The Oklahoma City Thunder are headed to the play-in tournament, shattering expectations of where the team would be before the season began. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has been right at the center of it all.

SGA went from promising young player to borderline superstar this season, becoming one of the most lethal scorers in the game. His scoring average took a massive leap from 24.5 points per game last season to 31.4 points for just shy of a seven-point improvement.

He becomes just the third player in Thunder history to ever average 30 points or more over a season-long span, joining franchise icons Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook.

Durant, a 4-time scoring champ, has averaged 30 or more just twice in his career with both coming as a member of the Thunder. Westbrook has only done it once, during his MVP-winning 2016-17 campaign when he averaged 31.6 points per game with a triple-double.

It seems inevitable that Shai Gilgeous-Alexander will become the face of OKC's new era. Regardless of how the team performs in the play-in tournament this season, it's clear the team has nowhere to go but up as their youth movement is already bearing fruit with more harvests to come.

The Thunder during Kevin Durant's time may never have won a title, but they did reach the NBA Finals and made three Western Conference Finals appearances.

With the talent that they have on the roster under rookie contracts, Chet Holmgren's debut next season, the war chest of draft and trade assets they have at their disposal, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander playing at a top-10 level, the OKC Thunder are arriving real soon.