Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who led the NBA in scoring last season and later grabbed league MVP and Finals MVP honours, was named Canadian athlete of the year on Tuesday.
A sports media panel huddled in Toronto and selected the Hamilton native over Olympic swimmer and 2024 recipient Summer McIntosh, curler Rachel Homan, World Rugby women’s player of the year Sophie de Goede and world hammer throw champion Camryn Rogers. Eighteen athletes were nominated.
Gilgeous-Alexander also won the Northern Star Award (formerly Lou Marsh Trophy) in 2023 after leading the Canadian men’s national team to an historic bronze at the Basketball World Cup and its first Olympic berth in 23 years.
The 27-year-old is the 10th multiple winner, with only NHL great Wayne Gretzky and legendary figure skater Barbara Ann Scott having won more than twice.
In May, Gilgeous-Alexander became the second Canadian to be named NBA MVP after Steve Nash was recognized in 2005 and 2006.
Gilgeous-Alexander averaged 32.7 points, 6.4 assists and five rebounds per game last regular season, leading the Oklahoma City Thunder to a 68-14 record and the second title in franchise history. He was also the first guard to win MVP since James Harden in 2018.
Before Gilgeous-Alexander, only three players in NBA history won the scoring title, league MVP, NBA championship and Finals MVP in the same season: Hall of Famers Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Michael Jordan and Shaquille O’Neal.
“Many athletes would be considered a great player having had achieved just one of these accolades,” Rowan Barrett, general manager of the Canadian men’s national team, said at a Hamilton rally in August.
“To do them all with such grace, calmness under pressure and true leadership in every sense of the word, it was a beautiful thing to behold.”
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander becomes 2nd Canadian to win NBA MVP
Gilgeous-Alexander completed his memorable 2024-25 season with 29 points and 12 assists, and the Thunder beat the visiting Indiana Pacers 103-91 in Game 7 of the NBA Finals.
Years ago, he was cut from his junior varsity team in Grade 9. Gilgeous-Alexander came off the bench for most of the first two months of his freshman season at Kentucky, wasn’t a top-10 draft pick (he was 11th overall in 2018) and was traded from the Los Angeles Clippers after his rookie year.
“He is the example that all kids should be looking towards. Be humble, work hard, show kindness, compete at the highest level and have fun while you are doing it,” Tim Francis, who coached Gilgeous-Alexander at Hamilton’s Sir Allan MacNab Secondary School, told CBC News this past summer.
In August, hundreds of people attended a free rally to honour Gilgeous-Alexander as he was presented with a key to the city for the first time by a Hamilton mayor since 1998.
He hasn’t rested on his laurels as Gilgeous-Alexander has averaged more points (32.8) in fewer minutes than he did last season.
He also boasts shooting career-best percentages from the field (55.6 per cent) and three-point range (44.3).
Canada’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander named NBA Finals MVP as Oklahoma City Thunder win championship
McIntosh won four of five races at the World Aquatics Championships in August.
The 19-year-old captured gold medals in Singapore in the 200-metre individual medley and butterfly, along with the 400 freestyle and medley. Her other medal was bronze in the 800 free.
“I have so many amazing takeaways and so many lessons that I can learn from this meet and that’s what’s going to keep pushing and moving me forward,” McIntosh told CBC Sports’ Devin Heroux in August.
McIntosh is only the second woman in history to win four individual titles in a 50m pool at a single long-course world championship competition, following American great Katie Ledecky in 2015.
She is also the third swimmer to earn five individual medals at worlds, joining Phelps and Sweden’s Sarah Sjostrom.
Summer McIntosh reflects on dominant performance at the World Aquatics Championships
McIntosh has 13 career world medals, with eight gold, one silver and four bronze.
She prepared for the competition by breaking three world records in five days in June at the Canadian trials in Victoria — in the 400 free, 200 medley and her own mark in the 400 IM. McIntosh was 45-100ths of a second off the 16-year-old world record in the 200 butterfly.
The Northern Star Award is given out annually by the Toronto Star and is voted on by sports journalists from across Canada.
It has been handed out since 1936.
Until 2023, it was named the Lou Marsh Award after a former football player and NHL referee who spent over 40 years working in the Toronto Star’s sports department.
The award was renamed after concerns surfaced in recent years over some of the racist language used in Marsh’s writing.
