When describing Oklahoma City Thunder star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s game, the first attribute that comes to mind for most is he’s a drive-heavy guard. The stats certainly back this up, too: Gilgeous-Alexander has led the league in the past two seasons at drives per game.
Being such a drive-heavy offensive player leads to a lot of kick out opportunities for his teammates where decent looks are created due to the defense putting all of their focus on stopping the driver.
This theory probably explains why Gilgeous-Alexander was the third-best player last season in creating scoring opportunities, according to one metric.
SIS Hoops ranked the best on-ball advantages players in the league last season and Gilgeous-Alexander comes in third behind fellow 2018 draft class members Luka Doncic and Trae Young.
Introducing: Advantages Created
This metric measures when a ball-handler creates an opportunity, for themselves or a teammate, for a high-quality shot, regardless of whether that opportunity was seized. Here are the leaders in Advantages Created per 100 last season: pic.twitter.com/RKclN7UHcE— SIS Hoops (@SIS_Hoops) August 22, 2022
The metric is decided upon how many scoring opportunities — whether for themselves or for a teammate — were created from a player per 100 possessions. Whether the shot was made or not is irrelevant.
Gilgeous-Alexander averaged 26.2 advantages created on on-ball opportunities and 80.9 on-ball advantage creation opportunities per 100 possessions.
The ability to create quality shots for both himself and others is a great trait to have, especially once the Thunder acquire enough talent where the team can start to reap the benefits of this skill soon.
