Thunder proved their inevitability extends beyond SGA: ‘They know how to win’ - The Athletic
OKLAHOMA CITY — Inevitability, for the Oklahoma City Thunder, once required their MVP. That signature avalanche of a run. That series of expected blows that creates distance between the defending champs and their opposition. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is meant to be in the middle of it. So it must be understood how deflating Thursday’s third quarter felt for the Los Angeles Lakers. When a band of players hoping to hold down the fort without Gilgeous-Alexander — who picked up his fourth foul after just 18 minutes — took the roof off instead. Jared McCain and Ajay Mitchell ran devastating offenses. Jaylin Williams nearly entered the astral plane, his four-point play appearing like an out-of-body experience. Chet Holmgren excitedly beat Williams on the chest until it bruised. From his seat on the floor after the whistle, Williams saw his four surrounding teammates react in synchronization, like unmasked Jabbawockeez. Their jaws unlatched. Their roars unleashed, their lungs emptied. They were riffing without their MVP-caliber organizer. If the net rating wasn’t enough, if the weaponization of deep bench players seemed at all fluky or purely predicated on the regular season, then take the third quarter as a public service announcement. For nearly 11 minutes, virtually everyone not named SGA declared themselves capable. “Full confidence in those guys,” said Gilgeous-Alexander, who tallied a modest 22 points in the Thunder’s 125-107 Game 2 win. “They know how to win basketball games. They’ve proven that, no matter who’s on the floor now, they know how to get the job done, and they just did it again.” The Thunder trailed 65-61 when he exited with 10:34 remaining in the third. He didn’t play the remainder of the quarter. He didn’t need to. From 8:15 to 1:51, OKC went on a 25-7 run. No SGA, no Jalen Williams. Mitchell’s ballhandling responsibilities elevated beyond a secondary need. He caulked star-fitted cracks. In 10 third-quarter minutes, he didn’t morph into a check-down quarterback. His possessions didn’t suggest a preference for safety. He relentlessly barreled toward the rim, tallying seven points and three assists, along with six free throw attempts. The pressure on the paint, the order in that quarter, began with him getting downhill. His touch was the last thing the Lakers saw on drives. His fingerprints were on a telling run. “He played three years in college,” Holmgren said of the former UC Santa Barbara guard, “and didn’t play a single minute with Shai.” Mitchell and McCain didn’t discover something on Thursday. They built upon a dormant connection. McCain, who arrived via the Philadelphia 76ers at February’s trade deadline, entered this series aware of the volatility of his minutes. That he could just as well swing a quarter as he could watch it from the bench. For two consecutive games, he and Mitchell delivered the offensive stretch that produced OKC’s biggest lead of the night. That momentum washes over McCain. When his deep 3-pointers invoke a frenzy that shatters ear drums, he senses the opposing shoulders shrug. He’s hit four 3s in each of the first two games in these Western Conference semifinals. Thursday felt like his indoctrination as a true cog in an undeniable machine. “Every time I see him get a touch,” Holmgren said, “I think it’s going in. I know it’s going up. At this point, I know it’s going in, too. As he should.” McCain finished with 18 points Thursday, just two fewer than the entire Lakers bench. That score, through two games, sits much closer: L.A.’s reserves with 35, McCain 30. He’s more than doubled the 12 points he scored in four first-round games against the Phoenix Suns. He’s also twisted the dagger deeper into the wound created by his Philadelphia departure. Thursday marked the first time the Thunder trailed at halftime in this postseason, the first time a team truly got in OKC’s grill. SGA, obsessively doubled and thrust into foul trouble less than two minutes into the second half, couldn’t save them. Nothing about McCain’s short-lived time with the team told him it couldn’t be him. “If you have a skeptical or cynical locker room, then the first time a guy dribbles off his foot, everybody’s rolling their eyes,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said the afternoon before Game 2. “That has a huge impact on the confidence of a young player. We don’t have that at all.” Cason Wallace, a plus-14 in the third quarter, spent much of the period beside them. His disruption, his sturdiness, allowed OKC to get greedy. Holmgren reached eight points in 10 minutes. Isaiah Hartenstein held down the rim in a game where the Lakers repeatedly tried him vertically. Alex Caruso let his bank of LeBron James data inform his defensive swipes and chatter. The Lakers didn’t die then. Another push followed in the fourth, which saw them cut the deficit to five. But without the momentum sourced by the non-SGA minutes of the third quarter, the gall behind that stretch, there’d be no lead to threaten. No composure to break. In nearly 33 minutes with Gilgeous-Alexander off the floor in this series, the Thunder are a plus-21. The Lakers have exhausted resources to minimize him through two games. Such excessive coverages, concerted efforts to get the ball out of his hands immediately, come with a cost. The team the Lakers are challenging to beat in four-on-three scenarios has spent the past couple seasons learning SGA’s gravity in these scenarios. They’ve got platoon swaps of four-man units that can probe and pick at these coverages. They’ve got players near the end of the bench who can swing games. Their dedication to cage SGA hasn’t granted solutions to Mitchell’s poise. To Holmgren’s presence. To Caruso’s irritation. To McCain’s inferno. There is no algorithm or coverage that covers inevitability.
Source: The New York Times