Last June, with the confetti still being swept off the Paycom Center floor, a blue-clad crowd gathered inside the Broadway 10 Bar & Chophouse to celebrate Oklahoma City’s NBA championship. Surrounded by friends and family (and a healthy number of their friends and their families), Thunder players, coaches and staffers partied deep into the night. Guests picked at buffet tables lined with steak medallions and crab cakes. Against a wall, the Larry O’Brien trophy rested as a prop for pictures. Champagne that went largely untouched in Oklahoma City’s locker room—what do you expect from a title winner led by a bunch of early-20-somethings who needed help figuring out how to pop the cork?—flowed liberally into glass flutes. A few freshly shotgunned beer cans littered the floor. In the middle of it all was Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the NBA’s MVP, scoring champion and Finals MVP, the fourth player ever to complete that trifecta in one season. In between hugs and high fives, Gilgeous-Alexander was overheard offering a promise: I can be so much better. 

“Well,” says Gilgeous-Alexander, “I can be.” It’s mid-November and he is in the backseat of a black SUV speeding down an empty Oklahoma City highway. The suggestion that it seemed strange to be thinking about improving after one of the greatest single seasons in sports history draws a shrug. “I think more than anything I was excited by the fact that I had achieved those things and still had so much room to grow,” he says. As a teenager, Gilgeous-Alexander jotted down goals in a notebook. Division I scholarship. NBA player. Lottery pick. Over time the goals got more ambitious. All-Star. MVP. NBA champion. “There’s an obsessiveness to him,” says Nate Mitchell, who has been training Gilgeous-Alexander since he was 16. 

There’s also a palpable self-assuredness to Gilgeous-Alexander. He doesn’t see anything about his success as all that complicated. (“Nothing about him boils down to like an epiphany or an anecdote,” says Thunder coach Mark Daigneault.) He ties his rise to NBA superstardom to what earned him a scholarship to Kentucky or turned him into a lottery pick. “The way I saw it was when I was in ninth grade, nobody saw me and was like, ‘He’s going to be the 11th pick in the NBA draft,’ ” says Gilgeous-Alexander. “And I did it, so why can’t I just implement the same thing on a different scale, on a different level using the same process?” 

That work bred confidence. Last May, Oklahoma City lost Game 3 of the conference semifinals in overtime, giving Denver a 2–1 series lead. As the Nuggets celebrated, cameras caught Gilgeous-Alexander grinning while a fan heckled him as he walked off the floor. “In my mind I was like, When we win, you’re going to feel like absolute dogs—, ” he says. “That’s why I started laughing. He’s acting like they won Game 7. I was like, I’m going to remember that face. He’ll feel it when we win.” 

“Ruthlessly consistent” is how Daigneault describes Gilgeous-Alexander. Daigneault first met him in 2019, when Shai was acquired from the Clippers as the centerpiece of a deal with the Clippers for Paul George. Well, sort of. The real prize at the time was the cache of draft picks, five first-rounders and two swaps. Gilgeous-Alexander was a skinny combo guard coming off a decent rookie year. 

Daigneault, then an assistant, liked what he saw early. When COVID-19 shut the season down in 2020, the team scattered. Months later, when the NBA returned, Daigneault was struck by the changes to Gilgeous-Alexander’s physique and his game, calling an early scrimmage a “whoa moment.” Asked about Gilgeous-Alexander’s pandemic improvements, Mitchell launches into a description of hourslong workouts at an empty gym before pausing. “Wait,” he says, “can we still get in trouble for that?” 

Oklahoma City’s rise to NBA champion has been methodical. The Thunder won 22 games in 2020–21, a season after having stripped away the last remnants of their first would-be dynasty. They won a whopping 24 the next season and didn’t crack .500 until ’23–24. There were double-digit losing streaks, pick-centric deals and (justifiable) grumblings of tanking from league officials. But the Thunder never deviated. They believed in the plan, and it paid off. 

Gilgeous-Alexander is wired similarly. He was cut from his high school’s version of a junior varsity team. It took him 15 games to permanently crack the starting lineup at Kentucky. Three guards were taken before him in the 2018 draft. In his first season with the Thunder, he was an off-the-ball complement to Chris Paul. Skepticism didn’t dissuade him. It motivated him. “He had a vision for himself,” says Daigneault. “He saw this earlier and clearer than anyone.”

Did he see this, being named Sports Illustrated’s 2025 Sportsperson of the Year? Probably not, though his mother, Charmaine, insists her two boys, 27-year-old Shai and his younger brother, Thomasi, were avid readers of SI Kids. Still, Gilgeous-Alexander is the 72nd recipient of SI’s top honor and the first Canadian to win the award outright since Wayne Gretzky in 1982. He earned it for leading the Thunder to a franchise record 68-win season. For steering the team to two Game 7 closeouts in the playoffs. For etching the name of a small market oil town in the heart of college football country onto basketball’s most coveted trophy. For his charitable works, both in OKC and in Canada.

