Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is the favorite to win MVP with a historic level of production for a guard who also has his own distinctive style. Gilgeous-Alexander developed his game with a remarkable work ethic and the tutelage of his former club coach Dwayne Washington.
As a native New Yorker, Washington learned the game of basketball from watching jerky-jerky guards such as Rod Strickland. Washington was not just a basketball coach but he also taught science. With Gilgeous-Alexander, he wanted to mesh his two areas of expertise. Washington taught him about acceleration and deceleration, about how slowing down quickly could create as much space as speeding up fast.
Washington compared Gilgeous-Alexander to a car with four gears, telling him to never rev to fourth gear.
“You’re never gonna be faster than Allen Iverson,” Washington explained to him. “But what you can do is control your gears.”
Gilgeous-Alexander was given a formula to go from third gear to first gear, then first gear to third gear, then ease down to second gear and then first before moving back to second. All of it was designed to be unpredictable.
“I was always a quick learner,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “So I always tried to soak things up and just get better as fast as I could and use them instinctually throughout the years.”
Gilgeous-Alexander was also given breathing techniques to keep his heart rate down and to remain calm. Finally, he was given geometry. Washington believed too many players viewed a basketball court as straight lines, whereas he taught Gilgeous-Alexander to view it as a series of triangles.
“He’s ahead of his time,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said in a conversation with The Athletic. “Intuitively, he’s where the scientific research is, which is you wanna be making decisions. You want randomness in your workouts. You want variability. You want interweaving in the workout. He kinda does that naturally.”
