It’s mere days before Christmas, and Paycom Center is unusually quiet.

The arena — home of the Oklahoma City Thunder, the reigning 2025 NBA champions — typically holds 18,000 roaring fans, but today, you could hear a pin drop. Yet even in silence, the Thunder’s accomplishments speak loudly. Division title banners hang proudly from the rafters. Scan past those banners and across the empty arena, and three words in bold orange and blue come into focus: Committed. Community. Together.

That trifecta isn’t just the glue that keeps the Thunder ahead of the competition — it’s the ethos of Simon Gebrelul’s ISLA Management. Since launching ISLA in 2018, Gebrelul and his co-founder, EK, have proved that a powerhouse management company can be built on a foundation of friendship — at least when the friends in question are some of the biggest stars in sports and music today, including Thunder superstar and reigning NBA MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Grammy Award-nominated, multiplatinum singer GIVĒON.

“My clients are my friends,” says Gebrelul, 34. “I met some of them playing video games early on when I was 16, 17, 18. You go hard for the people you care about. I’ve gotten in front of huge companies and burned relationships because I was standing up for clients. When you love them that much, the relationship with whatever brand doesn’t matter. I’m going to live or die on the sword with my client. You lose that when you try to become more of a company than a family.”

Read the full Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, GIVĒON and Simon Gebrelul cover story here.