Hamilton basketball superstar named MVP as Thunder win NBA championship

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander capped off a dream season Sunday with an MVP performance in game seven of the NBA finals to lead his Oklahoma City Thunder to a 103-91 victory, the city’s first-ever NBA title.

SGA, as the kid from Hamilton is known, became the first Canadian to ever be named NBA Finals MVP, adding to his regular season laurels, where he became just the second Canadian (after Steve Nash) to win MVP honours.

The league scoring champ led all scorers last night with 29 points against a determined Indiana Pacers squad but his biggest impact on the game was as a facilitator, dishing out a dozen assists to help his team take over the game in the second half after Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton went down with an achilles injury.

SGA, still just 26, becomes the fourth player in NBA history to win MVP, Finals MVP, a scoring title and play for a champion in the same season, joining Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Shaquille O’Neal and Michael Jordan – who did it four times – in that exclusive club.