And for not taking his foot off the gas. Through December, Oklahoma City was 29–5, miles ahead of its closest competitor in the Western Conference. The Thunder went 18–1 before Jalen Williams, an All-NBA guard, had played a minute. Shai has been the driving force, with numbers across the board equal to or better than last season. Not since 2018 has the NBA had a back-to-back champion, but with Gilgeous-Alexander the Thunder are the favorites to do it. And if you believe him, he’s just getting started. 

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In November, after Gilgeous-Alexander cooked his team for 30-plus points, a rival assistant coach bemoaned the lack of ways to stop him. It isn’t just that SGA is efficient in the paint (51.9%), from midrange (50%) and beyond the arc (37.5%). “He’s a 6’ 6″ Tim Duncan,” grumbled the coach. When he attacks the rim, he’s unpredictable: Shai finished last season in the top five in shots out of drives, passes out of drives and assists out of drives, along with getting to the free throw line nearly nine times per game. “The body control, the handle, and you combine that with the touch,” says Warriors coach Steve Kerr. “There’s an art to that. He’s mastered that art.” Indeed, it’s as if Gilgeous-Alexander was manufactured on an assembly line of superstar parts. 

He wasn’t. He grew up in Hamilton, a port city in hockey-mad Ontario. “That’s not our style,” Charmaine Gilgeous says. She is an energetic 53-year-old, a self-styled alpha female who refers to former Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau as “the one dating y’all’s Katy Perry.” She was raised in Scarborough, a suburb of Toronto popular among immigrants. Charmaine’s parents came from Antigua and Barbuda in the 1970s. She took to track early, earning a scholarship to Alabama, where she became a five-time All-American and earned a spot as a sprinter for Antigua and Barbuda in the ’92 Olympics. 

Charmaine’s approach to sports was simple: Try everything. Before track stuck, she dabbled in gymnastics, hockey, figure skating. She eventually found her calling. Her children, she reasoned, would do the same. Shai spent his youth shuttling from basketball courts to soccer pitches, football fields to hockey rinks. He even dabbled in skateboarding. “I think I love the game so much,” he says, “because I was never burned out by it.” 

Charmaine knew her kids would be athletes. “Good genetics,” she says proudly. Track was out. “Horrible mechanics,” she says with a laugh. Football interested Shai for a while. Soccer stuck longer. When Shai committed fully to basketball, Charmaine told him: Set no limits. Her words, says Thomasi, were “undercover lessons.” Meaning: “We don’t need anyone’s validation or approval.” Adds Shai, “She always made delusional confidence seem normal.”  

Basketball became all-consuming. Vaughn Alexander, Shai’s father, renovated the top of a vacant garage into a full court. Shai, Thomasi, who played two seasons at Evansville, and Nickeil Alexander-Walker, the Hawks guard and Shai’s cousin, spent countless summer hours there, running drills, firing worn-down basketballs through chain-link nets. YouTube offered Shai his basketball education: Allen Iverson’s crossover. Kobe Bryant’s fadeaways. Dwyane Wade’s Eurosteps. In high school he studied Rod Strickland, a similarly built guard who excelled using pace and angles. He’d watch, rewatch and then practice the moves relentlessly. 

He learned to control his emotions. Use them, really. This version of Gilgeous-Alexander is unflappable. He doesn’t yell at teammates. “We have coaches for that,” he says. He doesn’t get rattled. “An unwavering sense of poise” is how Nickeil describes it.

That wasn’t always true. Gilgeous-Alexander described himself as a hotheaded teenager. Nothing serious. “Kid stuff,” says Charmaine. In his first few weeks at Kentucky he’d call his mom fuming at his lack of playing time. Still, he knew he needed to control his emotions. Harness them. “Weaponize them,” says Gilgeous-Alexander. “Like use anger or use sadness, use excitement, use them in ways that can help me and motivate me. I think especially the negative emotions. As a kid, I always shied away or acted like I didn’t feel them, and then it would be overwhelming and I would explode. And it would be an inappropriate setting or time or place. I would look crazy. Figuring out how to reverse that was big for me.”

Big, too, for Oklahoma City. That steadiness proved useful during the Thunder’s title run. In Game 7 against Denver in the conference semis, Gilgeous-Alexander racked up 35 points in 36 minutes. In the championship-deciding game against Indiana, he scored 29. Like the stars he patterned his play after, Gilgeous-Alexander thrives in pressure moments. “He has about the highest level of emotional regulation and maturity as you could possibly expect from somebody,” says Daigneault. “And for our team, it’s contagious.”

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There’s a story Thunder GM Sam Presti likes to share. In the summer of 2019, he was in his office at the Thunder practice facility putting the finishing touches on a roster deconstruction. He had finalized the deal for George and was close to an agreement with Houston for Russell Westbrook. That night, after working on an op-ed for The Oklahoman that detailed how the team would dig itself out of the basketball rubble, Presti was walking down a hallway and heard the sound of a bouncing basketball. It was Gilgeous-Alexander, fresh off completing his physical, in the gym getting up shots. Watching from an office window Presti thought to himself: Wouldn’t it be something if this guy turned out to be a really good player. 

Presti, certainly, won’t claim to have foreseen an MVP talent—no one did—but once it became apparent, the organization mobilized to foster it. “Tactically, it was, How do we maximize this elite skill that he has?,” says Daigneault. Give him the ball, for one. Paul was traded in 2020. Dennis Schröder, another playmaker, was shipped out, too. Later that year in the bubble, the Thunder marveled at how Gilgeous-Alexander could slip through tight spaces. The emphasis shifted to widening them. 

