Oklahoma City lost 119-98 in Houston on Saturday night, and the clip that went around showed Shai Gilgeous-Alexander sitting in his warm-ups, looking hollow, while a hostile crowd enjoyed itself. People are using that face to ask whether the reigning MVP can actually carry a team by himself. That's an absurd question to ask off this particular game, and the box score tells you why.
SGA led the Thunder with 26 points on 10-of-20 shooting, hit three of his six threes, and added four rebounds and three assists in 30 minutes. His team shot 43.5% from the field and 31.3% from three around him. He was the best player on the floor in a game Oklahoma City had no business keeping close. If your read on the night is that Shai was the problem, you watched a different broadcast than the one that happened.
Now look at who wasn't out there. For the Rockets game, the Thunder were without Alex Caruso, Chet Holmgren, Jalen Williams, Cason Wallace, Nikola Topic and Thomas Sorber. This is a defending champion missing three starters long-term, plus one of its best defenders for this game, plus two players who haven't appeared all season. Holmgren was ruled out the night before with a patellar tendon tear, an 8-to-10 week absence by the team's estimate. Williams is out for the season. Wallace is set to miss most of it after shoulder surgery. You can't run a fair referendum on a man's ability to carry a team when half the team is in street clothes.
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RatingPostgame, asked what Oklahoma City could control, he just said "I don't know." That's a competitor being honest about a situation he can't fix with one pair of hands. Anyone who watched him calmly let a 141-game 20-point streak end against Denver, taking a seat in a win rather than hunting a stat, knows the difference between resignation and theatrics. Saturday was resignation.
This is exactly the kind of adversity that's supposed to separate an MVP from a champion. The great ones drag dead rosters somewhere anyway, and a tired face is a tell. Judge him on whether he keeps producing while the cavalry's hurt. His face in a blowout doesn't factor into it. On that score he's already passing, the production is there. What isn't there is a second, third and fourth option, and no amount of body language fixes a 31% three-point night from everyone else.
RTGIf you want to aim the heat somewhere, aim it at the construction. Oklahoma City spent the summer shedding salary, trading Lu Dort, Aaron Wiggins and Isaiah Joe and leaning on rookies, betting that an MVP-level engine could paper over a thinner supporting cast. Then a brutal run of injuries blew the margin for error to pieces. That's a front-office gamble meeting bad luck, and it's a real conversation about depth and risk. It has nothing to do with whether Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has "it."
This is six games into a season, at 4-2, with the roster gutted. Judge the depth chart and Sam Presti's math instead, and leave the man who just carried this franchise to a title out of it. A dejected bench clip isn't evidence of anything except that losing by 21 is miserable.
