Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Tyrese Haliburton and becoming one in a million — Andscape

OKLAHOMA CITY — Vaughan Alexander makes no bones about how wonderful he’s felt about watching his oldest son, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, living his dream. Indeed, living an entire family’s dream.

His 26-year-old son is the All-Star guard for the Oklahoma City Thunder, the NBA Most Valuable Player and has the Thunder one game away from winning the franchise’s first NBA championship.

What’s not to love? Life is good.

“This is going to be a year that is going down in the books,” Vaughn Alexander said during a recent conversation with Andscape.

As long as I’ve covered sports and watched young people and their parents, what has fascinated me more than anything is the one-in-a-million phenomenon. Out of tens of thousands of aspiring basketball players around the world, how does a player who grows up in Canada — like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, for example — find his way through the youth sports maze, the high school gauntlet, receive a college scholarship, find his way to the NBA, becomes a league MVP and put himself on the verge of winning an NBA championship?

How did he beat the odds? How much is talent? How much is drive?

“It’s more drive,” Vaughan said. “It’s more mental, it’s more who you are, its more discipline. There are so many talented people out there. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t force them to drink. They just won’t take the teaching you give them. It’s more about making that kid be a receptive, principled, respectful-minded person; they’ll probably listen to their teachers, they’ll listen to other elders besides you.

“Who wants to be that one who does what people don’t want to do? It’s hard work, it’s not easy. You’re going to have to do some stuff that most people don’t want to do. If you’re comfortable in your own skin, and comfortable with saying, ‘I’m not going to parties, I’m not going to do this, I’m not going to do that.’ That’s one way to get yourself in that elite space.”

How do you become that one in a million?

I suppose you can ask the same question about anyone in any profession who has achieved success. There is something admirable and challenging about climbing the pyramid, especially in the bloodsports of basketball and football. Black athletes often, not always, have to traverse a minefield of a less-than-ideal environment and the lack of family wealth and connections.

“It’s more about being that sponge, being humble, understanding that you’re a kid and you don’t know anything,” Vaughan said. “Kids today know everything. I’d say eight out of 10 think they know everything because of social media.

“Be that two out of 400, be that kid who’s really humble, realizing, ‘I got to listen, ask a lot of questions.’ See the people who are doing the things you want to do and be around them.”

Vaughn and his former wife, Charmaine Gilgeous, were born in Antigua. Charmaine participated in the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona. Vaughn played high school basketball in Toronto, Canada. In addition to Shai, Vaughan and Charmaine’s youngest son also plays college basketball.

What advice does Alexander give parents as they put their children in the youth sports cauldron. Most simply want their children to have a good experience. Many want their kids to become pros.

He encourages parents to have their children embrace the qualities that make them different rather than aspiring to fit in with the crowd. Most of all, he advises parents to develop an unshakeable sense of self in their children.

They’ll need it.

“Sometimes you’ll see your kid moving around and you’ll say, ‘Hey, chill. Who do you think you are?’ But you’d rather that than under-confidence, not being confident in yourself. It’s hard to build that back up.”

My frame of reference for the one-in-a-million question is Bronx-born Rod Strickland, the former point guard who enjoyed an All-America college career at DePaul and a 13-year NBA career. Strickland is currently the head men’s basketball coach at Long Island University.

You never know where young people you’re involved with will end up. For the last 25 years, I’ve run a sports and recreation program at the Church of the Intercession in Harlem. A number of years ago, when Strickland was with the Washington Wizards, I happened to mention the program.

His eyes lit up. He said that when he was 10, Intercession was where he played in youth basketball tournaments at halftime of the older kids’ games. I’m sure back then if we asked the kids on his team how many of them wanted to play in the NBA, everyone would have raised their hands. Then the adults in the room would recite the familiar refrain about how nearly impossible it is to become that one in a million who reaches the league.

After Strickland told me he was one of the 10-year-olds in the gym, I changed my perspective from lecturing about the insurmountable odds of being that one in a million to preaching that somebody has to be that one in a million and it might as well be you.

The question then becomes how do you get to be one of those needles in a haystack? How do you get to be that one in a million?

Fact is, no one thought Strickland would be the one. After Strickland reached college, one of his early mentors told him there were other 10-year-olds who were favored.

