There’s nothing inherently wrong about a team executive going to bat for their star player, but my goodness, did Sam Presti go beyond the pale when talking about Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in his end-of-year press conference.
This whole “he’s playing against six people” thing is absolutely something a middle-aged man thinks up in front of the mirror while putting on his tie in the morning and thinks he’s nailed it. It’s part of a time-worn tradition of stoking the flames of a local fanbase by gaslighting them about what “everyone else” is saying. In this case it’s the “machine,” which he thinks has “turned” on SGA — because there are some trolls on Twitter.
There are no doubt some individuals who hate Gilgeous-Alexander for the way he plays ball. It’s difficult to deny that Shai is a free-throw merchant, especially when he led the league in free-throw attempts this season with 7.9 per-game — which rose to 8.8 per-game in the playoffs. That said, the majority of people either:
b) Accept that he’s found an edge to exploit inside of the rules
Just because people are worried about a slippery slope where everyone in the NBA is flailing for fouls, that doesn’t mean there’s specific, widespread hate for SGA. Shai won the MVP this season, he deserved to, and it’s certainly not on him that the Thunder didn’t make it to the NBA Finals again — we can blame that largely on Jalen Williams being injured, and also on several Thunder players turning into pumpkins in the playoffs.
It’s just getting so tiresome hearing from front office people and taking things too far. It was dumb when the Chiefs trotted out their whole “nobody believed in us” shtick, and it’s dumb when Sam Presti is trying to create this whole “everyone vs. Shai” narrative.
