Five things to watch in Game 7 between Nuggets, Thunder

It’s this simple for me: The winner of this game will win the NBA championship.

Oklahoma City and Denver have been the two best teams in the NBA this postseason, going head to head in what has been the best series of the playoffs. While the Thunder are +32 for the series, remove the Game 2 blowout from the mix and it is Nuggets +11. Denver has shown more offensive weapons that coach David Adelman can trust night-to-night, but the Thunder are deeper and have the better defense.

Here are the five things to watch in Game 7 between these teams on Sunday (3:30 ET on ABC).

MVP Face-Off

Nikola Jokic vs. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.

Basketball doesn’t get better than this. Savor it.

The two leading MVP candidates — the league has delayed handing out the actual hardware until this series ends — have lived up to the billing this series: Gilgeous-Alexander is averaging 28 points, 7 rebounds and 7 assists a game, adding 1.3 steals into the mix; Jokic is averaging 29.8 points, 14.7 rebounds, 5.7 assists and 2 steals a game.

These might be the two best basketball players walking the face of the earth right now (at worst, they are both top three), and they are living up to the billing. Enjoy one last game between these two.

Aaron Gordon’s hamstring

With just a couple of minutes left in Game 7, Aaron Gordon seemed to tweak his hamstring, he was walking around, rubbing it, then subbed himself out of the game with less than a minute to go.

Gordon has a strained hamstring and is unlikely to play in Game 7.

That is a huge blow. In this series, Gordon has averaged 14.5 points and 9.2 assists a game, shooting 45.2% from 3, and he hit the game-winner in Game 1 of this series.

If, as expected, he cannot play, that is a huge setback for an already thin Nuggets team. The pressure falls on Peyton Watson, who must have a monster game for Denver.

Which Jalen Williams shows up?

Oklahoma City fell to Dallas in the second round a year ago partly because Jalen Williams was not ready to step up and be the No. 2 option this team needed.

This year… it’s too much of the same. Williams had 32 points on 21 shots in Game 3 (an OKC loss), but in the last three games Williams has shot 2-of-13, 5-of-14 and 3-of-16, a combined 23.3%. That will not be good enough in Game 7.

Williams is an All-Star, and the Thunder will offer a five-year max contract extension this summer, but this is where that money is really earned. He needs to step up and be that guy. If he — and Chet Holmgren as well — can’t be the running mates Gilgous-Alexander needs, it means Sam Presti has some hard decisions coming up.

Which MVP gets help?

This is the real story of the series.

As noted above, Jokic and Gilgeous-Alexander have lived up to the billing. The question game-to-game is which team’s role players step up and provide enough help to their star. With everyone tight in Game 7, that becomes an even bigger question. Does Christian Braun have a big game because he’s been there before and handles the moment? Is this a good Williams and Holmgren game for the Thunder? Is this another Julian Strawther game?

The safest bet on the board is whichever team’s role players step up will win.

What about Thunder defense?

In the regular season, Oklahoma City had a 107.6 defensive rating, the best in the league (using Basketball-Reference’s numbers). In the first round against Memphis, the Thunder had a defensive rating of 99.6, allowing less than a point per possession.

In this series, here are the Thunder’s defensive ratings in each of the last four games: 99.8, 92.1, 107.3, 116.5. Jokic’s high-IQ mind tends to figure teams out over the course of seven games. Has that happened here? As great and athletic as the Thunder defense has been this season, has Jokic solved the puzzle? He’s making the right passes, he has found his counters to OKC’s adjustments. Or, do the Thunder — likely behind more minutes from Alex Caruso, who has been fantastic this series — have one more game of stops in them.

If the Thunder defense performs to its potential, the Thunder will take Game 7 and advance.