An example: Two weeks before the start of the 2020–21 season, Oklahoma City traded for Al Horford. What looked like a salary dump by Philadelphia that yielded a first-rounder was, to the Thunder, more. They wanted to see how Gilgeous-Alexander operated alongside a shooting big man. When he arrived, Horford immediately got the mission. “Sam said, ‘This is the guy, he’s going to be great,’ ” recalls Horford. “And you could see it. His body control, his strength, his quickness. It was all there.” 

Even the dark days served a purpose. Pressure-free environments offer the opportunity for a player to be the focal point of an offense. Oklahoma City took some beatings during those lean years. But they played a bunch of close games, too: 35 of the Thunder losses between ’20–21 and ’22–23 were decided by five points or less, invaluable experience for a developing star. 

Among the lessons Oklahoma City learned from its last would-be dynasty was the importance of breaking bad habits early. As successful as those Thunder teams from the 2010s were—you remember them, led by that Durant guy—they could be sloppy. Talent was enough to overcome those flaws, but OKC didn’t want to white-knuckle wins again. With Shai, the emphasis early was on polishing weaknesses. Less dribbling. Fewer contested shots. Making the right reads. It wasn’t about the numbers but how he got them. 

Presti, who played guard at Emerson College, was schooled in the San Antonio Spurs’ system. Information is his currency, and he can’t get enough of it. Gilgeous-Alexander is the same. Identify a weakness, he’ll fix it. Erratic from three? He’ll work until he’s pushing 40%. Defenses taking away driving lanes? He’ll find new angles to attack. After two postseasons of watching defenses load up on him, Shai spent last summer working on playing off the ball.

The Thunder sought players to complement Gilgeous-Alexander. But the team didn’t want to be dependent on him. It wasn’t about building around a singular talent—as, say, Houston did with James Harden—but for that talent to be the centerpiece of a modern NBA roster. Draft capital was invested in versatile, multipositional players. Some picks hit (Chet Holmgren, Jalen Williams). Others didn’t (Darius Bazley, Aleksej Pokuševski). 

The losing was tough. But not discouraging. Gilgeous-Alexander signed a five-year extension in August 2021. When the inevitable trade speculation surfaced, he told reporters, “I know what I signed up for.” He bought into Presti’s vision hook, line and jumper. “The way I saw it, I had no choice but to trust him,” says Gilgeous-Alexander. “It’s not my job to put an NBA team together. You’d probably be better [at it] than I would. So for me, it was just making sure that I’m the best player for his basketball team.”

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In 1993, Oklahoma City voters approved its first Metropolitan Area Projects plan—MAPS for short—a temporary sales tax that funded, among other things, the construction of Paycom Center and a convention center across the street. Thirty years later voters approved another tax—this one to usher in the arena’s replacement. Sometime this year construction will begin on a new $900 million arena, which residents voted overwhelmingly (71%) to foot most of the bill for. “The Thunder,” says Oklahoma City mayor David Holt, “fundamentally changed our identity.” 

Holt should know. A lifelong Oklahoman, he remembers the city P.T.—pre-Thunder—before the surge in population, before the flood of outside business interest, before economic diversification. Back then, Oklahoma City’s name was synonymous with the 1995 federal building bombing that killed 168 people. “We were proud of our response,” says Holt. “But you can’t build an economy on that.” These days, any time Holt engages with business leaders, conversations routinely begin with the Thunder. 

The predominantly white Great Plains region might seem an odd fit for a Black kid from Canada. Not so, insists Gilgeous-Alexander. Oklahoma City’s small market status is familiar for someone who grew up in the shadow of Toronto. “Hamilton is not Toronto,” says Gilgeous-Alexander. “Just like Oklahoma City is not L.A. It’s people that put in the work every day. That go home to their families. That’s the environment I grew up in.” 

Besides, in Oklahoma City, Gilgeous-Alexander can just be himself. Everyday things are just that. Grocery shopping. Dinner with his wife, Hailey. Gilgeous-Alexander is a regular at soccer practice with his 1 1/2-year-old son, Ares. “It’s perfect for me,” says Gilgeous-Alexander. “Everything about it just fits.”

“If you were to pick an NBA star to be on the Thunder, the perfect match would be Shai.”

SGA’s brother, Thomasi

Most of Gilgeous-Alexander’s major life events have happened in Oklahoma. Forget basketball. He became a husband in OKC, marrying his high school sweetheart. In his MVP speech last May, Gilgeous-Alexander thanked Hailey for showing him “what love really meant.” 

“My whole life has been closed up with emotion,” says Gilgeous-Alexander. “And it’s hard to be in a relationship of that sort when you’re just so closed off. She’s helped me with opening up. With accepting and then knowing what to do with emotions as you open up.”

