Gilgeous-Alexander and Haliburton took roads less traveled to stardom in the NBA Finals

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Oklahoma City's Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Indiana's Tyrese Haliburton weren’t expected to ever be starring in leading roles on the NBA Finals stage.

Well, at least not by many.

“It’s been a roller coaster,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “I had nights where I thought I wasn’t good at basketball, had nights where I thought I was the best player in the world before I was. It’s been ups and downs. My mentality to try to stay level through it all really helped me. Once I figured that out, I really saw jumps in my game.”

Those jumps have made Gilgeous-Alexander, from Hamilton, Ont., the face of the Oklahoma City Thunder. This, after he was cut from his junior varsity team as a ninth grader. He came off the bench for most of the first two months of his freshman season at Kentucky, wasn't a top-10 draft pick and was traded from the Los Angeles Clippers after his rookie year.

Haliburton has travelled a similar road to NBA stardom. 

Now a favourite son in the state of Indiana, Haliburton didn't get attention from major college programs until his senior year of high school when he led Oshkosh North High School (Wisconsin) to a state title. The slender guard was visited schools such as Ohio and Indiana University-Indianapolis before Iowa State offered a scholarship. He wasn't a one-and-done, wasn't a top-10 pick and got traded from Sacramento during his third year in the league.

“This is a franchise that took a chance on me, saw something that other people didn’t see in me,” Haliburton said of the Pacers. “Sometimes I think they saw more in me than I saw in myself.”

Haliburton and Gilgeous-Alexander aren't the household names that familiar to casual basketball fans are accustomed to seeing in the Finals, like LeBron James or Stephen Curry. But they will be the engines for their squads when their teams meet in Game 1 Thursday night in Oklahoma City — and for good reason.

Gilgeous-Alexander is the this year's league MVP and Haliburton is a two-time All-Star and an Olympic gold medalist. 

Gilgeous-Alexander, the 6-foot-6 OKC guard, averaged a league-best 32.7 points per game in the regular season to claim his first scoring title. He has averaged 29.8 points, 5.7 rebounds and 6.9 assists per contest in the playoffs. That's a long way from his formative days in Canada, or even four years ago when the Thunder were one of the worst teams in the league.

Gilgeous-Alexander just seems to always be focused on the task at hand. He said the ups and downs of the journey flashed through his mind when he was named MVP.

“All the moments I got, like, cut, traded, slighted, overlooked,” he said. “But also all the joy, all the things that my family has comforted me in, all the life lessons. Everything that’s turned me into the man and the human being that I am today.”

Haliburton spent two seasons at Iowa State and appeared in exactly one postseason game, a 62-59 first-round loss to Ohio State in the 2019 NCAA Tournament. He entered the NBA draft despite suffering a season-ending fractured left wrist in February 2020.

Sacramento made him the 12th overall pick, even with De’Aaron Fox already on the roster. But Haliburton never made the playoffs in 2 1/2 seasons with the Kings and their crowded backcourt led to Haliburton’s trade to Indiana for All-Star forward Domantas Sabonis in February 2022.

The change of scenery didn’t change his postseason misfortune — at least not immediately. The Pacers missed the playoffs in 2022 and again in 2023 as Haliburton sat out the final 2 1/2 weeks, costing him his first NBA assists crown.

The breakthrough finally came last season, when Indiana secured the No. 6 seed in the East and eliminated Milwaukee and New York before getting swept by Boston in the conference finals as the injured Haliburton watched the final two games from the bench.

This year, the Pacers have dispatched Milwaukee, Cleveland and New York to reach the Finals. But even with his success, Haliburton has had his detractors. The Athletic published an anonymous player poll in April saying he was the league's most overrated player.

During the postseason, Haliburton is averaging 18.8 points, 9.8 assists and 5.7 rebounds per game. 

“What makes him very good is that he’s very confident,” Thunder All-Star Jalen Williams said. “So to be able to play as well as he’s been playing through like a lot of the ‘overrated’ stuff ... you have to tip your hat to him for that. So he’s just an extremely confident individual. And I think that, regardless of who you are, makes you dangerous.”

It also makes for an intriguing backcourt matchup after a couple of winding roads to the NBA Finals.

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AP Sports Writer Michael Marot in Indianapolis contributed to this report.

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