sit between Jordan and Nowitzki.
Those are projections, not predictions. Injuries happen. Players decline. The formula counts what occurs, not what might.
What has occurred in eight seasons is a per-season average of +8.40 across all seasons including the tank years, a peak of +15.59 that is the fourth-highest guard season in database history, and a last-four-season average that matches the career averages of the all-time greats.
He is from Hamilton, Ontario. His mother ran for Canada in the Olympics. He married his high school sweetheart. He gave the city of Hamilton the key to itself back, symbolically, by becoming its most famous export and staying connected to where he came from.
The formula sees a player in the middle of something historic. 142nd after eight seasons, with a recent four-year average that would place him in the top ten all-time if he sustains it. The database is already beginning to make room.
The full Net Wins database, 295 NBA players and every season from 1946 to 2026, is free at willf123.github.io/nba-net-wins.
Next: Shaquille O’Neal at #8. He shot 43% from the free throw line and still produced one of the ten greatest individual seasons in the history of the sport. Subscribe to get it when it drops.
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