Wednesday night, the OKC Thunder pulled out a hard-fought, collective-effort win over the New York Knicks, with Chet Holmgren breaking out of his scoring slump, Kenrich Williams perfectly displaying the club's elite next-man-up abilities, and a bigger gap opening up between them and the second-seeded Spurs.
Yet, despite these exciting happenings, it seems all people can talk about is Shai Gilgeous-Alexander's supposed foul-baiting antics.
Sadly, this kind of narrative has been following the reigning MVP around for years now. Though he's proven this to be completely blown out of proportion time and time again, somehow it keeps making its way back into the newscycle.
Knicks coach Mike Brown is the primary reason for this latest revival.
Knicks coach peddling same old criticism of Thunder star
Following Oklahoma City's clutch 103-100 win over New York, the club's first-year head coach went on record stating that he views Gilgeous-Alexander as being better than "anybody in the league" at convincing officials "that he's getting hit."
Now, though this soundbite suggests Gilgeous-Alexander may have hoisted up an obscene number of free throws on the night, the reality is that he shot only seven in total, yet still finished with a whopping 26 points.
Excitingly enough, this appears to be somewhat of an ongoing trend for the superstar guard when he's been lambasted for his foul line activity.
Let's not forget that during the same game earlier this season, where Minnesota Timberwolves coach Chris Finch was tossed for arguing about supposed exaggerated contact and OKC drawing phantom whistles, Gilgeous-Alexander shot eight free throws, just two more than Anthony Edwards, and a whopping eight fewer than Julius Randle.
As was the case on Wednesday, the Thunder cornerstone still lit up the scoreboard with a ridiculous 35 point performance.
The fact of the matter is, these complaints about SGA's free-throw activity are not only overstated, but, frankly, take away from the greatness that has been his shooting efficiency from the field as a whole this year.
As things currently stand, the point guard is right on the outside looking in on becoming just the tenth player in league history to join the 50/ 40/ 90 club, as he's boasting shooting splits of 55.1/ 38.4/ 89.5 while averaging the second-most points per game with 31.7.
He's also on his way toward joining Wilt Chamberlain and Michael Jordan as the only players to ever average 30.0 points or more on 50.0 percent shooting from the field.
At this point, it seems all but certain that the complaints from opposing teams about Gilgeous-Alexander's free-throw activity won't be going away any time soon. Fortunately, neither will his overall efficiency and dominance in the scoring department outside of the charity stripe.