He became a father in Oklahoma. If Gilgeous-Alexander lived an uncomplicated life before, Ares further simplified it. Practice, go home. Games, go home. “He always says, ‘Whatever happens during basketball, it’s O.K,’ ” says Hailey. “ ‘I’ll be O.K. because I have you guys and the rest of my family.’ ”

Raising Ares has offered an unexpected benefit. “It’s made me a better leader,” says Shai. “He’s forced me to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Like, if my teammate does something wrong, I’ll take a step back and think about how they feel. He’s shown me all the things that you think matter in life don’t even really matter.”

He’s built a brand in Oklahoma City. If that seems improbable, remember that all that big market/small market stuff went out in the age of Instagram. These days your reach is as far as your following, and Shai’s (4.7 million) is considerable. He notes he has fans all over the world, even in places “I’ve never bounced a ball.” His social profile is a mix of basketball and well-lit fashion shots. He’s met designers (Virgil Abloh, Louis Vuitton’s first Black artistic director, stands out), walked runways and designed his own sneaker (the Shai 001, which sold out in minutes), all while living in a zip code filled with people comfortable in western boots and Stetsons. 

Fashion is just a hobby, Shai insists. “I don’t have an end goal,” he says. “Just learn, soak it all up and see where I can take it.” He started drawing as a kid and fell deeper into it when he got to the NBA. “You have a lot of free time on the road,” he says. Nickeil traces the passion to Charmaine, with her sleek black outfits and bottomless bag of sunglasses. Charmaine points higher up the family tree to Shai’s grandmothers. Regal is how Charmaine describes them. “Always well-dressed.”

Turning pro in that world, Shai says, will have to wait. “It’s a lot of work,” he says. He’s found inspiration in conversations with designers, discovering parallels between their creative processes and his own. He finds the pressures strangely similar. “In that world, it’s so objective-based,” says Gilgeous-Alexander. “Like, do people like it or not? I like to see what people are inspired by, what makes them them. The most credible designers and creators are unapologetically themselves.”

As he is. Last spring’s playoff run spotlighted not only Gilgeous-Alexander’s skills, but also his fits. The black leather, Matrix-style jacket he wore in the second round. The Cowichan sweater he rocked in the Finals. The John Lennon T-shirt, the double-knee pants, the Canadian tux. Want to get a rise out of Shai? Walk into the locker room with shoes that don’t match your outfit, offers teammate Lu Dort. 

Shai sees no obstacles to building an empire in Oklahoma. His affection for the area grew days after winning the title, when he looked out at tens of thousands of fans lining the streets for the championship parade, sweating through 101° heat. “Seeing the pride and the joy that they had in us winning,” says Gilgeous-Alexander, “almost as if they were on the team.”

He still does plenty of community work in Canada, where—in addition to refurbishing basketball courts and visiting children in the hospital—he’s on the verge of launching an after-school music program in Hamilton to give kids an outlet for expression. In OKC, he has become a supporter of the children’s hospital. With Hailey, he volunteers at a community center that supports autistic kids. Thomasi sums it up well: “If you were to pick an NBA star to be on the Oklahoma City Thunder,” he says, “the perfect match would be Shai.”  

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Let’s get the obligatory stuff out of the way. Yes, Gilgeous-Alexander wants to win more championships. Yes, he would love to win multiple MVPs. Yes, he sees the seeds of a potential dynasty in OKC. Presti’s wizardry has so stocked Oklahoma City’s rotation that its two most recent first-round picks, Nikola Topić and Thomas Sorber, have not played a minute. After a loss to the Mavericks in the 2024 playoffs, Presti addressed the team’s biggest shortcoming, its physicality, by picking up Isaiah Hartenstein and Alex Caruso. Not only that, but a Thunder team on pace to destroy the NBA record it set last year for point differential (+12.9) could have as many as four first-rounders in next June’s draft—including one from the Shai deal with the Clippers. 

That’s great, says Gilgeous-Alexander. But it isn’t what fuels him. What does? “Maximizing my potential,” he says. Where some saw a near perfect season, Gilgeous-Alexander noted flaws. He didn’t think the Thunder played great in the playoffs. He thinks he can be more efficient defensively. He thinks he can do more to understand the “psychological warfare” in each game. Lou Williams, Shai’s teammate with the Clippers, once told him: Every possession is a game within a game. The words stuck. “I was never someone who was like, ‘I’m doing this so I can win any championship,’ ” he says. “My motivation was to do this so that I get to the point where I’m the best version of myself every night.”

Surely, that’s just humble rhetoric … right? Ring culture has defined the NBA for generations. On Inside the NBA Shaquille O’Neal still routinely clubs Charles Barkley with his 4–0 edge in hardware. The most cited reason for a trade demand is a chance to win a championship.  

Not Shai. “He doesn’t look at the game of basketball like an accolade,” says Thomasi. “He looks at it like, There’s little parts of the game that I’m not perfect at yet, and I want to be perfect at them.” Nickeil says when they talk about legacy, championships never come up. “He’s trying to be the best man he can be,” says Alexander-Walker. “That’s what it comes down to, the push of what do we leave behind for our children, and what we want them to see when they look at us.”

