Editor's note: This story originally posted on April 8, 2024. WITH 6:56 LEFT in the third quarter of what should have been a fairly routine game in early March, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander knocked down an 18-foot jumper to give the Thunder what should have been an insurmountable 84-60 lead over Kevin Durant and the Phoenix Suns. Oklahoma City, as it had been all season, was cruising. Twenty-four hours earlier, the Thunder had become the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference, fueled by their young Big Three in Gilgeous-Alexander, Chet Holmgren and Jalen Williams. The Suns, behind their own Big Three, were tied for sixth, just a game out of the play-in tournament. Two teams on opposite trajectories -- one fighting to play the part of an NBA contender, the other fighting just to stay in the show. Then, with their season teetering, Durant, a former MVP and two-time champion, answered with a 3. Forty-six seconds later, Grayson Allen added another one. Possession after possession, the Suns' onslaught continued unabated. For five minutes, the Thunder didn't answer, couldn't answer. By the end of the third, Oklahoma City's lead was down to 4. A minute into the fourth quarter, it was gone completely. It was the kind of game young teams like the Thunder lose. With his team down 5, Gilgeous-Alexander reentered the game with 8:27 left in the fourth quarter and calmly took over, powering an 18-5 run and leading the Thunder to a 118-110 win. It allowed OKC to remain atop the Western Conference standings for the second day this season -- exactly two days longer than anyone predicted for the league's second-youngest team. The Thunder have become a contender this season ahead of even the most optimistic predictions because their 25-year-old MVP candidate continues to defy every expectation -- except his own. This game, and the run that came to define it, is but one example of an improbable 20-year journey that began in the Toronto suburb of Hamilton, Ontario, extended to the bluegrass of Kentucky and continued to the NBA, in which Gilgeous-Alexander has been trying, planning, auditioning, to become the best basketball player on the planet. "It's been the story of my life," Gilgeous-Alexander said. "I've always just gotten better." He didn't make his high school's varsity team as a freshman. He didn't start until midway through his freshman season in college or as a rookie in the NBA. The Thunder didn't even think he'd be this good when they traded for him in 2019 as part of the deal that sent Paul George to the LA Clippers and started what has turned into a rapid rebuild. This season Gilgeous-Alexander has improved at just about everything: scoring (30.4 PPG, third in the NBA), defense (a league-leading 2.1 steals per game), and learning how to control and win games like the one against the Suns in which he scored 11 of his game-high 35 points in the final six minutes. "It's a mentality," Gilgeous-Alexander said. "The skill stuff I just hammer away at. But what makes a great player is how they carry that to the court. How they control fourth quarters and win games. "LeBron [James] is LeBron because for 20 some odd years he's controlled games." Gilgeous-Alexander was never ordained for greatness like James, whom Sports Illustrated anointed "The Chosen One" at the age of 15. Yet he said he always believed he would get there one day -- his mother made sure of that. THE PLAYER WHO has mentored Shai Gilgeous-Alexander the most, and made the most impact on him, is someone he played with for just 17 months. Almost immediately upon his arrival in Oklahoma City, Chris Paul saw qualities and values in the then-21-year-old that mirrored his own: the unrelenting devotion to routine, the almost compulsive eye for details, the ability to see the longest view. Gilgeous-Alexander was constantly over at Paul's condominium that year, trying to soak in as much as he could from one of the greatest point guards of all time. They trained together. Ate breakfasts and dinners together. Went to G League games and talked hoops for hours. "Shai is just a basketball junkie," Paul tells ESPN. "Even now, we might be on the phone watching a game, just talking about what we see." But just as Paul is about to continue describing a player he now considers family, he stops. "You cannot write this story without talking to his mom," he says. "Hold on. I'll call her." He patches her in. "You OK?" she asks Paul, figuring he'd be calling her during the season only if something were amiss. They've become close over the years. So close that she makes a point to attend Paul's games in Toronto each year, no matter which team he's on. Paul assures her everything is fine. That he just wants to make sure her role in raising her son is fully understood. Charmaine Gilgeous introduces herself as "a sprinter." And indeed she was -- competing