The NBA’s most valuable player is its fashion MVP, too

The Oklahoma City Thunder’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has taken the tunnel fit to new heights

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander of Oklahoma City Thunder arrives at the arena for the 2025 NBA All-Star night at Chase Centre in San Francisco, California. Picture: Getty Images

Last week, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander arrived at the Paycom Centerre in downtown Oklahoma City for game two of the National Basketball Association finals between his Thunder and the Indiana Pacers looking not quite like anyone else in the league. The Thunder point guard, 26, wore a striped button-down shirt, a T-shirt emblazoned with a photo of John Lennon, and a pair of baby-blue jeans. His pants pooled around a pair of sneakers in the same hue: the Converse Shai 001, his first signature sneaker and one he played a significant role in designing. A tangle of necklaces and a pair of skinny sunglasses – with blue lenses, naturally – completed the outfit.

A few hours later Gilgeous-Alexander led his squad to victory, racking up 34 points and lending further credence to American football coach Deion Sanders’s famous motto: “If you look good, you play good.” Indeed, few players in NBA history have matched on-court performance with pre-game fashion sense quite like Gilgeous-Alexander, also known as SGA.

Since entering the league with the Los Angeles Clippers in 2018, he rapidly has climbed the league’s ladder of stars – this year leading the Thunder to the brink of a championship and earning his first Most Valuable Player award along the way. In a league increasingly populated by the fashion-conscious and occasionally by the truly obsessed, Gilgeous-Alexander stands out as a true connoisseur. He’s the league’s MVP – and maybe its most valuable shopper, too.

Gilgeous-Alexander walked the runway during Thom Browne’s Spring-Summer 2023 fashion show, rocking a stomach-revealing sheer shirt and carrying a dog-shaped handbag. Photo: Dan Lecca/ Thom Browne

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander attends the 2021 Met Gala benefit In America: A Lexicon of Fashion, at Metropolitan Museum of Art on September 13, 2021 in New York City. Picture: Getty Images

“He is like our Tom Brady, our Michael Jordan,” says Ian Pierno, who runs Slam magazine’s outfit-tracking Instagram account, @LeagueFits, referring to the broader community of fashion-focused sports fans. “At this point, he’s kind of the unheralded GOAT” – greatest of all time – “of sports fashion in general.”

For years now NBA stars have been engaged in a parallel competition to outdress each other off the court. After the league instituted a much-criticised dress code in 2005, players took what seemed like a set of limitations – outfits were to be business casual, no throwback jerseys or durags allowed – and used it as a creative springboard. The stars of the 2010s took things even further: in 2018, LeBron James outfitted his entire Cleveland Cavaliers squad in Thom Browne suits during one playoff run. Dwyane Wade was a pioneer in carrying a tiny handbag. Carmelo Anthony amassed a staggering collection of hats.

This all culminated in the rise of the so-called tunnel fit: television broadcasts began capturing what players wore while entering the arena, and players in turn upped the ante. Some, including Kyle Kuzma, seemed to dress with virality in mind. How else to explain his enormous, bubblegum-pink Raf Simons sweater?

Gilgeous-Alexander, meanwhile, has plotted a more deliberate path in his seven-year career. Where many of his peers wear the latest and greatest logo-fied designer gear, SGA sticks to a handful of favoured items and silhouettes: straight-leg denim, washed-out hoodies, beaten-up plaid shirts, puffy vests and jackets in the winter. He’ll veer from that formula on occasion, and to great effect: an all-leather look here, a Canadian tuxedo (complete with necktie!) there.

“He is insanely, insanely consistent,” Pierno says. “It’s kind of a copycat league, and he wears pieces that nobody else has ever worn – which is actually quite hard, especially because all the guys are taller, so they’re competing for a lot of the same over-size stuff.”

Gilgeous-Alexander contributed sketches for his signature Converse Shai 001 shoe and logo that informed the ultimate designs of both. Picture – Converse

He boasts a level of fashion-brained obsession more often seen in menswear circles than NBA locker rooms.

“It’s obvious that he really loves fashion,” says Leah Faye Cooper, Vogue’s digital style director. “He’s not afraid of taking risks.”

Gilgeous-Alexander has said that he makes sure to steam his outfits after unpacking during road trips. And unlike many pro hoopers, he typically declines to tag specific brands in the outfit photos he posts to Instagram – presumably preferring to keep their provenance a secret from would-be copycats. Not that they could pull them off with the same panache, Cooper points out: “The types of pieces that he’s wearing, like fur coats, huge designer bags and jewellery, a lot of times it looks like the clothes are wearing you. But he’s really wearing them.” Gilgeous-Alexander declined to comment.

While it has become de rigueur for NBA players to hit the European runway shows during their off-season each June, SGA has taken that to another level: he walked the runway during Thom Browne’s spring-summer 2023 fashion show, rocking a stomach-revealing sheer shirt and carrying a dog-shaped handbag. He wore the brand to the 2023 Met Gala, too. In recent years, he has begun working with more mainstream partners. In 2023, Gilgeous-Alexander modelled for Kim Kardashian’s Skims line. He signed a deal with Converse in 2020, and in 2024 began working with the company in the formal role as creative director.

Gilgeous-Alexander’s looks are documented by various social media platforms. Picture: Getty Images

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander at the 2023 Met Gala: Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 1, 2023 in New York, New York. Picture: Getty Images

It wasn’t just a vanity title: Gilgeous-Alexander contributed sketches for his signature shoe and logo that informed the ultimate designs of both, Converse chief marketing officer Rodney Rambo says. “Shai knows his stuff,” he says.

Since debuting the shoe during All-Star Weekend in February, Gilgeous-Alexander has worn the Shai 001 in the tunnel before nearly all of his games – a rarity in a league where most shoes are too packed with performance-minded technology to look good with jeans and a hoodie.

“He always had the desire to create a performance shoe that can be worn both on and off the court, and you’re seeing that come to life with how he’s styled each colourway in the tunnel this year,” Rambo says.

In the debate-heavy world of sports media, Gilgeous-Alexander’s on-court performances are subject to all manner of argument: a close loss in game one prompted an outpouring of takes about his ball-dominant approach. But no matter what happens in the finals, his reputation as a smart dresser isn’t up for debate. “He’s that one guy that we can post and 100 per cent of the people are like, ‘This is amazing’, which is rare in fashion and it’s rare in sports,” Pierno says. “He’s, like, 1A, 1B and 1C.”

Wall Street Journal