So how, exactly, does an MVP get better? It isn’t about any specific statistic, though Gilgeous-Alexander is sure he can improve some. Again, it’s the game within the game. Like finding ways to conserve energy. At 27, Gilgeous-Alexander can absorb 35-plus minute burdens without sacrificing efficiency. But that won’t always be the case. Last summer he studied how Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant increased their post play later in their careers. How LeBron James improved as an off-the-ball cutter in his second go-round in Cleveland. How Jason Kidd transformed from an open floor blur to a 40% three-point shooter. “Your body forces you to do that,” says Gilgeous-Alexander. “You want sustained success over a career, you have to be better without the ball.” 

Sustained success. His eyes widen when he finds the words, as if he spotted a seam to split a double team. That’s what he’s seeking. If championships follow, so be it. Gilgeous-Alexander was barely a teenager during the Thunder’s last rise. “That team had three MVP talents and anybody would have bet the house that they were going to eventually figure it out and win,” he says. “But you just never know with life and how things work out.” 

Maybe. But Shai’s pretty close to figuring it out. “I still pinch myself sometimes,” he says. “To where I was 10 years ago.” His voice trails off. “Growing up you have goals and you write them down and you’re like, I’m going to get this one day. But way more people do that and don’t achieve their goals than actually achieve them. So it’s always like a is-this-really-my-life? type of feeling. And I don’t know if that’ll ever go away.”  

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Sometimes in order to truly appreciate the good times, we have to remember the bad times.

As a lifelong BYU fan who began as a student in Provo in 1996, I’ve lived through the best of times and the worst of times with my beloved Cougars. My first year as a student in 1996-97 was among the worst of times as BYU basketball went 1-25, a season full of a shocking amount of losses that most of us have erased from our memories.

But I still remember the gloom of the 1-25 season back in 1996-97, and those scars are making my enjoyment of the current iteration of the Top 10-ranked, AJ Dybantsa-led BYU hoops team that much sweeter.

The gathering storm of 1996

I am a lifelong, loyal, strong, and true BYU fan.

I was born in the mid-1970s in Salt Lake City. While my father graduated from the University of Utah, we were a BYU household. As a competitive youth basketball player I grew up idolizing Jeff Chatman, Andy Toolson, Michael Smith, and Marty Haws. I would pretend to be those guys when shooting hoops in the front yard.

After serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1994-1996, I enrolled at BYU prior to the 1996-97 basketball season. We knew it would be a rebuilding year for Roger Reid’s program that was coming off a middling 15-13 season and 9-9 WAC conference record. The Cougs were losing their top three scorers in Kenneth Roberts (19.3 PPG), Bryon Ruffner (18.8 PPG), and Randy Reid (11.2 PPG).

Ruffner’s departure was especially difficult on both the team and BYU as an institution after he pleaded guilty to felony theft for his part in a fraudulent check and credit card scheme. Ruffner had averaged 18.8 points per game for the Cougars as a junior in 1995-96, had NBA potential, and was expected to score 20-plus points per game for the 1996-97 squad. His potential was so high that even after resolving his legal issues he was invited by the Utah Jazz in 1997 to play in the Rocky Mountain Revue, though he was eventually cut by the Jazz and didn’t latch on elsewhere in the NBA.

But Ruffner’s issues weren’t the only ones hanging over the program back in 1996. BYU had also lost out on prized LDS recruit Chris Burgess who chose Duke over BYU and other suitors. Coach Roger Reid had to apologize after Burgess claimed that Reid told the young recruit that he was “letting nine million people down” across the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by choosing Duke over BYU.

Between Ruffner’s shocking departure, Chris Burgess’s deflating decision, and Roger Reid’s regretful comments, there was already a gathering storm on the horizon in Provo before the season even began.

But even with these dark clouds on the horizon, none of us were prepared for the storm of losing that was about to rain down on the Cougars.

A deluge of losing

I came to Provo on the heels of Ruffner’s withdrawal and Burgess’s decision, but I was still ready to cheer on what I thought could be a somewhat competitive team.

While there were no realistic expectations for the 1996-97 team to win the WAC or make the NCAA Tournament, none of us expected Roger Reid’s squad would go on to have the worst seasons in program history.

After all, Roger Reid was a very good coach. Coach Reid had piloted the Cougars to the NCAA Tournament five times in seven years at the helm of the program. BYU had won at least 21 games in each of Reid’s fist six seasons before a disappointing 15-13 season in 1995-96. Under his leadership BYU finished first in the WAC regular season three times and won the conference tournament three times. Roger Reid was a two-time WAC Coach of the Year, and deservedly so.

All of that previous success aside, which is the nature of big-time college sports, the program was already trending in the wrong direction going into the 1996-97 season, but there was hope the Cougars could at least take a few steps in turning the program around.

That didn’t happen.

The Cougars lost their first game of the season to Cal State Fullerton. They then suffered a humiliating 51-point loss to Washington followed by a 22-point blowout to Pacific. BYU, now 0-3, had a chance to right the ship against in-state rival Weber State, but instead suffered a gut-punch 17-point drubbing on the road.

After this discouraging 0-4 start, I knew my first basketball season as a BYU student was going to be a long one. I had no idea just how long and painful it would be.

The only highlight of the season came the following game when BYU narrowly beat Utah State at home by three points to get to 1-4.

The Cougars would go on to lose their next 21 games in a row, finishing the season 1-25.

