The Thunder have shut down Shai Gilgeous-Alexander for the remainder of the season, head coach Mark Daigneault told The Oklahoman’s Joe Mussatto (Twitter link) and other media members on Monday.
Gilgeous-Alexander has been bothered by right ankle soreness during portions of the season and hasn’t played since last Monday. The team’s star guard signed off on the decision to let the ankle heal.
He had another strong season statistically, though his 3-point shooting dropped dramatically (down from 41.8% last season to 30% this year). He averaged 24.5 PPG, 5.9 APG, 5.0 RPG and 1.3 SPG in 34.7 MPG while appearing in 56 games.
Forward Darius Bazley was also ruled out for the remainder of the season on Monday due to a knee injury.
Gilgeous-Alexander remains a major piece in Oklahoma City’s rebuild. His five-year, maximum-salary extension that he signed last summer will kick in next season.
What a waste. My 3 points would drop too if I knew it was just another lost season.
Imagine you work hard every day to make it to The Show and finally you get there and your team willingly loses.
Disgusting. Disgraceful. Disrespectful to the fans and the people of OKC, but more importantly the athletes that put their ays on the line every day.
This league is broken…
Most of us know he’s fine and we’re tanking for a high pick.
It’s only been 2 years so far and honestly, if we land a top 4 pick, I do expect the team to start being a lot more competitive next year. (Barring real injuries of course)
We’re small market, it’s what we’re forced to do. Lebron or demar aren’t randomly signing with OKC. Least we shouldn’t have to tank a full decade like philly did, and we’ll recover quicker than Detroit will, who has been awful for a long time now.
Let’s hope
On the other hand Detroit has Cade Cunningham, there’s no one on his level in the next few drafts.
What else do you expect small market teams to do?
If the market doesnt support a team maybe they shouldn’t have one. If you’re not going to compete why play at all?
The tanking wars are getting ridiculous. OKC has now shut down 8 rotation players for the year and of those, two are probably legitimate. I hope they bite it in the lottery. It’s sad, as it was such a well run franchise when they first moved from Seattle and an incredibly loyal and enthusiastic fan base.
Lol you act like the 3 teams below okc aren’t doing the same exact thing. Orlando, who was up in the fourth tonite, benched all their starters late in the game and let Cleveland come back and win the game. It’s the same principle, just one team is calling them “injured” and the other is just benching them.
They should flip the lottery around. If you’re the worst team in the league, you should be in 14th place for the lottery, with a 0.5% chance of getting the 1st overall pick. If you’re the 14th-worst team in the league, you move up to the top. All of these games would actually mean something because you’d be playing to *win* the first overall pick.
This is a great idea.
It would be like a probability play-in.
Jayson Stark suggested this for baseball during the lockout, and I think it’s a brilliant idea for basketball too. If they would do that, I’d like to see the playoffs go back to 8 teams in each league and scrap the play in tournament. Sub .500 teams do not deserve to get into the postseason.
I have little sympathy for a franchise that packed up and left Seattle with no notice, hope they tsnk for a decade. They wasted a team bequeathed to them by the Sonics with Durant, Ibaka, Harden, and Westbrook and still couldn’t win a title.
And I couldn’t care less about ‘small market’ blahblahblah. Owners had enough money to buy the team and steal it from Seattle, they got enough to make it competitive if they want to.
They had multiple stars but refused to pay Harden and tipped their hand, so lost one star and then disenchanted others.
No tears.
Ok, and so Shai way back then was in on this? He definitely deserves to suffer!
Everyone is so angry on this website lol
The point of people coming there. Paul George went there. But is only 7 games. More Poku time. Did you see Roby last night. OKC last tank. They have so many picks too and a great GM with an eye for talent.
The problem with the picks is a lot of it is a throw of the dice and the vast majority will not turn out to be premium. 2nd round picks are often Eurostash and getting sold. Look at Boston and how Ainge had acquired a boatload of picks. They definitely hit on a top pick to get Tatum … but how many of those ended up getting squandered or for role players?