After being crowned an NBA champion as well as league MVP and Finals MVP, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander will reportedly get a new kind of accolade as the face of NBA 2K26.
On Tuesday, ESPN’s Shams Charania reported that the Oklahoma City Thunder guard will be the next cover athlete of the popular video game series. Born in Toronto, the 26-year-old scoring champion will be the first Canadian to appear on the cover.
Other foreign born stars who have been featured on the cover include Luka Dončić, Giannis Antetokounmpo, but the video game has never had a player come from up North.
Last year, Celtics star Jayson Tatum was named the cover athlete after winning the NBA championship with Boston. The prior years displayed Kobe Bryant for 2K24, Devin Booker for 2K23, Dončić for 2K22, and Damian Lillard for 2K21.
The honor of cover athlete is just one more step in the evolution of Gilgeous-Alexander as a superstar.
After being traded to the Thunder before his second season in the summer of 2019, Gielgeous-Alexander has steadily grown as a player. Scoring 19 points per game his first year in Oklahoma, his scoring increased in each of the next four years. He reached 31.4 points per game and finished fifth in MVP voting in the 2022-23 season.
The next year he finished second in MVP, and this past season, everything came together for Gilgeous-Alexander and the Thunder. The guard led the league with 32.7 points per game, won MVP, and led the NBA’s top regular season team to its first ever NBA championship.
To top it all off, on July 1, Gilgeous-Alexander inked a four-year, $285 million contract extension with Oklahoma City, giving him the highest annual salary ever for an NBA player.
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