Shai Gilgeous-Alexander: ‘Being in the NBA is my outlet, my platform’

This story is taken from the spring 2024 issue of Dazed. Pre-order a copy of the magazine here.

There’s a lot on Shaivonte Aician Gilgeous-Alexander’s mind when we meet one winter afternoon. Like many basketball titans before him, the 25-year-old Oklahoma City Thunder point guard wants to leave an imprint on the game that transcends sport, to join a lineage of pioneers who combined athletics with fashion and broke down barriers. “It gives me a platform to show the world who I am, art-wise, and my personality,” Gilgeous-Alexander says when starting to discuss fashion. “I can show my ideas beyond basketball.”

In 2024, hip hop and fashion are as intertwined in NBA culture as the three-point field goal. LeBron James is featured in Louis Vuitton campaigns helmed by creative director Pharrell Williams; Carmelo Anthony was photographed “possibly” staring at Rihanna during the Met Gala; Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour would go to the games Dwyane Wade played at Madison Square Garden. These days, the NBA posts videos showing players’ outfits as they walk into buildings for work. Adam Silver, a canny promoter of the game in his role as commissioner of the NBA, is aware that athletes have more to say, and more creative freedom, than ever.

So, on January 6th, as I watch the player trying on different outfits for his cover shoot in New York City, I smile thinking of fashion’s great emergence into the NBA. A silk shirt isn’t as smooth as the game that Gilgeous-Alexander, or ‘SGA’ as basketball junkies call him, possesses. He’s a 6ft 6in giraffe who thinks quickly on court but seems to be going in slow motion as he does it. But his glide – which looks like he is doing ballet as he decides that the paint is open, thus clear to leap to – is anything but slow. “I always thought I was fly – and style, being in the NBA, is kind of like my outlet, my platform.”

The joy in watching Gilgeous-Alexander is his obvious natural ability, mixed with footwork that he honed very quickly. Flash takes a backseat to finesse; playing above the rim takes a backseat to mid-range jumpers that are impossible to stop. He’s a little like Drake, in basketball form: the craft is his X factor, and he can score from every spot on the floor. “Shai’s length, feel for the game, his demeanour on the court, and his drive are all the reasons why I recruited him,” says John Calipari, his head coach at the University of Kentucky. “I remember telling him I knew I had to give him more minutes but I was trying to figure out what the rotation was going to be. He said, ‘Coach, stop. I trust you,’ and that is when I really fell in love with him.”

Today, undisputedly, Gilgeous-Alexander is one of basketball’s great players. At his best, he is able to bring out the greatest qualities of his teammates and uplift the standard of the game generally, on both sides of the court. “A lot of it has to do with my teammates getting better, because teams have to worry about them more,” he reasons. “Teams have to guard them, and you can’t guard them and guard me at the same time.” Seeing him play calls up the memory of legends like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, but also 70s guards with more cerebral games, such as Dave Bing and Elgin Baylor. His play has helped the Oklahoma City Thunder, who were in the midst of rebuilding, become one of the best teams in the league, ready to be put on a pedestal with the big boys.

To have to deal with SGA is to deal with someone who knows how to score without sacrificing his teammates’ ambitions, too. “We are a young and energetic team. Our chemistry is good off the court and thus it makes it easier for us to win on the court,” the athlete says. “It’s like a family – every summer, we’re around each other. We hoop together. We’re all in the NBA, all dealing with the same things, helping where we can. A lot of us grew up together, playing against each other, so it’s cool to see the journeys and how far we’ve come.”

Watching him glide through courts also brings to mind some of the game’s truest style heroes, some of the men he grew up idolising. “The two worlds [fashion and basketball] have definitely collided and I think it has a lot to do with the guys that have come before,” Gilgeous-Alexander says, nodding to 00s MVPs like NBA shooting guard Allen Iverson, who “allowed us to have fun with it”. Prior to SGA walking for Thom Browne at men’s fashion week in Paris this past January, the relationship between the fashion industry and the NBA athletes that fancied themselves as stylish was complicated. Even the relationship between the NBA itself and the clothes its predominantly Black athletes wore was mercurial at best, frosty and adversarial at worst. In the mid-2000s, when the NBA athlete was as representative of hip-hop culture as Cam’ron himself, then-NBA commissioner David Stern implemented the infamous ‘dress code’. The rule: all players must dress in business attire when arriving at a game. It banned trends most associated with, and co-opted by, hip hop: du-rags, jerseys, chains, large jewellery and walking boots. (In order words: the Timberland boots that NBA players at the time liked to wear.)

But for SGA, dressing entered his consciousness before any of this could. “My parents always made sure we looked the part leaving the house,” he says, recalling his earliest style memories. “They made sure we cleaned our ears, always made sure we checked our eyes, always made sure our shoelaces were tied. They always made sure that, if we had a collar shirt, it wasn’t flipped. I think that has a lot to do with it.” The son of track athlete Charmaine Gilgeous, the sportsman grew up in the town of Hamilton in Ontario, Canada – a country trailed by significant basketball heritage. “I grew up watching [Toronto Raptors stars] Chris Bosh and Jose Calderon,” Gilgeous-Alexander says. “The trickle effect is why Toronto basketball is huge. The Raptors came to Toronto, and then Tristan Thompson and Cory Joseph got drafted. So, Toronto basketball has a culture.”

It’s why today, and looking ahead, SGA is proud to represent his country in style. (“Everyone on my team can dress,” he says, when I probe him on his teammates’ dress sense.) As our Lyft takes us through the gridded streets of New York, our conversation once again arrives at the crossroads of style and sport, a space he feels supremely at ease in as the world of basketball evolves around him. He reflects on a recent game at Madison Square Garden, in front of 19,000 screaming fans, and the thrill he gets from being part of a piece of theatre every night. “New York has a basketball culture, and you could feel it as soon as you walk into the arena like the fans are so engaged,” he says. “They’re ooh-ing and aah-ing all night.”

Hair MOE HARB, make-up MARCELO GUTIERREZ at BRYANT ARTISTS, nails ELINA OGAWA at BRIDGE using TWEEZERMAN, models NIAR ROBINSON, RAIN ROBINSON, ERICK JR WILLIAMS, CAIRO WILLIAMS, photographic assistants CIERA DUNBAR, TAJ REED, styling assistants DARLENE PARK, PIPPI NOLA, NOAH DELFINER, MONIQUE RANSOM, make-up assistant NANASE, production LISA WEATHERBY at MINI TITLE, production coordinator BRAD EISENHAUER, production assistants MICHAEL PARDO, street casting NATALIE LIN at IN SEARCH OF AGENCY