Roger Reid steps down

After the Utah State victory, the Cougars lost their next two games to fall to 1-6 then announced Roger Reid would “step down” as coach. Tony Ingle was tapped to lead the program and he would go on to lose every one of the 19 games he coached, and some of those games were cover-your-eyes bad. Nine of those 19 losses were by 20 points or more. BYU lost by 40 at TCU, 42 at New Mexico (scoring just 32 points), 36 at Utah, and 42 in their second showdown against New Mexico.

I remember attending a home game that year with my then girlfriend (now wife) and essentially sitting wherever we wanted at the mostly vacant Marriott Center. The arena was so quiet you could hear players, coaches, and referees talking. While the players on the 1996-97 team gave their best effort that season, I could see in their eyes just how defeated they looked as the season slowly, then mercifully, came to an end.

In 1996-97, BYU went 1-25.

As a lifelong BYU fan and first-year BYU student back then, it was the lowest period in my BYU fandom.

Enduring that season of prolonged losing has made the last two seasons of BYU winning in the Big 12 all the sweeter.

These are the best of times for BYU basketball

When it comes to BYU basketball, these are definitely the best of times! Over the last two seasons coach Kevin Young has elevated BYU hoops to a level not even the most optimistic among us could have dreamed of.

Last year the Cougs went 26-10, including 14-6 in a loaded Big 12 conference, and advanced to the Sweet 16. Richie Sanders blossomed into an All-Big 12 First Team selection. Freshman sensation Egor Demin was selected No. 8 overall in the 2026 NBA Draft and is off to a promising start with the Brooklyn Nets.

BYU’s 2025 recruiting class ranked No. 4 nationally and included AJ Dybantsa, who could win the NCAA Player of the Year this season and be the No. 1 overall pick in this year’s NBA Draft.

As BYU kicks off the Big 12 season this year, let’s remember that these are the best of times for BYU fans!

As the 1996-97 season proved for those of us who lived it, every win should be celebrated.

NEW YORK — Two rookies made their first career starts for the Nets and Cam Thomas provided a scoring lift off the bench with an efficient 21 points, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the absence of key starters in a 120-96 loss to the Houston Rockets on Thursday night at Barclays Center.

Brooklyn opened 2026 with a second straight loss and fell to 10-21, undone by a sluggish start, uneven offense and a Rockets team that continued to pour it on as the night wore on.

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That tone was set early.

With three starters out, the Nets leaned further into their youth experiment, starting rookies Drake Powell and Danny Wolf and asking Wolf to set the table. Brooklyn’s start was anything but steady with Kevin Durant back in the building. The Rockets raced out to a 12-2 lead by the 9:14 mark as the Nets’ offense stalled and defensive breakdowns piled up, prompting an early timeout from head coach Jordi Fernández after Houston opened 6-for-6 from the field on a parade of layups.

Brooklyn steadied itself for a bit, ripping off a 16-8 run and flipping the momentum when Alperen Sengun went to the bench. But the response didn’t last long. Rockets head coach Ime Udoka quickly put Sengun back in, and he continued to be a problem. By the end of the first quarter, the Nets trailed 26-20, with Ziaire Williams scoring six points and grabbing two steals and Sengun leading all scorers with 10.

The second quarter is where it started to slip. Brooklyn hung around early, with Day’Ron Sharpe’s interior work briefly cutting the deficit to four, but the Rockets answered every push. Durant settled the game with shot-making, Reed Sheppard buried back-to-back 3s and the Nets’ offense stalled into turnovers and empty trips. Houston closed the half in control, taking a 53-42 lead into the break.

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The third quarter is where Houston turned control into separation. It got ugly quickly. While Brooklyn committed just two turnovers in the period, the lack of offensive firepower showed as the Rockets shot 63.6% and saw Jabari Smith Jr., Tari Eason and Amen Thompson all reach double figures in the quarter. Thomas and Nic Claxton tried to keep the Nets within reach, but it wasn’t enough, as Brooklyn fell behind by as many as 26 and went into the fourth trailing 90-67.

It was never closer than 16 points down the stretch.

Rookies Powell, Wolf and Nolan Traore played 25, 29 and 26 minutes, respectively, shooting a combined 8-for-27 from the field. Thompson led six Rockets in double figures with 23 points, four rebounds, three assists, two steals and a block.

Sharpe finished with a career-high seven assists with eight points, eight rebounds and two steals.

The Nets return to action Friday night on the second night of a back-to-back against the Washington Wizards at Capital One Arena.

We asked you to vote for your favorite places and people of Peachtree Corners, and once again, you answered the call.

You can find the full Best of Peachtree Corners 2025 list in our November/December issue. But for online, we’re breaking it up into a series of smaller lists that will run weekly through the beginning of January, showcasing the top vote-getters.

This week, we’re sharing the results for the top-voted sports and fitness options in Peachtree Corners.

Editor’s note: In order to ensure fairness and accuracy for our Best Of 2025 survey, we made every effort to weed out bots and any other activity that would falsely skew the results. Ties for 2nd and 3rd place winners were arrived at when vote totals were within 1–1.5% of each other.

