OKC Thunder: ESPN perplexing player rank of Gilgeous-Alexander
ESPN perplexing player rank of OKC Thunder star Gilgeous-Alexander
This is why this 36th ranking overall from ESPN feels like a slight. While others made big leaps up the board from last season SGA only took a meager two rung leap from 38th last year. Brian Windhorst provided the excerpt for Shai, oddly listing him as a shooting guard and not a point guard:
"One big question: He’s now a max player and the franchise cornerstone for the Thunder as they work on a long rebuild. Last season he blossomed in a bigger role, becoming more efficient and a stronger floor presence in 35 games. But he’s no longer a player of potential — he’s now a player of expectation. While the Thunder have none in the short term, he assuredly will. Time to back it up. — Brian Windhorst"
Diving into the players who rank above several is questionably ranked ahead of SGA. In a vacuum, the fact SGA ranks ahead of Michael Porter Jr. (41), Domantas Sabonis (40), Nikola Vucevic (39), Pascal Siakam (38), and Draymond Green (37) is positive. But seriously? Who doesn’t rank SGA ahead of those five players?
The issue is the players directly ranked in front of Gilgeous-Alexander. Specifically, the players ranked 35th to 27th are:
- Deandre Ayton (35th)
- De’Aaron Fox (34th)
- Zach LaVine (33rd)
- Klay Thompson (32nd)
- Ja Morant (31st)
- CJ McCollum (30th)
- Russell Westbrook (29th)
- Ben Simmons (28th)
- Jaylen Brown (27th)
Including SGA that’s a group of 10 players featuring nine guards. At the top of the list of questions is if you had to pick a guard from this list to build your team around other than Morant isn’t SGA the player most organizations would target?
Sure Fox has improved each season but in a straight-up man-on-man comparison, SGA wins that battle every time! LaVine and Thompson are great shooters but one is suspect defensively and the other is returning from missing the past two seasons due to injury.