NBA community defends Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in polarizing social media debate

OKC Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is a legitimate superstar who, at just 26 years old, has already made a name for himself as one of the best two-way players the game has to offer.

Of course, even though he's an established and highly reliable commodity on the less glamorous side of the ball, his offensive play, particularly when it comes to his scoring expertise, is undoubtedly his bread and butter.

That said, despite this set-in-stone fact, a recent debate was held on X (formerly Twitter) discussing who between SGA and Dallas Mavericks cornerstone, Luka Doncic, was the "better SCORER."

Fortunately for the sanity of Thunder fans near and far, the more popular choice between the mentioned ballers was, in fact, Gilgeous-Alexander.

Fans tabs Thunder's SGA as superior scorer to Mavs' Luka Doncic

Though it goes without saying that both are unbelievable offensive players, one user would quantify things by saying while Doncic may be the more versatile offensive weapon, Gilgeous-Alexander, in his eyes, is the superior bucket-getter.

One user by the name of Duffalo would take things a step further by breaking down why they believe Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is the better all-around scorer in a rather in-depth manner.

Over the last two seasons, both Doncic and SGA have averaged above 30 points per game, which, in turn, has drawn some in the comments section to merely pick the player with the higher scoring number which, in this case, is the former.

However, it must be noted that while Luka is posting 2.4 more points per night on average (33.1 compared to 30.7) during this stretch, he's doing so on a whopping 233 more attempts than the Thunder star, while seeing 847 more shots hoisted and 316 more made from beyond the arc.

Adding more to these advanced metrics, Gilgeous-Alexander boasts a higher offensive rating (119) than Doncic (115) for their respective careers and, on a much more noteworthy level, has literally already proven to be the most consistent volume scorer in league history.

Back during his illustrious 2022-23 run where he averaged 31.4 points per night, the folks at Sportico calculated that the Thunder guard saw a standard deviation (a determination of how irregular a player's point totals are) of 6.68, which ranks as the best rate of all time (the lower the number, the less point totals vary).

What's more impressive is the fact that not only does he hold the top slot in this category, but he appears twice within the top three in NBA history, as his 2023-24 averages of 30.1 points per game production ranked third (6.75) behind Ocsar Robertson's 6.71 recorded in 1963-64 and just ahead of Kevin Durant's 6.80 registered in 2009-10.

And where does Doncic fall into these ranks? Well, per Sportico, none of his six seasons have even qualified for a mere mention in such a conversation.

While there's no question that the Mavericks star is a bonafide stud in the scoring department -- as made evident by both his point per game averages and is tied for the fourth-most points dropped in a single game at a whopping 73 -- and, in fact, is the superior long-range sniper in comparison, due to his virtually automatic ability to buy a bucket in virtually any capacity thanks to his wildly deep bag of tricks (hesitations, crossovers, in-and-out dribbles, offensive foul draws, etc.) and the advanced metrics, when it comes to the question of who is the best pure scorer between the two, SGA seems to be the clear choice.

Thankfully, it appears a large chunk of the NBA community agrees with such a sentiment.