He had been on the job for what felt like five whole minutes and already Jordi Fernández was doing his damnedest to express what the head of the snake would mean for Canada at the World Cup later that summer.

It was the first week of August and the new head coach of the Canadian men’s national basketball team began by pointing out the size and length and skill of our country’s best player. How he made it look so easy on the floor. Then Fernández stopped, seemingly mid-thought, and put it this way: “I’ve been around greatness. I’ve been around LeBron. I’ve been around [Nikola Jokic]… I know Shai is at that level.”

Yes, not quite 26 years old, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is already all of that and fittingly, he was recognized with the Northern Star Award as Canadian athlete of the year.

There may not be a basketball player on earth who has had a better calendar year, from January to December. Your first instinct may be to scoff at the notion, and that’s understandable. Gilgeous-Alexander is off in basketball Siberia, buried in Oklahoma City, where he couldn’t be less visible on the national stage, and where even the local market pays more attention to what the Sooners do in high-school recruiting.

Geography — and, by virtue, NBA market credibility — has been the issue around him. If Gilgeous-Alexander played in New York, his face would be plastered all over Times Square. Had the Clippers traded him to Miami or Chicago instead of Oklahoma City, he’d be one of the faces of the NBA. Put him in Boston or alongside LeBron in L.A. and we’d be talking about one of the planet’s most marketable athletes.

He's smooth and suave; there’s a fashionista element to him. Over two-and-a-half million track him on Instagram — more than Mike Trout or Connor McDavid — and the Kardashians have him locked in to their underwear line. Even so, it’s when the lights come on, that he’s continued to be every bit of what Fernández insisted.

In the 34 games from January to April, he averaged more than 32 points a night, along with five rebounds and five assists. In 20 games so far this season, the stat line is absurd: scoring better than 30 a game and improving his totals on boards and dimes from last year.

By the time the calendar flipped to December, Gilgeous-Alexander had put up better scoring numbers in this 2023-2024 season than LeBron, Steph, the Joker, and just about anyone else not named Kevin Durant — and KD was only about a point per game better. His point totals are roughly double, and his assists are about half, of what Steve Nash put together in his MVP seasons.

It’s not that Gilgeous-Alexander is the best Canadian basketball player today — that’s a given. (Yes, Jamal Murray had a playoff run for the ages, and the ring to go with it.) It’s that Gilgeous-Alexander is right there in the conversation for tops in the world. From wire-to-wire in 2023, Gilgeous-Alexander has cemented his status in the MVP conversation. All-NBA last season — meaning he’s a top-five player in the game — and he has come out of the gate this year doing the same.

And then you sit down with him for a conversation and realize: all of this is child’s play.

“I feel like I'm still learning. I feel like there's still so much for me to learn, understand, grasp,” Gilgeous-Alexander told me in the summer. In his eyes, basketball “becomes boring when you're done learning and you're done being challenged and things like that. And to accomplish the things that I've been able, and blessed, to accomplish and still have so much to learn is an exciting feeling.”

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This summer solidified our understanding of his place in the international game. Without Gilgeous-Alexander, Canada doesn’t punch its ticket back to the Olympics for the first time in nearly a quarter-century. Over and over again, down the stretch of games, there he was. For a month at the FIBA World Cup, he redefined the clutch gene.

Every game day, Fernández insisted the staff had to keep Gilgeous-Alexander’s minutes in the early-30 range for max efficiency, and then things would get tight in the third and fourth quarters and the Toronto native wouldn’t come off for a breather.

There was the showdown against Luka Doncic and Slovenia, a game that had the kind of one-on-one showdown hype often reserved for boxing or UFC, and SGA became the first player in three decades with 30-plus points and double-digit rebounds in a World Cup knockout game, and a win.

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Never before had the national team won a medal at the competition, and with bronze up for grabs against the Americans, Gilgeous-Alexander went for 31 points, 12 assists and six rebounds. He also became the first Canadian ever selected as a top-five player at the FIBA World Cup tournament.

This 2023 basketball calendar has simultaneously been a culmination and a springboard for an athlete who is all-in on dissecting any and every bit of what it takes to reach greatness. He’s studied those who are “supreme at certain things in the game,” he explained. He dug into Jordan’s and Kobe’s competitiveness and the ways they approached the game; the cerebral aspect of LeBron’s and Chris Paul’s craft.

“It's usually the guys that are mentioned at the, I guess you can say, ‘GOAT’ status that do something extremely extraordinary,” Gilgeous-Alexander said of who he learns from. “And I think those guys were, once upon a time, just dudes.

“It’s about what’s finding what’s made them the best,” that he wants to discover, he continued.

In 2023, no Canadian athlete put together as special a year as Gilgeous-Alexander. For a club, for the country, while not yet satisfied, still thirsty to learn.

Northern Star Award just a step in Gilgeous-Alexander’s rise to greatness

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