The shooting was so bad for both teams, especially in the first half, it looked like the Rocky Horror Picture Show. The Western Conference Semifinal matchup between the No. 1 seeded Oklahoma City Thunder and the No. 4 seeded Denver Nuggets is now a best-of-three affair.
The Thunder leveled the series at two games apiece with a highly contested 92-87 victory in Sunday’s Game 4 at Ball Arena. The defensive struggle, where points were difficult to come by, featured a number of ebbs and flows, but the road team used a powerful fourth quarter to pull out the W.
The presumptive MVP, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, played like a man on a mission when he needed to, doing a little bit of everything on both ends of the court, with 25 points, six rebounds, six assists and two steals, while members of his supporting cast, Cason Wallace, Aaron Wiggins and Alex Caruso provided major contributions off the bench. In fact, Gilgeous-Alexander was the only Thunder starter to put up more than 10 points, but they still had gas in their tank because of their defensive prowess, which has been their calling card and lifeline all year long.
“Great readiness by them,” Thunder head coach Mark Daigneault said of Wallace and Wiggins’ contributions. “They didn’t play as many minutes the other night, so they had fresh legs and brought great energy to the game.”
It was just another day at the office for Nikola Jokic, collecting yet another double-double with a game-high 27 points, 13 rebounds and four steals, but it was not enough to get his team over the top and take a 3-1 lead.
The Nuggets came into Sunday’s contest with the momentum on their side and series lead, but this was a swing game in every sense of the word for both teams. They had a chance to put the Western Conference’s top seed on life support and the brink of elimination, while the Thunder could take back home-court advantage and prove their Game 2 blowout win was not a fluke and more typical of this matchup than narrow losses in Games 1 and 3.
Maybe both sides felt the intense pressure of such high stakes in the early going because the first quarter was downright ugly, and that is being kind.
Embed from Getty ImagesAdelman would not go so far as to say the NBA erred with the early tip-off, either.
“I don’t want to say that,” Adelman said. “I will say that both teams were very tired coming off an unbelievably physical overtime battle late Friday night. … I mean, both of us had super tired legs, so it was about who’s going to make that final run.”
The two teams combined to score a sparse 25 points and shoot 1-of-25 from 3-point range in those forgettable opening 12 minutes as the Nuggets did not even reach double digits with eight. The Thunders’ lockdown defense deserves a boatload of credit as they pressured ball-handlers on the perimeter, darted into passing lanes, protected the paint and the rim and swarmed Jokic like killer bees.
It could only get better from there since the 25 combined points tied for the fewest in a first quarter in playoff history. And it did, with Christian Braun, with his mother Lisa in the stands rooting him on, providing secondary scoring and Jokic playing with more assertiveness, including when he drained a last-second three to cut the halftime deficit to six, 42-36, which was his first three in two games.
The jumpers finally started to fall for the Nuggets to start the second half, and threes from Braun, Jamal Murray and Aaron Gordon gave them the lead. By the time Russell Westbrook buried one and then shut down Gilgeous-Alexander in the final minute of the third before they took a six-point lead, 69-63, into the fourth, it was clear the terrible first quarter was firmly behind them.
The Thunder refused to roll over and die, and their depth came up big for them in the fourth when Wallace and Wiggins hit clutch three-pointers as Caruso played stifling defense to retake the lead and set the stage for a dramatic finish.
“I really thought the difference in the game was their bench kind of lit a fuse for them,” Nuggets interim coach David Adelman said. “They made 3s … pretty incredible in a game where the two teams shoot 21 of 86 from 3.”
Ultimately, Gilgeous-Alexander was the difference-maker in that finish.
He hit a floater from midrange, assisted on a crucial Jalen Williams basket, and hit another important driving layup in the final minutes to create the separation that the Thunder could not get for much of the contest.
Not to mince words but the Thunder simply do not have the Nuggets playoff pedigree, but Daigneault said his team is gaining that much-needed experience by the day.
“Every time you take punches, and you get back up, you get stronger,” he said. “That’s what we’re preaching to our team. We lost a tough one the other night in overtime. We stood back up today.”
As a result, the Western Conference’s top seed now has home-court advantage and momentum back on their side heading into Tuesday’s all-important Game 5.
