Basketball superstar from Ontario ready to make NBA history

It’s a record that has stood for 63 years, and it will likely fall tonight.

If Shai Gilgeous-Alexander of the Oklahoma Thunder scores 20 points in his NBA match against the Boston Celtics (March 12), he will break a record set by basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain.

The Toronto-born and Hamilton-raised Gilgeous-Alexander is a true superstar of the game, having already earned a league MVP, NBA finals MVP, and a scoring championship. Now, he is shooting for a record that many thought would never be broken.

If he plays his typical game and scores more than 20 points, it will be 127 consecutive games where he has reached that plateau, and he will have surpassed the standard set by Chamberlain in 1963.

“It’s still a lot to even wrap my head around,” Gilgeous-Alexander, the 6-foot-6 guard, told NBA.com on Monday night after tying the streak. “To be honest with you, I try not to even think about it, especially during the season. So much is going on, and so many things have to go right for you to get what you ultimately want. But obviously being in the conversation with a guy like (Chamberlain) is special.”

Gilgeous-Alexander’s rise to becoming one of the best players in the league has been a magnificent one.

The now 27-year-old attended both St. Thomas More Catholic Secondary School and later Sir Allan MacNab Secondary School in Hamilton before transferring, ironically enough, to Hamilton Heights Christian Academy in Tennessee, where his emerging skills needed to be tested against a higher-level of competition.

It was the right move.

Highly recruited out of high school, he chose the University of Kentucky, where his game continued to improve as he collected more accolades for his ability to put up numbers that turned him into a first-round selection in the NBA draft of 2018.

After an uneventful first year with the Los Angeles Clippers, he was traded to the Thunder, and that is when the magic began.

With more frequent playing time, the buckets started to come, and Gilgeous-Alexander has never looked back.

“He’s just been out of this world the past four or five years, especially scoring the ball,” Houston Rockets All-Star Kevin Durant told reporters on Tuesday night. “I think he’s averaging 30 (points) over the last four years. I love players who care about leaving their mark in the history books. You can tell Shai cares about it. Obviously, he’s a team-first player. But you can tell he wants to be great. He wants to be considered one of the greatest of all time.”

Stay tuned.