After a physically dominant defensive performance that was propped up by one historically hellacious 40-ball from Jalen Williams, the Oklahoma City Thunder are now one win away from their very first NBA championship.
To take a 3-2 series lead, Oklahoma City beat the feisty Indiana Pacers 120-109 behind some of the more breathtaking defensive stretches you’ll ever see in a spot this big. The Thunder did what the Thunder do, finishing with 15 steals and scoring 32 points off Indiana’s 23 turnovers. “That’s the game,” Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle said after the loss. “We’ve got to do a heck of a lot better there.”
Indiana’s turnover rate (23.7 percent) was its second-highest of the entire season, topped only by … Game 1 of these NBA Finals. Unlike that series opener, though, Tyrese Haliburton was hampered by a calf strain on Monday night and unable to conjure the same crunch-time magic. Oklahoma City’s defense made sure of it for every second of Haliburton’s 34 minutes, strapping him into a seat belt named Lu Dort and holding him to a grand total of zero made baskets and four points. When Dort wasn’t available (he picked up two quick fouls and played only 12 minutes in the first half), Alex Caruso, Williams, and Cason Wallace allowed no breathing room.
It’s hard to even blame Haliburton for looking like he did against such collective determination and aggressiveness. For the entire season, the Thunder have disrupted their opponents’ rhythm—fumigating pet plays, walling off the paint, and bothering every 3-pointer they were seemingly content to surrender—with a rotation that could literally make up its own All-Defensive team. “We were very disruptive defensively,” said Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who chipped in four blocks and two steals. “It always starts defensively for us.”
In their biggest game of the season, pretty much every Thunder defender provided nonstop agitation. The Pacers were so outside their comfort zone that they generated only five corner 3s—fewer than half of what they averaged in the first four games of the series. They were able to take advantage of some second-chance opportunities and a more conservative Thunder approach in the second half—i.e., less help off the perimeter—with T.J. McConnell’s paint leaner (now a spiritual stepson of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s sky hook and Hakeem Olajuwon’s Dream Shake, as far as “unguardable signature moves that are iconic” go) and Pascal Siakam’s relentless drives to the basket helping keep the offense afloat.
But Indiana still finished a putrid 23-for-46 in the paint, where Chet Holmgren, Isaiah Hartenstein, and Gilgeous-Alexander combined to block eight shots. There was a stretch near the end of the first half when Oklahoma City covered the rim with a lid and dared the Pacers to break through. Spoiler: they could not.
Indiana’s offensive rating in the first half was 93.8. It’s nearly impossible to overcome a number that low, on the road, with your best player not 100 percent, against a defense that can seemingly close the curtains whenever it wants to by switching every screen:
Defense wins championships, but you know what else really helps? A 24-year-old All-Star playing one of the best games of his career in the biggest game of his life. Building off a sublime Game 4 that was packed with grit and force, Williams was even more spectacular in the series’ most pivotal game. OKC’s second-best player finished with 40 points, six rebounds, four assists, and one turnover in 35 minutes. He took 12 free throws, was 8-for-11 in the restricted area, and posted a 66.1 true shooting percentage with a game-high 33.7 usage rate. Not bad for just the 31st playoff game of his career.
“Honestly, it feels so much different than a regular-season game,” Williams said. “I didn’t even really notice that I had it going. I was just playing so hard that everything else in the game seems second to what’s going on. That’s how it feels, so I wouldn’t even say I was in a flow state. I was kind of absorbed in the game so much that I’m not really thinking about how many points I have or how many times I’ve scored. I’m just into the game.”
Dub Is Winning
Dub moved seamlessly without the ball (three of his first four baskets were assisted dunks or layups), finished through contact, sparked at least one pick-six touchdown, played magnificently off of SGA, refused to concede anything in transition, and got downhill as he pleased against Indiana’s dropping bigs (poor Tony Bradley):
“He was really gutsy tonight,” Gilgeous-Alexander said of Williams. “He stepped into big plays. Felt like every time we needed a shot, he made it. He wasn’t afraid. He was fearless tonight. Whether they went in or didn’t, obviously tonight they went in more than [they] didn’t. He stepped up to the plate with confidence, for sure.”
There’s something to be said about the way Oklahoma City won this game. It allowed its fourth-highest offensive rebound rate of the season (against a team that prefers not to chase its own misses) and committed 24 fouls. None of that mattered, though, because all of those aforementioned turnovers allowed the Thunder to attempt 12 more shots than Indiana, while Gilgeous-Alexander followed up his zero-assist Game 4 with 10 assists and 31 points. It was a good illustration of how the Thunder dominate, in a nutshell.
That doesn’t mean this series is over. Several of Indiana’s turnovers were completely unforced and, even if he isn’t 100 percent, it’s hard to envision Haliburton not scoring a single point in the first 30 minutes of Game 6—as he did on Monday night—in front of a ravenous home crowd. The Pacers have played the Thunder well in Indianapolis and have already cemented themselves as one of the most resilient teams in recent memory. But the Thunder can taste the title. And, if Williams has another offensive outburst bolstered by a defense that refuses to surrender an inch, they just might win it on Thursday night.