in the 400 meters at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona for Antigua and Barbuda. But she's referring to a mentality, not just her résumé. "I never ran anything over 400 meters," she says. "That means I know what the goal is, and I don't do anything until I get the goal. That's how I'm orientated. And I knew I needed my kids to be like this. I had to raise them that way." She never made a lot of money as a social worker, she says. The family had to move around often. There were constant pressures. "No matter how horrible a situation looked, if I had to cry or scream, I would wait until they went to bed," she says. "They would never see me sweat. They would never see me frustrated." This is where Gilgeous-Alexander gets his discipline, he says. This is why he seems so unflappable on the court. "If you know his mom," Paul says, "you know him." SINCE IT OPENED with a lavish, $75-per-person party in 1979, the Holt Renfrew store on Bloor Street in Toronto has been the place to go for those who like to dress to impress. It is a massive store. Four levels, a fancy chocolate shop inside, marble floors, hundreds of luxury designers and brands. Charmaine Gilgeous used to take her sons, Shai and Thomasi, there to window-shop, spending leisurely afternoons dreaming about the kind of life they might one day lead if they worked hard and let nothing get in the way of their goals. At the time, she was just thinking about guiding her boys to college and then steady jobs. But she didn't tamp down on any of the lofty dreams they had about being the next Kobe Bryant or Cristiano Ronaldo or Kevin Durant. So Gilgeous took them window-shopping Saturdays. It was their routine. Forty-five minutes each way on the subway. They'd wear polo shirts and slacks, look at all the Guccis and Versaces, grab a bite to eat at a restaurant in the city's so-called Mink Mile, then head back to Hamilton. As a single mom, Gilgeous had a few nonnegotiables for her sons. Homework had to come first. Food had to be healthy. And no matter what was going on in their lives, they would always dress nicely. "I don't play about how you look," she said. "My kids could run amok in my house, but when they stepped out that door, you better, as we say, 'fix up.' "You better get it together." "Growing up we'd always try to dress and look the part," Gilgeous-Alexander said. "That was very important. When we left the house, it was like, make sure your collar is down, make sure your shirt is not wrinkled. Make sure there's no boogers in your nose. Make sure there's nothing in your eyes." This was about vision, not vanity. About looking the part even if you're not able to play it yet. About establishing routines, habits, a vision for the future. Dress for the life you want to have, not where you are. "You step out of the house, you look the part. You're representing the family," Gilgeous-Alexander said. "And that kind of transferred into what it is now." What it is now is what Gilgeous-Alexander always believed it could be: That he could one day be on the short list for the NBA's Most Valuable Player. Gilgeous-Alexander has said he has dreamed of winning an MVP since he was 6 years old. In high school, he and his cousin, Minnesota Timberwolves guard Nickeil Alexander-Walker, would talk about their NBA dreams late into the night. "We would stay up for hours talking about what we want to accomplish, where we wanted to go," Alexander-Walker said. "I remember him saying it then, too." THUNDER GENERAL MANAGER Sam Presti likes to tell a story about a call and a visit he had with Jerry Krause, the architect of Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls. Krause was older and not in great health, but he wanted to get to know Presti and talk with him about his philosophies. Presti accepted the invitation. "This guy was a baseball scout, too," Presti said in 2023. "He took it so serious, and he was talking about these, he called them 'electric moments' when you're scouting a player and you see something. "It's a glimpse of something, and you stand up and you look around and you go, 'I hope that no one else saw that.'" For Presti, the "electric moment" with Gilgeous-Alexander came during that 2019-20 season when he saw him playing against Paul during a practice. There was just something about the way Gilgeous-Alexander was competing, Presti said, something about the way he was finishing baskets that made Presti think he had found the next face of his franchise. Presti had experienced that feeling before. He had famously drafted and developed Durant, Russell Westbrook and James Harden a decade and a half earlier and was at the beginning of what he hoped would be a similar rebuild around Gilgeous-Alexander. Recognizing those "electric moments" is just one part of the process, however. Creating the right environment for great players to thrive is even more important.