After putting forth a truly remarkable 2024-25 campaign where he took home league MVP honors and guided the OKC Thunder to their first-ever NBA Championship, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander once again finds himself getting off to a blistering hot start to this 2025-26 campaign.
Simply put, his production has, at worst, remained consistent from last season to this one and, at best, has gotten even better.
In fact, according to the NBA's findings, over his last 100 regular-season games, Gilgeous-Alexander has totaled a ridiculous 3,243 points, 637 assists, and 164 steals while shooting 52.3 percent from the field.
Since the league started tracking steals back in 1973-74, there has only been one other player to match or exceed such numbers.
That player: Michael Jordan.
Thunder star again groups himself in with Michael Jordan with rare feat
Since embarking on his domination fest over the rest of the league last season, Gilgeous-Alexander has found himself regularly thrusting his name into categories largely dominated by the sport's all-time great.
From becoming the second player aside from Jordan in the last 50 years to record 30-point outings in 16 of the first 19 games of a campaign to joining him, along with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Shaquille O'Neal, as the fourth player to win regular season MVP, the scoring title, and an NBA Championship all in the same season, in some ways, their names have grown synonymous.
Now, 22 games into this year's title-defense tour, the 27-year-old has managed to add one more Jordan-related accomplishment to his ever-growing collection.
What's most exciting about these individual feats is the fact that they are directly leading to team-wide successes.
Behind Gilgeous-Alexander and his sensational averages of 32.8 points, 6.5 assists, 4.7 rebounds, and 1.5 steals on 54.8 percent shooting from the floor and a career-best 43.4 percent shooting from deep, the Thunder are off to a blistering hot 21-1 start to the season (the second-best over a 22-game stretch in league history).
With this record, they find themselves on pace to not only become the first team since the 2018 Warriors to win back-to-back titles, but reset the record books for wins in a single season with 78 (six more than the Jordan-led Bulls of 1995-96) along the way.
Though it may only be early December, many are already seemingly penciling this Thunder team in as 2026 NBA Champions.
Considering they're being led by the Michael Jordan-esque play of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, it's easy to see why.