Now the highest-scoring team in NBA history, the Oklahoma City Thunder are the best team in the Finals. If they play like it in two of the next three games, the Pacers are cooked.
Even on a night when shots didn’t fall for Oklahoma City — the Thunder missed 13 of 16 from 3-point range — MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander bounced back and lived in the paint, at the free-throw line and shrugged off more physical body-blow defense from Indiana to even the series at 2-all.
“I think as a team you have to be ready to respond. Every game is different. You’ve just got to be able to respond when your back is against the wall, and that’s where we are right now,” Pacers guard Tyrese Haliburton said Friday night. “Obviously that’s a frustrating loss, but as a group, I still have a lot of confidence in ourselves as a group. We’ve got to be ready to go down there and fight for 48 minutes. It’s going to be a challenge, but this group has been resilient all year. I wouldn’t want to go to war with any other group. I’m really excited about Game 5.”
Indiana had no response to a four-guard lineup with Alex Caruso, who outdid bench counterpart T.J. McConnell with 20 points and five steals in Game 4. The Pacers led with three minutes to play, only to lose the accelerator at the worst possible time.
Pacers coach Rick Carlisle denied the team sputtered to an empty tank in the fourth quarter. But even with a small-ball lineup on the court, the Thunder looked like the team that wanted it just a bit more, winning the turnover battle, rebounding war and icing Indiana’s offense to just one assist in the final 12 minutes (20 in the first three quarters).
“An inability to come up with rebounds, an inability to get key stops was a part of it, and then we just got too stagnant. The ball was not being advanced quickly enough,” Carlisle assessed postgame. “We weren’t creating problems and we were up against the clock a lot. Things got very difficult.”
Jalen Williams had the hot hand in two games in Indianapolis and SGA was more like himself in Game 4. Williams said there was a feeling of having the entire season on the line when the team went to a timeout down 103-99 on Friday night.
“Three minutes is a lot of time. I think it was like 3:52 on the clock at that point in time. A lot of possessions left,” Williams said. “Our season is kind of on the line. Get easy looks and make them work for everything at the end. Everything up until that point didn’t matter. It’s just about trying to score, then it was really good getting stops.”
The question for Indiana becomes whether it can stop OKC’s momentum and regain the edge before it’s too late. Game 6 is Thursday night in Indy, and the Pacers don’t want to head back home in a must-win situation.
SGA scored 15 of the final 16 OKC points on Friday. Head coach Mark Daigneault anticipates further adjustments from the Pacers, but he’ll have his own counter as it becomes clearer that Oklahoma’s best is more than enough.
“We’ve got to get better now. That’s a really good team that has really found some solutions against us,” he said. “As we go home, we have to evaluate things on both ends of the floor.”
