NBA Gets Clowned For Promoting Egregious Shai Gilgeous-Alexander Travel On Overblown Play

With 14 NBA teams in action on Monday night, you'd think that the league would avoid posting a highlight of a player blatantly traveling, but when said play involves reigning league MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, rules be damned.

SGA and the Oklahoma City Thunder hosted a very depleted Memphis Grizzlies squad on Monday night and improved to 26-3 on the year with a 119-103 victory. Leading by seven points with just under five minutes left in regulation, Gilgeous-Alexander found himself stuck near the free-throw line with a defender draped all over him.

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Instead of looking for the easy pass, he tossed the basketball off the glass to himself before finding a wide-open shooter in the corner. It was the split-second before the off-the-glass pass that has plenty of fans laughing, and not in a positive way.

SGA changed his pivot foot while doing an incredibly loose spin, and should have been whistled for a travel, but this is the NBA, and traveling is called more frequently at your YMCA than it is in the Association.

Was it an impressive play for SGA? Sure. Should it have been a play at all? Nope.

Folks across social media were quick to point out the obvious:

This is not an SGA problem; this is an NBA problem. When you have a league that misses travel calls in every single game, and has for decades, you're going to get guys with loose pivots and walking all over the place, not thinking twice about it.

Gilgeous-Alexander finished the contest with a game-high 31 points in 36 minutes of action and was two rebounds shy of posting a triple-double.