The former 12-year NBA veteran puts Shai Gilgeous-Alexander through one of his worst takes yet

Over the past few seasons, OKC Thunder superstar Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has faced a series of defamatory and, frankly, unfounded allegations.

From his ridiculed long-range shooting skills to being labeled a free-throw dealer, the 26-year-old has drawn a lot of heat for things that he not only failed to eliminate with his play on the court, but perhaps weren’t true to begin with.

But of all the questionable and deplorable assessments made about the SGA’s game, perhaps the worst this week came from former 12-year NBA veteran Nick Young.

In a scathing post on his personal X account, the 2018 NBA champion went on a rant criticizing the current state of the league’s MVP race, specifically pointing out that “a guy like Jason Tatum could never win “Because in his eyes the Celtics are regulars. They outscore their opponents every night, forcing the forward to sit out the fourth quarter and subsequently limit his averages per game.

Now, while there are many things that could be disputed about Young’s claims, perhaps the most egregious is when he stated in his post, “Teams like OKC need to keep Shai in the game during a blowout to maintain his numbers.”

This is without question one of the most unfounded views ever regarding the cornerstone of Thunder.

Nick Young is making really stupid claims about the OKC Thunder star

The logic here just doesn’t seem to make sense.

Young believes Tatum, who is the league’s sixth-leading scorer at 27.5 points per night, would average even better in that department if Boston had closer games on every night and therefore had more action in the fourth quarter would see. Additionally, he appears to have alluded to the fact that Gilgeous-Alexander has more runs scored than the C’s star in the final stretches of 2024-25.

Perhaps the NBA veteran doesn’t realize it, but Google is actually free, as is the NBA’s statistical database.

Had he known, Young could have easily avoided such an embarrassing assessment by looking at how Tatum has actually played in more fourth quarters (33) than the Thunder guard (31) this year, despite being a total Having logged around 20 minutes more in those quarters, he trails Gilgeous-Alexander by 13 points.

This means that Boston has found itself in close matchups more often than Oklahoma City this season, as evidenced by their plus-minus rating (+413 compared to +538) and the mere fact that they have seen fewer 15+ point wins ( 14 compared to 20).

What makes this assumption even more absurd is the fact that SGA has the lowest minutes per game averages among the association’s top 12 scorers, ranking way down at 35th overall in that category at 34.1. To put this in perspective, Tatum ranks 10th with 36.3 per game.

Still, the Thunder Stud ranks first in points per game with 31.5 points per night.

To say that Nick Young’s view of the MVP race, and particularly where Jayson Tatum falls in the pecking order against someone like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, was based largely on emotion rather than logic would be a major understatement.