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This story is a part of Peak, The Athletic’s desk covering leadership, personal development and success through the lens of sports. Follow Peak here.
Dwayne Washington was a teacher at St. Thomas More Catholic Secondary School, where Gilgeous-Alexander attended, and also his club basketball coach.
I met Shai during his eighth-grade summer. He came to our gym for a tryout. His mother brought him.
He was tiny back then. Probably the smallest guy in the whole gym.
But from day one, he already had a routine. He was already working. Everyone else was trying to dunk or do crazy moves. He had a paper that he wrote drills on and over in the corner of the gym, just working on his routine.
I thought: Man, he was raised right.
Then practice started, and he looked you in the eye, locked in. It was quite impressive. Even still, I couldn’t foresee anything like this: multi-time All Star, leading scorer in the NBA, MVP and the best player on a team in the NBA Finals.
So here are five lessons anyone can learn from SGA’s journey.
1. Create an alter ego
When you get into sports, you may feel like you’re inadequate based on the stages in your development. Maybe it’s your physicality. Perhaps it’s where you’re from, your background.
So you can create an alter ego to help you.
I used to always say, “When you watch Denzel Washington or Tom Cruise in movies, they are tough guys in the movies. But they are playing a role. So when you step on the court, that’s like being in front of the camera. You’re not yourself.”
For Shai, that alter ego was Allen Iverson. That was his guy. Iverson was a real-life superhero because he was small, like Shai, but he was tough, confident, and played hard. He was everything that Shai aspired to be.
When Shai was younger, he wasn’t physically there. But I saw that he embodied that alter ego because he was still throwing his body around against big guys with the mindset of Iverson. It helped him.
For some people, I suggest creating an alter ego, such as the Incredible Hulk or Batman. You can use them as examples to take your mind somewhere else, other than where you are at that moment. You can use them to eliminate the fear, uncertainty and doubt.
Now, Shai is at a level where he is that guy, and people can use him as an alter ego.
2. Keep finding motivation
Initially, as a basketball player, you have the motivation of getting to the NBA or becoming a starter. Sometimes you have a motivation to buy your mother a house or to prove people wrong.
However, your motivation will change as you become more successful. You always have to reset and find new motivations. If you’re able to do that, you’ll never be complacent. That’s a critical mindset for longevity.
I’ve seen Shai do that every game. He always finds motivation. Oh, we can’t win in a small city and you think I’m going to leave? No, I’m going to win here. Oh, you think I’m too small or think I can’t shoot? I’m going to come back and up my percentages.
You can always find those little doubts that people have about you and use them to your advantage.
That keeps you on top.
3. Positive thinking
This is critical.
Positive thinking must occur every single day. You have to be ultra-optimistic because the world is grim. Your situation might be gloomy. But positive thinking is the No. 1 factor you must have, more than anything else here.
If you’re not thinking positively, then you can’t even find motivation. You don’t even see the purpose of an alter ego.
Therefore, you must always think positively. And you have to clean the slate every single day. You can’t carry over anything negative with you. If you carry negative thoughts, it’s like adding bricks to a backpack when you’re about to go on a race against Usain Bolt. You want to release all the stress, forgive others, eliminate burdens, make amends and be transparent. That allows you not to hold and carry stress mentally.
When Shai did not receive high-major college offers right away, he could have thought, “Man, I’m done, I’m just going to go to Butler.” Xavier wouldn’t even offer him. But he just stayed positive.
He said, “Listen, my time will come. My time will come.” He wasn’t thinking about the worst-case scenario. He was thinking: “I believe in my work. I believe in my path.”
Instead, he went to Kentucky, one of the top schools at the time, with many five-star recruits. With positive thinking and a strong work ethic, he ended up being the best player on the team, despite having all those five stars.
That’s the best example, right in our face.
4. Run your race
Shai is not the fastest, not the strongest, not the quickest. But he knows his work ethic is there, and he knows he has the mental capacity, thanks to his mom and dad and everyone around him.
We all know kids who, as 8th graders, have muscles bulging out of their necks. They jump high, they run fast, they’re tall. You could look at them and think: “Man, they already beat me.”
No. Everybody has a race.
Shai has embodied this. He was someone that people said, “Why is he even going to Kentucky? He isn’t good enough. Why is he going in the lottery? He can’t even do anything. Why are they trading Paul George for him? He’s not even that good.” To take the metaphor a step further: If he were looking left and right while he was running his race, he probably would have run out of his lane and been disqualified. But he just kept looking forward and running his race.
Even to this day, there’s all this talk: “Who is better than who? Is this guy better than him?” He doesn’t care about that. He finds motivation in it, but he still runs his race. And, boom, here we are today.
You can’t worry about anyone on the left and right of you. Stay in your lane, go as fast as you can and give your personal best. Just run your race.
5. Don’t believe the hype
Believing in the hype will crush you in any sport, in any walk of life. No matter what people tell you — how great you are or how bad you are — you can’t worry about people’s low or high expectations for you.
It’s easy when people think you’re not good enough. That’s low-hanging motivation. But when people tell you you’ve arrived, that’s hard. You cannot believe how good you are, because it doesn’t matter.
If you have your goals written down and they are high, it doesn’t matter what anyone else says. Shai does not believe any of the hype. He downplays all of it.
If you’re consistent, you don’t change the pace at which you’re moving. You don’t change because someone said something nice about you. It has to come from within.
Shai will tell you: “I’m consistent.” He values that.
Consistency doesn’t change with emotions. It’s something that’s always going to happen. And Shai has been consistent as long as I’ve known him.
— As told to Jayson Jenks