Best Fitness Place

1. Burn Boot Camp is a fitness center offering 45-minute workouts using active warm-up, exercise demos and rotation through strength and conditioning stations, led by friendly, expert trainers.
5450 Peachtree Pkwy.
Peachtree Corners, 30092
470-403-2876; burnbootcamp.com

2. Robert D. Fowler Family YMCA
5600 W. Jones Bridge Road
Peachtree Corners, 30092
770-246-9622; ymcaatlanta.org

3. Life Time Peachtree Corners
6350 Courtside Drive NW
Peachtree Corners, 30092
770-449-6060; lifetime.life

Best CrossFit

1. CrossFit Peachtree Corners is a local gym offering workouts and varied, functional movement training for people of all ages and fitness levels. Sound nutrition guidance and community accountability are also part of the CrossFit formula.
6760 Jimmy Carter Blvd., Unit 125
Norcross, 30071
404-854-1816; crossfit.com

2. (tied) CrossFit PPG
4505 Peachtree Industrial Blvd.
Norcross, 30092
470-808-4938; crossfitppg.com

2. (tied) Zanshin Fitness
4015 Holcomb Bridge Road
Peachtree Corners, 30092
770-992-9200; zanshin.fit

Best Gym/Health Club

1. Robert D. Fowler Family YMCA serves the community with programs focused on healthy living, youth development and social responsibility. They offer swimming, group exercise classes, workout rooms and more.
5600 W. Jones Bridge Road
Peachtree Corners, 30092
770-246-9622; ymcaatlanta.org

2. Life Time Peachtree Corners
6350 Courtside Drive NW
Peachtree Corners, 30092
770-449-6060; lifetime.life

3. Planet Fitness
7050 Jimmy Carter Blvd.
Peachtree Corners, 30092
770-696-1605; planetfitness.com

Best Martial Arts

1. Taido Karate offers traditional, family-friendly instruction in the modern Taido style of karate, utilizing dynamic techniques and footwork for the purpose of self-defense.
6470 Spalding Drive
Peachtree Corners, 30092
770-242-6406; taidokarate.com

2. Lozo Karate
5450 Peachtree Pkwy., Suite 8A
Peachtree Corners, 30092
404-333-8808; lozokarate.com

Best Sports Program

1. Peachtree Corners Football Club has been a part of the PTC community for 50 years, offering youth soccer coaching and team play for kids in U6 through U14 age groups.
4901 E. Jones Bridge Road
Peachtree Corners, 30092
pcfcsoccer.com

2. Norcross Youth Athletic Association
P.O. Box 2484
Norcross, 30091
norcrossathletics.com

3. D1 Training
5250 Triangle Parkway NW
Peachtree Corners, 30092
855-783-7650; d1training.com

Best Yoga/Pilates

1. Club Pilates offers low-impact, Reformer-based, full-body Pilates workouts for all ages and fitness levels, designed to increase mobility, balance and strength.
4880 Peachtree Parkway, Suite 1130
Peachtree Corners, 30092
404-902-2583; clubpilates.com

2. Sunny Street Yoga
6375 Spalding Drive, Suite E
Peachtree Corners, 30092
470-641-3021; sunnystreetyoga.com

3. Sun Dragon Yoga
5600 Spalding Drive Norcross, 30092
313-303-0096; sundragonyoga.com

Best Pickleball Courts (within 15 minutes of PTC)

1. Life Time Peachtree Corners is a world-class racquet and athletic country club offering leagues, programming and instruction. They have 30 indoor and outdoor pickleball courts and 18 indoor and outdoor tennis courts, as well as fitness studios and other amenities.
6350 Courtside Drive NW
Peachtree Corners, 30092
770-449-6060; lifetime.life

2. Ace Pickleball Club
1425 Market Blvd., Suite 200
Roswell, 30076
678-6752; acepickleballclub.com

3. Cauley Creek Park PickleBall Courts
7255 Bell Road
Johns Creek, 30097
678-512-3200; johnscreekga.gov

Next up in the series: Hotels and Event Spaces

Photo: Adobe Stock

Flag football, an old sport, is now seeing rapid growth across the country. This Sunday, Aptos High hosts a showcase, featuring 34 top high school senior girls competing: the best of Monterey County traveling here to compete against the best in Santa Cruz County. 

Aptos High senior Ella Porter, playing on the Santa Cruz County or north team, told Lookout this week she’s been hooked on flag football since she started playing last year. The 18-year-old said the sport provides another opportunity for girls to develop their athletic ability and be part of a team. 

“You need one another to either win or lose, and that’s what’s really special about it,” said Porter. “We have the same wins, but we also have these hard losses, and we get to go through it together.”

It’s football, but without the tackling, and the players have four downs to get to the end zone. To stop the offense, players pull a flag from an opponent’s belt.  It’s a seven-on-seven game, rather than the 11 per team in regular football. Young people have played flag football for decades, in physical education classes or recreationally, but in recent years, it’s taken on a more competitive form. 

About 2.4 million kids under 17 play in organized flag football leagues in the United States, and the number is rapidly growing across the globe, according to the International Federation of American Football. In response to its growing popularity, the sport will be featured in the Olympic Games for the first time in 2028. 

