Northwest Notes: SGA, Bazley, I. Thomas, R. Jackson

Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander played in his 65th game of the season on Thursday, meaning he now officially qualifies for end-of-season awards such as Most Valuable Player and All-NBA, tweets ESPN’s Bobby Marks.

If Gilgeous-Alexander makes an All-NBA team this year – which is a virtual lock – he’ll become eligible to sign a super-max extension with Oklahoma City during the 2025 offseason. He’ll have met the performance criteria by having earned an All-NBA spot in each of the past two years, but will remain one season shy of the service time requirement — he’ll have six years of service after this season, and a super-max deal (which starts at 35% of the cap instead of 30%) can’t be signed until a player has at least seven seasons under his belt.

Given that Gilgeous-Alexander has been performing at an MVP level this season and shows no signs of slowing down, it seems safe to assume that super-max offer will be waiting for the two-time All-Star on July 1, 2025.

Here’s more from around the Northwest:

• The terms of Darius Bazley‘s new three-year deal with the Jazz are virtually identical to those of Kenneth Lofton‘s contract, Hoops Rumors has learned. Bazley will make $500K the rest of this season via Utah’s room exception, with various trigger dates on non-guaranteed minimum salaries in 2024/25 and ’25/26. Because this is Bazley’s fifth NBA season, his minimum salaries are worth more than Lofton’s, so the overall value of his contract is approximately $5.74MM, whereas Lofton’s is about $4.9MM. The other difference between the two deals is that Bazley’s final year is simply non-guaranteed, rather than a team option.
• Isaiah Thomas, who is playing with the Salt Lake City Stars as he pursues an NBA comeback, credited Jazz CEO Danny Ainge for pulling the strings to get him a shot with the team’s G League affiliate, per Jay King of The Athletic. “Danny helped make this thing happen,” Thomas said of the veteran executive who previously had the guard on his roster in Boston. “He connected the dots.”
• Nuggets guard Reggie Jackson has been struggling with his shot in recent weeks, making just 36.8% of his attempts from the field and 25.5% of his three-pointers since February 4. However, he appreciates the fact that his teammates and coaches have encouraged him to shoot his way out of the slump, writes Bennett Durando of The Denver Post (subscription required). “They want me to continue to be myself. Continue to be aggressive. They’ve been kind of upset at me for not playing my game the last few,” Jackson said. “So then I started playing aggressive. Even still in the midst of missing shots. … But just hearing the encouragement from my teammates … once you have a great group like that — front office, coaches, teammates — believing in you like that, you can’t do anything but start believing in yourself again.”