Shai Gilgeous-Alexander joins NBA legends after a historic season, gracing Sports Illustrated's prestigious Sportsman of the Year cover.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has been named the 2025 Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year.
The iconic and pioneering sports magazine has presented the award every year since 1954 to "the athlete or team whose performance that year most embodies the spirit of sportsmanship and achievement."
"Every Sunday after church, my mom, my brother and I would go to Indigo or Chapters. Go in there and read the sports magazines," Gilgeous-Alexander said in an interview with Sports Illustrated. "It's just crazy to think that a decade later or however many years later, that I'll be on the cover of one of those magazines. And kids will go in there and buy them and read them and flip through them as excited as I was to go through them."
The list of NBA players to win the award over the past 72 years is short and exclusive. The only professional hoopers to be honored in its long history are Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Rory Sparrow, Michael Jordan, David Robinson, Tim Duncan, Dwyane Wade, LeBron James, Steph Curry and now Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
The list of Oklahoman athletes to win the award is even shorter. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. That's it. Pretty remarkable considering that the first era of OKC Thunder basketball included the likes of Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook as well as the storied sports histories of the Oklahoma Sooners and Oklahoma State Cowboys, not to mention local born legends such as Mickey Mantle, Johnny Bench, Shannon Miller, Troy Aikman and many more.
“If you were to pick an NBA star to be on the Oklahoma City Thunder, the perfect match would be Shai," Thomasi Gilgeous-Alexander, Shai's younger brother, told Sports Illustrated.
The Shai Gilgeous-Alexander Sportsman of the Year issue will be available for purchase sometime in early January. Though he has been featured on the cover of many digital issues, this will be the reigning MVP's first Sports Illustrated print cover issue. It will be OKC's first print cover issue in seven years.
The official ceremony will be held on January 6 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
As if being announced for the Sportsman of the Year honor wasn't enough, the cherry on top for Gilgeous-Alexander's Friday afternoon was also being named the Western Conference Player of the Month for December.
Here's hoping Gilgeous-Alexander's wife Hailey or his mother Charmaine or even Santa Claus gifted the Thunder superstar a bigger trophy case for Christmas. He's going to need it.