Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Tyrese Haliburton took roads much less traveled to stardom within the NBA Finals

Well, at the very least not by many.

“It’s been a roller coaster,” Gilgeous-Alexander mentioned. “I had nights where I thought I wasn’t good at basketball, had nights where I thought I was the best player in the world before I was. It’s been ups and downs. My mentality to try to stay level through it all really helped me. Once I figured that out, I really saw jumps in my game.”

Those jumps have made Gilgeous-Alexander the face of the Oklahoma City Thunder. This, after he was reduce from his junior varsity workforce as a ninth grader. He got here off the bench for a lot of the first two months of his freshman season at Kentucky, wasn’t a top-10 draft decide and was traded from the Los Angeles Clippers after his rookie yr.

Haliburton has traveled an identical street to NBA stardom.

Now a favourite son within the state of Indiana, Haliburton did not get consideration from main faculty packages till his senior yr of highschool when he led Oshkosh North High School to a state title. The slender guard was visited faculties akin to Ohio and Indiana University-Indianapolis earlier than Iowa State provided a scholarship. He wasn’t a one-and-done, wasn’t a top-10 decide and bought traded from Sacramento throughout his third yr within the league.

“This is a franchise that took a chance on me, saw something that other people didn’t see in me,” Haliburton mentioned of the Pacers. “Sometimes I think they saw more in me than I saw in myself.”

Haliburton and Gilgeous-Alexander aren’t the family names that acquainted to informal basketball followers are accustomed to seeing within the Finals, like LeBron James or Stephen Curry. But they would be the engines for his or her squads when their groups meet in Game 1 Thursday evening in Oklahoma City — and for good motive.

Gilgeous-Alexander is the this yr’s league MVP and Haliburton is a two-time All-Star and an Olympic gold medalist.

Gilgeous-Alexander, the 6-foot-6 OKC guard, averaged a league-best 32.7 factors per sport within the common season to assert his first scoring title. He has averaged 29.8 factors, 5.7 rebounds and 6.9 assists per contest within the playoffs. That’s a great distance from his formative days in Canada, and even 4 years in the past when the Thunder had been one of many worst groups within the league.

Gilgeous-Alexander simply appears to all the time be targeted on the duty at hand. He mentioned the ups and downs of the journey flashed by means of his thoughts when he was named MVP.

“All the moments I got, like, cut, traded, slighted, overlooked,” he mentioned. “But also all the joy, all the things that my family has comforted me in, all the life lessons. Everything that’s turned me into the man and the human being that I am today.”

Haliburton spent two seasons at Iowa State and appeared in precisely one postseason sport, a 62-59 first-round loss to Ohio State within the 2019 NCAA Tournament. He entered the NBA draft regardless of struggling a season-ending fractured left wrist in February 2020.

Sacramento made him the twelfth general decide, even with De’Aaron Fox already on the roster. But Haliburton by no means made the playoffs in 2 1/2 seasons with the Kings and their crowded backcourt led to Haliburton’s commerce to Indiana for All-Star ahead Domantas Sabonis in February 2022.

The change of surroundings didn’t change his postseason misfortune — at the very least not instantly. The Pacers missed the playoffs in 2022 and once more in 2023 as Haliburton sat out the ultimate 2 1/2 weeks, costing him his first NBA assists crown.

The breakthrough lastly got here final season, when Indiana secured the No. 6 seed within the East and eradicated Milwaukee and New York earlier than getting swept by Boston within the convention finals because the injured Haliburton watched the ultimate two video games from the bench.

This yr, the Pacers have dispatched Milwaukee, Cleveland and New York to succeed in the Finals. But even along with his success, Haliburton has had his detractors. The Athletic printed an nameless participant ballot in April saying he was the league’s most overrated participant.

During the postseason, Haliburton is averaging 18.8 factors, 9.8 assists and 5.7 rebounds per sport.

“What makes him very good is that he’s very confident,” Thunder All-Star Jalen Williams mentioned. “So to be able to play as well as he’s been playing through like a lot of the ‘overrated’ stuff … you have to tip your hat to him for that. So he’s just an extremely confident individual. And I think that, regardless of who you are, makes you dangerous.”

It additionally makes for an intriguing backcourt matchup after a few winding roads to the NBA Finals.

Sports Writer Michael Marot in Indianapolis contributed to this report.

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