INDIANAPOLIS — As Oklahoma City Thunder general manager Sam Presti turned the corner of the concourse in the bowels of Gainbridge Fieldhouse, following a 116-107 loss to the Indiana Pacers in Game 3 of the NBA Finals, a look of concern covered the face of one of the smartest men in basketball.
This is what the Pacers do. This is what they have been doing. They make opponents uncomfortable, and the Thunder, now trailing the best-of-seven championship series, 2-1, are as uncomfortable as they have been all season. Presti’s 68-win juggernaut — the one so heavily favored in this series; the one we figured for a budding dynasty — is two losses from the franchise’s best season ending short of a championship.
Thunder head coach Mark Daigneault found all sorts of ways to describe this loss by his young team as “uncharacteristic,” and he found even more ways to say, “They outplayed us the majority of the game.”
“The turnovers were uncharacteristic,” Daigneault said of his team’s 19 giveaways, one shy of a season high. “Obviously we’re usually pretty clean there. I give them credit. I thought they played really well.”
The Pacers played phenomenally, mostly because the Thunder did not apply the defensive pressure that they usually do. Indiana had something to do with that, too, playing so fast that Oklahoma City could not settle into its defensive pressure. It is hard to be physical with someone when you cannot catch them.
“Just the pace of their offense was sharper than our pressure and physicality tonight,” said Daigneault. “That’s just what it came down to. They got the ball ahead of us more easily tonight than they did in the first two games. That led to a lot of the downstream effects of their offense and our defense tonight.”
Mostly, though, the Thunder were not themselves, especially in the fourth quarter, when the league’s MVP, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, a machine, attempted only three shots and failed to register an assist.
“It felt like they won all the 50/50 plays,” Gilgeous-Alexander said of the fourth quarter. “They executed on both ends of the ball. When you give those two things up, no matter what quarter, you’re probably going to lose the quarter, especially on the road in a hostile environment as the crowd is behind them.”
“Their overall tone was better than ours for the majority of the game,” added Daigneault. “Like I said, I thought we had some really good stretches, but we just made one too many mistakes and had one too many possessions on both ends of the floor where they were more tied to their identity than we were.”
Even Shai Gilgeous-Alexander looked out of rhythm in Game 3, as Indiana’s pressure pushed OKC into unfamiliar discomfort. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
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Another point of evidence: The Thunder, the NBA’s best free-throw shooting team, missed seven of their 30 attempts. All the coach could say to that: “It was an uncharacteristic night in a lot of ways for us.”
The question, then: Why was everything about this game so uncharacteristic for Oklahoma City? Why did the real Thunder not stand up? Why, conversely, as Daigneault said, were the Pacers “in character in terms of their physicality, their pressure on defense” and “in character in terms of their pace on offense”?
It is not like the Thunder did not know what to expect. This was a tied series. A championship is on the line. The Pacers did not defend them any differently, other than attacking pick-and-rolls at a higher point.
“They were above the screen,” said Gilgeous-Alexander. “When you come off it, you got to go backwards. It goes back to a little bit more force. If we’re more aggressive setting up the pick-and-roll, then we get a better angle. Things like that usually come down to who throws the first punch. That’s what that was.”
There it is again. The Pacers were throwing the punches. The Thunder were merely trying to avoid them.
It is curious, considering Oklahoma City lost Game 3 in its previous two series, including the Western Conference semifinals, which they also trailed to the Denver Nuggets, 2-1. The Thunder were well aware of the importance of this one, and still they took the court with a lack of force that was unrecognizable.
“We’ve been in that exact same kind of predicament,” said Oklahoma City forward Jalen Williams. “This Game 3 was a better Game 3 than the ones we’ve had, so we’ll take that and run with it. Yeah, I mean, it’s very pivotal. Obviously you don’t like being down in a series. But we have been here before.”
Only they have not. Not at this level.
“It’s the Finals, so it’s a little different here,” said Alex Caruso, the only member of the Thunder to have reached this level before, having won a title with the Los Angeles Lakers. “You’re probably just slightly more frustrated with it. You just put in so much effort to not come away with a win when you have a chance to, especially on the road, it definitely stings a little. That’s part of the playoffs, part of the Finals.”
It would be easy to blame this on the Thunder’s youth, their inexperience at this level of basketball. But it is not like Indiana has been here before. Their superstar, Tyrese Haliburton, is only 25 years old, a year younger than Gilgeous-Alexander, and the Pacers have no more experience than OKC on this stage.
Maybe, then, the Pacers are playing freer in this series — clear of the expectations that come with being one of seven teams ever to win 68 games and one of the biggest betting favorites in NBA Finals history.
Whatever the reason for OKC’s shortcoming, they now face the prospect of a Game 4 in Indiana, where the crowd is its own animal — where the pressure will only be more intense. The winner of a pivotal Game 3 has won the series 80.5% of the time. Should the Pacers manage to take Game 4, too, that figure would increase to 95.6%, putting them on the brink of arguably the biggest Finals upset in NBA history.
“We’ve got to learn from it and then tap back into being who we are in Game 4,” Daigneault said of his team’s poor Game 3 performance. “If we do that, I think we’ll have a much better chance to win.”
And if they don’t? If they are uncharacteristically outplayed again? Then the Thunder are in real trouble.
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