{"id":92252,"date":"2025-06-11T21:55:11","date_gmt":"2025-06-11T21:55:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/92252\/"},"modified":"2025-06-11T21:55:11","modified_gmt":"2025-06-11T21:55:11","slug":"john-calipari-reveals-shai-gilgeous-alexander-told-cleveland-cavaliers-he-would-not-play-for-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/92252\/","title":{"rendered":"John Calipari reveals Shai Gilgeous-Alexander told Cleveland Cavaliers he would not play for them"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Calipari <\/a>shared some interesting details about Shai Gilgeous-Alexander<\/a> not wanting to play for the Cleveland Cavaliers. While appearing on Golic & Golic on the FanDuel Sports Network Wednesday, the Arkansas<\/a> basketball coach said that Gilgeous-Alexander told him he didn\u2019t want the Cavaliers to draft him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t start in the first four to five games (at Kentucky<\/a>). And I called him in and said, \u2018Look, Shai, I know you should be starting or could be starting, but I kind of like this rotation,’\u201d John Calipari said. \u201cHe looked at me and said, \u2018Coach, I trust you. I\u2019m fine. I\u2019ll see you at practice.\u2019 Well, game nine and 10, I started him. And from there, he was a lottery pick. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe made himself a lottery pick to the point that Cleveland wanted to draft him, and he said, \u2018No, I\u2019m not going to Cleveland.\u2019 I was at the table. I\u2019m like, \u2018What are you doing?\u2019 And he ends up going to the Clips. I watched him in a playoff game. That\u2019s when I knew he was going to be in this league a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Charlotte Hornets selected Shai Gilgeous-Alexander at No. 11 overall in the 2018 NBA Draft. He was then traded to the Los Angeles Clippers during draft night and spent his rookie season in L.A. The Cavaliers had the No. 8 overall pick in the draft and selected Colin Sexton<\/a>. After spending four seasons in Cleveland, Sexton was signed and traded to the Utah Jazz in September 2022.<\/p>\n

John Calipari predicted MVP for Shai Gilgeous-Alexander<\/p>\n

Gilgeous-Alexander was traded to the Oklahoma City Thunder in July 2019. He\u2019s still with the team and has emerged as one of the NBA\u2019s best players. Gilgeous-Alexander is the reigning NBA MVP<\/a> and has led the Thunder to an NBA Finals appearance this year.<\/p>\n

Calipari also talked about when he knew that SGA was going to be an NBA MVP. \u201cI went to a regular-season game. He comes from warming up to me to the sideline, to meet the people I was with to say hello, which is a big deal,\u201d Calipari said. \u201cDidn\u2019t need to do that. After he was done, he went to the end zone, started signing autographs, taking pictures, walking the baseline, walking the sideline, and then going in the tunnel. Took him about 15 minutes. I\u2019m like, he\u2019s an MVP. <\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t believe it. Called his mom, \u2018(Charmine), I\u2019ve never been prouder of your son.\u2019 Oh, wait a minute. I get off the phone, the Oklahoma City employee looks at me and says \u2014Glenn Wong says, \u2018Coach, he does it every home game.\u2019 And he\u2019s still doing it now, when they\u2019re playing for a world championship. It tells you who he is and what he\u2019s about. No one asked him to do it. He did it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"John Calipari shared some interesting details about Shai Gilgeous-Alexander not wanting to play for the Cleveland Cavaliers. While…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":92253,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3772],"tags":[7,306,305,193,20193,3846,14154,6,1927,1667],"class_list":{"0":"post-92252","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cleveland-cavaliers","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-cavaliers","10":"tag-cleveland","11":"tag-cleveland-cavaliers","12":"tag-cleveland-cavaliers-cleveland","13":"tag-clevelandcavaliers","14":"tag-john-calipari-78-moon-area","15":"tag-nba","16":"tag-oh","17":"tag-shai-gilgeous-alexander-17-hamilton-heights-christian-academy"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114666964583198546","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}