The one player Oklahoma City acquired this offseason who seems to be part of the Thunder’s bigger plan for the future is Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. The Thunder received the point guard — along with Danilo Gallinari, multiple first-round draft picks and pick swaps — in the trade which sent Paul George to the Los Angeles Clippers.

Gilgeous-Alexander proved his worth in his rookie season, scoring 10.8 points per game on 47.6 percent shooting (36.7 from deep), along with his 1.2 steals and 3.3 assists a night while averaging 26.5 minutes a game. More importantly, he helped the team reach the postseason, even after Los Angeles traded away key pieces, like Tobias Harris, at the trade deadline.

Though, Gilgeous-Alexander’s success comes as no surprise to his college coach, Kentucky’s John Calipari, who told Brett Dawson of The Athletic his former point guard will do well with helping Oklahoma City rebuild for one simple reason:

Because he did it with us.

Kentucky’s head coach also added:

If you’re gonna do what they’re gonna do, it’s gonna be about culture. It’s gonna be about, how quickly can these young guys create an environment that is gonna help us succeed — how we’re gonna play and how we’re gonna work and all that stuff. That’s what this is. That’s what he did for us.

Now, Calipari doesn’t make these statements solely based on Gilgeous-Alexander’s stats from college. Oklahoma City’s new point guard didn’t start much at the beginning of his Kentucky career. Yet, by the end of his one season, he was the SEC tournament MVP and helped lead the Wildcats to a Sweet 16 appearance.

By the end, he had just taken over the team. We won the games we won because of him.

While it may seem easy for Calipari to make these claims about Gilgeous-Alexander now, given he’s already had some success at the NBA level, he was making the same points about the point guard when he was just starting his NBA career, in particular to Clippers assistant coach Sam Cassell, telling him: