The NBA Enters Its SGA Era

“I pick up a basketball to be the best. If you’re asking me if I want to be better than Kobe, of course I do,” Shai says. “Whether I get there or not, we’ll find out.”

Off court, the ambition is equally singular: Already considered the league’s best-dressed player, he’s looking to nurture his upstart Converse line into an Air Jordan–esque global concern. And he’s one of the few players who could authentically carry the style mantle for years to come. Most importantly, since he and his wife, Hailey, welcomed their son, Ares, last year, he’s learning to balance that hunger for greatness with the responsibilities that come with being an active and present father.

“Family, friends, hoops, fashion” is how he ticks off the priorities. “Everything else just gets in the way.”

SGA lives in a Gilmore Girls–y town just outside Hamilton, on a quiet, leafy street along the banks of Lake Ontario. When I roll up to his place at half past noon, he’s in the driveway finishing his second workout of the day: 90 minutes with his strength trainer, Nem Ilic, who’s currently making him Sisyphus a weighted sled back and forth past his matching black G-Wagon and Range Rover. “Couple more sets and I’ll be right there,” he says, ushering me through the immaculate gym in the garage and into the house.

Inside, it smells delicious; SGA’s private chef is grilling meat and boiling pasta for lunch. The family dog, a floppy-eared Doberman named Echo, rises from a vast white couch in the living room and pads over to me for some head scratches. Propped against a wall, next to Ares’s toddler-size electric car, is a street sign for “Shai Gilgeous-Alexander Way”—given to him, along with the key to the city, by Hamilton’s mayor in August. The space is airy, comfortable, charmingly domestic. It feels less like the opulently curated homes in Architectural Digest and more like visiting your richest friend’s house in high school.

That was by design, Gilgeous-Alexander explains, as we settle in at his dining table to talk. He’s shirtless and wearing another pair of Thunder shorts, blue this time, his post-lift torso wiry and chiseled like a muscle-bound Gumby. “I like smaller cities,” he responds, between sips of a protein shake, when I ask why a stylish young superstar who just signed a four-year, $285 million contract extension isn’t living in Miami or LA or even just half an hour up the road in Toronto. Growing up in working-class Hamilton—the Newark to Toronto’s New York, as the writer Eric Koreen once put it—and playing in Oklahoma City has primed him for a quieter way of life. “I can walk around here freely. It’s mostly older people walking the dog. I was just in the NBA season for 10 months, and we were all over the place—fans 24/7, on a flight, off a flight. In my offseason, I want the absolute opposite, so I just hide out here.”