Heading into the fourth quarter on Friday, the Oklahoma City Thunder were on the brink of falling down 3-1 in the NBA Finals. Given that they’d shot 2 for 14 from 3-point range and had four more turnovers (12) than assists (8), they were fortunate to be trailing the Indiana Pacers by only seven points. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the league’s Most Valuable Player, was minus-16 in 29 minutes. The Pacers had pressured him, denied him the ball and targeted him on defense. It had been another long, difficult night.
The stakes were the highest they’d been since the Thunder’s second-round series against the Denver Nuggets went to Game 7. And unlike that game, Oklahoma City was not able to force a zillion turnovers and score a gazillion fast break points against the Pacers. After just sort of hanging around for most of the game, down the stretch Gilgeous-Alexander and the Thunder earned a 111-104 win the hard way.
Oklahoma City put up 31 points in the final frame, but it’s not as if it found an incredible flow in the halfcourt. The Thunder recorded just two assists in their fourth-quarter comeback, and they attempted only three 3s. They tied up the series, though, because they got stops, they got to the free throw line and Gilgeous-Alexander made every play they needed him to make in crunch time.
Gilgeous-Alexander scored 15 of the Thunder’s last 16 points on 3-for-3 shooting and made all eight of his free throw attempts in the fourth quarter. The 15 points were the most by a player in the last five minutes of a Finals game, and his 14 clutch points were also the most in a Finals game on record, per CBS Sports Research. The first of his three late buckets came after Jalen Williams had missed a tough pull-up and both Isaiah Hartenstein and Chet Holmgren had gotten a hand on the loose ball. Gilgeous-Alexander had missed six straight shots at that point, but he saw an opportunity, got to the rim and scored off the glass:
On the Thunder’s next offensive possession, Gilgeous-Alexander tried to split a pick-and-roll and turned the ball over. After that, though, he got Aaron Nesmith on a switch and baited him into a foul on a face-up jumper:
Then Gilgeous-Alexander got the Nesmith switch again, but got rid of the ball when the Pacers doubled him. Late in the shot clock, he calmly drilled a catch-and-shoot 3:
The next time down the floor, Gilgeous-Alexander had Nesmith on him again on a crossmatch. He isolated on the left wing, drove baseline and went into one of his patented stepbacks. Nesmith hit the floor, trying to draw a foul on the push-off. Andrew Nembhard scurried over to contest it, but it didn’t matter: Cash.
In the final minute, Gilgeous-Alexander again got the Nesmith switch, isolated, went left and appeared to set him up for a stepback. Instead, the MVP pump faked, spun right and drew another foul, Nesmith’s sixth:
Gilgeous-Alexander finished with 35 points, three rebounds, three steals, a block, two turnovers and — notably — zero assists in 40 minutes. Despite the late-game heroics, it was far from his finest all-around performance. Because of them, though, it was representative of the even-keeled approach he brings to every game.
“You really wouldn’t know whether he’s up three, down three, up 30, down 30, eating dinner on a Wednesday,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault told reporters. “He’s pretty much the same guy. It’s unbelievable. He really didn’t have it going a lot of the night. He was laboring. We had a hard time shaking him free. For him to be able to flip the switch like that and get the rhythm he got just speaks to how great of a player he is.”
Gilgeous-Alexander was not the lone author of the come-from-behind victory. Alex Caruso, Oklahoma City’s most productive player for much of the night, opened the fourth quarter by making a contested leaner on the left baseline just before the shot clock expired. Holmgren came up with two putbacks. Kenrich Williams and Caruso forced Pascal Siakam into a turnover. Jalen Williams got downhill for two layups against Indiana’s set defense. Lu Dort, whom Daigneault said set the tone with his fourth-quarter defense, blew up a Myles Turner–Tyrese Haliburton dribble-handoff by getting his hand on the ball, then recovered it, went the other way and got to the free throw line.
Daigneault said that OKC “kind of manufactured that win with defense down the stretch.” Its switching got the Pacers discombobulated — they scored 17 points and recorded just one assist in the fourth quarter. Over and over, it forced tough shots late in the clock:
Leading up to Game 4, Daigneault said that the Thunder needed to play to their identity. In a way, they failed to do that. “We didn’t have a lot going, especially offensively,” Daigneault said. Throughout the season, though, they have routinely come up with grimy wins, overcoming poor shooting and inefficient halfcourt offense by generating extra possessions, locking down defensively and making timely shots. In this respect, they showed exactly who they are in Game 4.
“[We] kind of scraped enough together to win the game,” Daigneault said. “You gotta be able to win games like that. It’s not always going to be pretty, especially in the playoffs against a great team on the road.”
