He showed up at 6 a.m. this morning, but these sessions can start as early as 4:30. The week prior, Gilgeous-Alexander flew home from Nike’s campus outside Portland, Ore., slept two hours, and was on the court before dawn. (He transferred from Converse, a Nike subsidiary, to the big brand in June; Nike plans to release a second edition of his signature shoe—the Shai 002—early next year. Asked what customers can expect, SGA, who counts drawing and tennis as hobbies, responds: “Sick design. Because I drew it. That’s all I can give you.”)
After a series of drills, he is bent over, hands on knees. “A little fatigue never hurt nobody,” says Mitchell. Gilgeous-Alexander steps to his safe space, the foul line, where he’s almost automatic. He makes nine in a row.
For the record, he does not practice falling. Yahoo! Sports basketball analyst Tom Haberstroh did yeoman’s work last spring: he tracked more than 1,300 shots taken by top scorers SGA, Wembanyama, Jalen Brunson, James Harden, and Donovan Mitchell in the playoffs and found that, indeed, SGA hits the deck at the highest rate—on both attempts that are whistled as fouls and those that aren’t. But SGA swears he’s not acting. After all, he drives to the bucket more than most, so he’s more likely to draw contact. Plus, he often lands on his tush for safety. “Sometimes I’m leaning so much and fading away so much that it’s easier for me to fall than to try to stick a landing or risk landing on someone,” he says. “It’s just natural. Your body’s in a way in the air that if you try to stick the landing, it’s unnatural. If I’m this way and my knee will have to go the other way, you’re compromising your body.”