“He was like, ‘Back then, there were other people that they might’ve thought was the one,’ ” Strickland recalled during a recent phone conversation. ” ‘Nobody thought you were the one at that time.’ At 10 years old, I probably was one of the better kids, but then at some point between 10 and 15, I might’ve dropped off a little bit and had to recover.”

Strickland, 58, said the difference between his journey and more recent generations is that his aspirations were different.

“I think now, everybody thinks they’re going to be a pro, like it’s automatic,” he said. “I didn’t think I was going to be a pro. I admired guys; I wanted to be like Magic [Johnson] and pass, I wanted to be like Dr. [Julius Erving] with the layups. I wanted to be George Gervin with the finger rolls. I had all these idols, I had this vision, I had a creative mind and I wanted to be something, but I never knew what I was. I kept trying to attain the goal of being good and then getting better and then being able to compete against people, so there were steps to it.”

Because he always played against older competition, Strickland said he spent most of his early life trying to prove himself — in junior high and even college.

“There was never a time where I just thought I was a pro,” he said. 

Then there was a game against Georgetown when he was a freshman at DePaul when he made one of his patented drives, showing the ball then going to his other hand to finish. The late Al McGuire, who was broadcasting the game exclaimed, ‘A star is born.’ At that point, Strickland felt he had a chance.

“So, for me, being that one in a million was a journey,” Strickland said. “I was just trying to figure myself out.”

Before getting the LIU head coaching job, Strickland spent several years as an assistant coach where he worked in the youth basketball space.

Many young players never had to go through a journey. Some received too much too soon.

“There’s a lot of kids who are the chosen ones, but they are the outliers,” he said. “There’s these other kids who everybody puts in play to be the next pro. Sometimes they don’t make it because you’re telling them they’re there already, so they don’t get to go through the journey. It’s almost like you already know.

“I never knew until I knew.”

The secret to being that one in a million is a combination of confidence and humility; resilience and defiance.

“People can throw you off so easily, you have got to have some ‘F-you’ in you,” Strickland said.

I began covering Strickland when he was at Truman High School in the Bronx. As a junior, he led Truman to the New York State High School Championship. Strickland transferred to Oak Hill Academy (Va.) for his senior year, then went to DePaul University where he was a first-team All-American as a junior.

Strickland was drafted in the first round (19th overall) by the New York Knicks in the 1988 NBA draft and played 13 NBA seasons. He knew how to play the point guard position. He understood at an early age that the essence of the position was giving, sharing and putting teammates in a position to be successful.

“You have to be talented, but you have to be self-aware, you have to know how to make others feel good,” Strickland said.

That’s what impresses him about Gilgeous-Alexander and Indiana Pacers guard Tyrese Haliburton. They are star players—one in a million—who made the journey by making their teammates better.

Gilgeous-Alexander has created space that’s allowed a teammate like Jalen Williams to break out and become a star. Haliburton, while not a prolific scorer like Gilgeous-Alexander, knows how to put his teammates in position to be successful.

“All you got to do is listen to them talk,” Strickland said. “Their sophistication and their maturity and their thought process of the game and their teammates. You got two unselfish dudes, and they play differently. Shai is scoring that ball. You could see how his teammates love him and how he embraces them and all that.

“And then you watch Tyrese play in the way he plays; he’s about everybody else. But they’re mature, articulate, they have creative minds and their thought process is just different.”

Before I ended the conversation with Vaughan Alexander, I wondered how he has maintained the father-son relationship with a son who is not only well known but wealthy. He admires his son, admits that he enjoys being in the limelight, but he is not his son’s employee or a groupie along for the ride.

“The upbringing, the product of his environment, it just doesn’t change because he’s got hair on his chest,” he said. “I’m still going to give you advice, whether you want to take in or not. They can tune me out, I’m going to tell them the right thing. That’s just how you’ve got to move with your kid.

“You’ve got to deal with them like men from early on. When they become men, you let them go do their own thing, make their own decisions. But at the end of the day, I’ll always be his father.”

There are myriad formulas for a young athlete to become that discovered needle in a haystack. Vaughan Alexander and Charmaine Gilgeous had a formula for Shai and it has worked fabulously.

The formula is rooted in a tenacious belief in possibility. Someone has to be that on in a million. It might as well be you.