This stretch of January around Martin Luther King Jr. Day is usually peak evaluation time in the NBA front-office world. It’s one of the milestone points where teams will have full-staff pow-wows and talk things out,

Midway through an NBA season in which he’s become an MVP favorite, Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was announced Thursday night as an All-Star starter in next month’s game in San Francisco.

Gilgeous-Alexander finished with a career-best 54 points on 17-of-35 shooting, eight rebounds and five assists. He shot 3-of-10 from 3 and went 17-of-18 at the free-throw line.