Login
The craziest stats behind Shai Gilgeous-Alexander's 20-point streak
While the NBA world remains absolutely flummoxed after Bam Adebayo’s 83-point inferno, we’re on the verge of another historic feat that melts the brain. On the eve of Halloween in 2024, the San Antonio Spurs did something that no team has been able to accomplish since. They “held” Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to under 20 points.
I deliberately put held in quotation marks because the Spurs were getting beat so badly in that game that SGA barely needed to play in the fourth quarter. He finished with 18 points.
One hundred and twenty-six games later, Gilgeous-Alexander has a chance to pass Wilt Chamberlain for the most consecutive games with at least 20 points, a record that has stood for over half a century.
It’s a streak that has gone on for so long it began before Cooper Flagg had ever played a game at Duke.
To put Gilgeous-Alexander’s streak and his MVP candidacy into proper perspective, here are seven ways to better understand how Gilgeous-Alexander is wrecking the record books.
1. SGA’s streak is longer than the next two longest current active streaks combined: Kawhi Leonard and Joel Embiid. Actually it’s longer than the next ELEVEN highest streaks combined.
Kawhi Leonard has delivered a metronome-like scoring streak for the Clippers this season. From Nov. 28 to now, he has put up 20-plus points in 43 straight games. It’s incredible. Joel Embiid has strung together 24 straight games of his own with at least 20 points. Impressive! Tyrese Maxey has mounted 13 such games in a row. Remarkable.
Stack them all together and those superstars still don’t topple SGA’s current mark. Actually, the next 11 highest streaks — Leonard (43), Embiid (24), Maxey (13), Luka Dončić (11), Bam Adebayo (7), Trey Murphy III (5), Pascal Siakam (5), Victor Wembanyama (4), Devin Booker (4), Stephen Curry (4) and Jerami Grant (4) — have a combined 124 straight games with 20-plus points, according to Stathead.com tracking. It’s not just that SGA’s streak is better than everyone else’s, it’s that none of them can even sniff what SGA is doing right now.
2. SGA hasn’t played in 30% of the Thunder’s fourth quarters during the streak.
Perhaps the greatest threat to SGA’s record isn’t the greatness of the opponent’s defense but rather the greatness of his own team. SGA and the Thunder have been so dominant that they haven’t even needed to play the reigning MVP in dozens of fourth quarters because the game is already out of hand.
To be exact, the former Kentucky Wildcat has sat in 39 fourth quarters over the streak, making it even more impressive that the streak is alive. He’s done this while playing in a 36-minute NBA game a third of the time. Most players need all four quarters in a game to put together at least 20 points. Not SGA.
3. He has clinched the 20-point streak before the fourth quarter in 90% of his games.
This is an extension of the previous note, with a twist. Not only does Gilgeous-Alexander sit a lot in fourth quarters because his team does so well, most of the time he doesn’t even need to play the fourth quarter to keep his streak alive.
He has scored at least 20 points by the start of the fourth quarter in a whopping 113 of the 126 games, which equates to 89.6%. In only one out of 10 games is the record in jeopardy going into the final frame. Madness.
4. Stephen Curry could add 100 games to his personal longest streak, and he’d still trail Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s current run.
Stephen Curry is one of the greatest scorers in NBA history with over 25,000 points to his name. He has won four championships and changed the game forever. And yet: he has never come close to anything like Gilgeous-Alexander’s current streak. In fact, according to Stathead.com, Curry’s longest streak of stringing together 20-point games is 23. He did it across two seasons back in 2022-23 and 2023-24.
The Golden State Warrior guard has actually never rallied 20 straight games of 20-plus in any single season, which is something that SGA has done not just once, but five separate times. One reason why: the variance of the 3-point shot. Curry relies much more heavily on a shot that goes in less than half the time, which can yield some wild fluctuations. On the other hand, SGA is shooting 60% on a whopping 15 2-point attempts per game. There’s a lot of steadiness in that.
Even if we wrap around seasons, Curry’s best is 23 straight games of 20-plus points, which is still a shorter streak than …
5. At one point last season, SGA scored 20-plus points through three quarters in 26 straight games.
To reiterate: Last season, from Nov. 25, 2024, to Jan. 22, 2025, Gilgeous-Alexander ended the third quarter with at least 20 points in 26 straight games. Just three quarters of basketball was all he needed to keep the streak alive.
To put it in perspective, SGA’s 26-game three-quarter streak of 20 points or more is longer than the full-game streak of the following players’ careers:
Stephen Curry (23 games of 20-plus points)
Donovan Mitchell (22 games)
Ja Morant (22 games)
Nikola Jokić (21 games)
Kyrie Irving (21 games)
Karl-Anthony Towns (21 games)
Jalen Brunson (19 games)
Trae Young (17 games)
Just incredible consistency and greatness.
6. SGA’s individual record is almost twice as long as the NBA’s active team streak of having at least one 20-point scorer.
I know I already gave it away, but if I had asked you whether SGA’s streak is longer than NBA teams’ streaks of having at least one 20-point scorer, what would you say?
In my mind, I was quite certain there were teams that have outpaced Gilgeous-Alexander’s record. Surely a player on a team would have put up 20 in every game this season and beyond, right? If you shared my feeling on that, it turns out we’re both dead wrong. As crazy as it sounds, Gilgeous-Alexander’s personal streak is longer than any team streak of having at least one 20-point scorer in a game.
And it’s not particularly close. SGA almost laps the team competition.
If you dig into it, only one team has even had a 20-point scorer in every game this season, and you’ll never guess the team.
It’s not the Thunder, actually. On Feb. 12, a game in which Gilgeous-Alexander did not play, the high scorer for the Thunder was Isaiah Joe, who registered a mere 17 points. In every other game, the Thunder have cleared the 20-point plateau with at least one player.
But the only team to have a 20-point scorer in every game this season is not the Denver Nuggets, holders of the NBA’s No. 1 offense. Although the Nuggets do have the most 20-point games of any team this season, with 143, according to Stathead.com.
So if it’s not the Thunder or Nuggets, who is it?
It’s not the high-powered Los Angeles Lakers, Boston Celtics or New York Knicks teams.
It’s actually not a team with a winning record either.
Stumped?
It’s the New Orleans Pelicans.
Yes, the 22-45 Pelicans have the longest team streak of having at least one 20-point scorer in each of their 67 games this season. You can look it up. They’ve had Zion Williamson and seven other players who have put up 20 in a game this season, spread out evenly enough that they’ve done it in every game.
So naturally I went back to last season. What I found was that New Orleans’ streak actually started not long before this season. If you go back to last season, the Pelicans had a 20-point scorer in only three of the team’s final regular-season games, which means that the longest active team record is … 70 games. Not even in the same ballpark as Gilgeous-Alexander AS AN INDIVIDUAL.
As crazy as it sounds, SGA’s individual record of 126 straight games with a 20-piece is almost twice as long as the longest active team record.
7. The Wizards’ longest 20-point streak this season is 12 games.
I’m not kidding. SGA’s streak is 12 times longer than the Wizards’ longest streak this season as a team. Check out this chart showing their last 126 games, snaking back to last season:
Between this chart and Bam Adebayo’s 83, the Wizards have seen a lot of red recently. Yeah, it’s been a tough week for them.