Event organizers Reggie Stephens and Joel Domhoff took notice of local girls’ interest in the sport and put together the event to raise awareness of flag football and celebrate the athletes’ skills. Stephens is a youth sports advocate and former NFL player, and Domhoff is a longtime media arts teacher currently at Renaissance High School in La Selva Beach. They both run nonprofit organizations which help fundraise to run the event: the Reggie Stephens Foundation and the Gino Panelli Foundation – which gives the event its longish name, RSF/GPF Central Coast Flag Football All-Star Game. Domhoff directs the all-star game. 

Domhoff began noticing girls showing up to football practices to train with high school boys several years ago. One year it was one girl, he said, and the next year two girls: “Then suddenly we had middle school girls. That’s when we realized, okay, this is bigger than we thought.”

He said he thinks the sport has become more appealing because there’s no tackling but the sport still emphasizes athletic ability. 

“It doesn’t have the violent aspect that turns a lot of people off to tackle football. It has all the beauty, the athleticism and the grace,” he said. “These girls are competitive, they’re highly skilled, and they absolutely love it.”

Four years ago, he said, there was no such thing as girls’ high school flag football. Now more than 200 California high schools support teams and some colleges are developing women’s flag football programs. Domhoff said the all-star game is part of a growing effort to give girls the same opportunities that boys have had. 

“There are only four women coaching flag football in the area — and all four of them will be coaching in this all-star game,” he said. “That’s symbolic, and it’s important for these girls to see women as role models and think, ‘That’s something I could become.’”

Carmel High School senior Ava Staehle, who is playing on the Monterey County or south team, said she started playing at around age 8 because she was inspired by her older brothers who played football. 

“Now I get to play competitively too,” she said. “It’s just such a perfect sport, especially for young girls, to start playing.” 

Staehle, who plays linebacker and receiver, said the sport has taught her “to keep pushing myself and to always try my best.” She hopes to keep playing, either through a club or recreationally, when she goes to college next year. 

Aptos High’s Porter, who plays quarterback and running back, said she also hopes to play when she goes to college. She appreciates that the sport has given girls another opportunity to challenge themselves. 

“Football has always been tackle football for men,” she said. “To have something added for women as fast as this was — I’m very thankful and very excited about that.”

The all-star game day starts at noon with skills competitions, including a 40-yard dash and a contest for the longest throw. The game will start at 1 p.m., featuring four 15-minute quarters. The festivities will also feature a live DJ, a raffle and tacos. For those who can’t attend in person, the game will be broadcast live on the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) website, air on tape delay on Community Television of Santa Cruz and also be posted on social media. 

All-star game details: 
When: Sunday, Jan. 4, at noon
Where: Aptos High School, 100 Mariner Way, Aptos, 95003
Cost: $5 general admission; free admission for middle school and high school students with student ID

South Roster 
Coaches: Alyssa Dixon, Marina; Kalah Ishimaru, Salinas; Marisol Rasul, Alisal
#22 Bailey Casarez, Rancho San Juan, C 
#26 Jaslyne Coronado, Salinas, WR/S
#23 Melony Erazo-Chavez, Rancho San Juan, QB
#5  Alissa Escutia, Salinas, WR
#21 Josie Hanson, Carmel, S/WR/QB
#88 Maya Ibarra, North County, QB/RB/WR/S
#10 Calleigh Panziera, Salinas, WR/LB/S
#11 Mia Rivera, Alisal, WR/S 
#13 Dania Rodriguez, King City, WR/S
#33 Gracy Ruiz-Gamino, Marina, RB/DB/P
#9  Jimena Salazar-Camacho, Salinas, LB/DB/RB 
#6  Elsie Sargenti, Palma, WR/DB
#3  Ava Staehle, Carmel, S/LB/WR
#0  Esmeralda Torres, Marina, WR/RB/LB
#2  Eva Vicencio, King City, RB/DE 
#4  Irie Williams, North Salinas, RB/QB

North Roster
Coaches:  Frank Galvan, St. Francis; Denise Russo, Aptos; Andy Morris, Santa Cruz 
#24 Haily Bettermann, Soquel, DB/WR
#11 Shelby Chase, Scotts Valley, C
#53 Elenah Esquivel, Aptos, LB
#33 Yareli Garcia, Renaissance, DB
#6   Natalia Lapioli, Scotts Valley, CB
#2  Citlali Lopez, Santa Cruz, DB/WR/P (injured, will not play)
#2  Amaya Moore, SLV, QB/RB/WR/S
#8  Lila Mosley, Scotts Valley, LB/RB
#5  Presley Pastrell, Scotts Valley, LB/WR 
#4  Ella Porter, Aptos, RB/WR/S/QB 
#10 Sammy Rebert, Scotts Valley, WR/DB
#13 Daisy Rincon, PVHS, DB/RB/WR
#14 Leah Serna, Santa Cruz, WR/LB/P
#17 Ben Sommerville, Santa Cruz, WR/S 
#18 Eliza Stevens, Soquel, QB
#0  Marina Tucker, Harbor, WR/DB 
#42 Brooklyn Williams, Scotts Valley, WR/DB
#3  Ivory Woodson, Soquel, DE/C