Sports

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander Had a Blunt Message for Teammate Jared McCain After Icing Game 2

By Stephen Douglas Sports Illustrated

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has got this. That's the message the two-time MVP had for teammate Jared McCain in the final seconds of the Thunder's Game 2 win over the Spurs on Wednesday night.

Oklahoma City held off a late charge from San Antonio with Gilgeous-Alexander finally putting the game away with a jumper with less than a minute remaining in the fourth quarter. As SGA turned and headed back towards the bench he made a gesture with his right hand. As NBC and Peacock showed the replay he appeared to be telling someone to calm down.

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After the game he revealed that he had been talking to Jared McCain who was apparently being a bit much at that moment.

"Jared was yelling at me while I was shooting and I was just like, bro, I'm shooting. Don't distract me," said Gilgeous-Alexander. "That's all. I wasn't... I was literally just telling Jared to calm down. But that's what great shooters do when they're open so."

It's kind of funny for a professional basketball player to say something like don't distract me by yelling when they play in front of a huge crowd full of people who are yelling the entire time. Obviously, there's a method to the madness.

McCain finished the game with 12 points on 4-of-14 shooting. He was one of four guards to come off the bench for the Thunder and score in double figures in Game 2.

SGA finished with 30 points on 12-of-24 shooting. Despite his best efforts to draw fouls, he only earned six free throw attempts.

SGA also had nine assists and just one turnover, which was just as impressive and maybe even more important.

Overall, the Thunder had just nine turnovers to the Spurs' 21. Stephon Castle had nine turnovers himself, but he also pulled off a really sweet dunk so he's lucky no one will be talking about the fact that he set a record for the most turnovers by a single player over a two game stretch in NBA playoff history. Combined with his 11 in Game 1, he's averaging 10 turnovers a game this series while the Thunder have averaged just 10.8 turnovers through their first 10 games this postseason.

The Spurs were able to overcome all the turnovers in Game 1 thanks to Wemby's otherworldly effort at both ends of the floor, but they were just too much in Game 2 and Gilgeous-Alexander and the Thunder constantly took advantage of the sometimes unforced errors.

Castle threw a bad pass that went out of bounds with just over a minute remaining. With any basket the Spurs could have made it a one-possession game. Instead, SGA shook Castle, hit a wide open jumper and iced the game, despite the fact that McCain was yelling at him while he was trying to concentrate.

With the series tied 1-1 the ascension of Victor Wembanyama suddenly seems less certain. There's a lot of series remaining, but the Spurs seem much less inevitable today. That's the beauty of the NBA postseason, where every game encourages declarative statements. In the case of Game 2, that statement was simply bro, I'm shooting and it was spoken by the MVP.

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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Shai Gilgeous-Alexander Had a Blunt Message for Teammate Jared McCain After Icing Game 2.

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This story was originally published May 21, 2026 at 6:34 AM.

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