NBA star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has agreed to a four-year, $285m contract extension with the Oklahoma City Thunder in a deal that could give him the highest single-season average salary for a player in NBA history, according to ESPN.
The deal will mean the 26-year-old is contracted through to the end of the 2030/31 season, and it is the second extension that he has signed since arriving at the franchise in 2019.
The extension, referred to as a ‘super maximum contract extension’, could see Gilgeous-Alexander earn an average of roughly $1m per regular season game based on the NBA’s most recent salary cap projections, according to The Guardian.
Gilgeous-Alexander won the regular-season NBA MVP award as well as the Finals MVP award last season – becoming just the 11th player to do so – as he led OKC to a first NBA Championship since their relocation in a 68-win season, and he scored 20 or more points in 72 straight games in 2024/25.
He also averaged a league-high 32.7 points during the regular season and 30.3 in the Finals, winning the league scoring title and becoming the fourth player in NBA history to win both MVP awards as well and a scoring title in the same season.
The 26-year-old was the 11th overall pick in the draft in 2018, spending his rookie year with the LA Clippers, and was traded to Oklahoma in 2019.
He has since become the face of the franchise along with teammate Jalen Williams, and with OKC having tied up most of their key players for at least one more season, he believes that his team will continue to challenge for championships.
He told the media that the team “definitely still have room to grow,” after the win over the Pacers in Game 7, adding that “that’s the fun part of this”.
“So many of us can still get better. There’s not very many of us on the team that are ‘in our prime’ or even close to it,” he added at the time.
