OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — When the Oklahoma City Thunder get hit, they tend to hit back. Immediately, too.
Everybody knows what probably is coming in Game 2 of the NBA Finals on Sunday night. The Thunder, down 1-0 in the series with the Indiana Pacers, will be raring to go. That’s been their way all season; the Thunder are 17-2, including the NBA Cup final loss, in the next game after a defeat — with those 17 wins coming by an average of 17.5 points.
The thing is, the Thunder say that’s the way they play after wins as well.
“That’s the trick,” coach Mark Daigneault said Saturday. “You don’t want to be reactive to the last game because then you can be too high after wins, you can be too low after losses. We just get ourselves to neutral. Understand every game is different, every game is unwritten. You go out there, the ball goes up in the air, and the team that competes better on that night wins.”
As such, Oklahoma City will try to be better Sunday. And so will Indiana.
There was much for both teams to clean up after Game 1. For the Pacers, it was too many turnovers. For the Thunder, it was not closing out a game that it led by 15 with less than 10 minutes remaining.
“Look, everybody’s pattern after a loss is to come more aggressively. … Their whole team is going to be even more aggressive defensively,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. “The challenge for us is to be able to match that.”
Thunder guard and NBA MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander — who led all scorers with 38 points in Game 1, his finals debut — said he doesn’t hang on to games for too long, even that one. He watches film, learns the lessons and moves on.
He doesn’t expect to deviate from that plan for Game 2.
“I take what I need to take from it, and we do it as a group,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “After that, I let it go because the lessons are learned. There’s nothing else you can do.”
Chasing history
The Pacers have an opportunity at something very rare: going up 2-0 in the finals by taking the first two games on the road.
It’s happened only twice in finals history: Chicago did it in 1993 against Phoenix and Houston did it in 1995 against Seattle. Both the Bulls and the Rockets went on to win the NBA title in those seasons.
“I think winning on the road is hard,” said Pacers guard Tyrese Haliburton, who had the game-winning shot in Game 1 with 0.3 seconds left. “Winning an NBA game is hard, and especially a playoff game, and let alone a finals game, right? It’s not easy. You’re just trying to be as present as you can.”
The stakes
The Thunder know their odds of winning this title take a serious dive if they lose Game 2 and head to Indianapolis trailing the series 2-0.
So, technically, Sunday isn’t a must-win game. There’s a Game 3 on Wednesday no matter what and a Game 4 on Friday no matter what.
But nobody needs to tell OKC the stakes right now.
“Game 1 was a must-win and we didn’t win. Now we flip to Game 2 and it’s a must-win again,” Thunder forward Chet Holmgren said. “We’ve been in must-win situations in this playoff run, and honestly in the playoffs, every game feels like a must-win. You’re not saving anything in the tank for any games down the line.”
SGA, 3K
Assuming he scores in Game 2 — obviously, a reasonable assumption — Gilgeous-Alexander will join a new club.
The MVP is just two points shy of reaching the 3,000-point mark for the season, including playoffs. (If the NBA Cup final game counted, which it doesn’t, he’d already be over 3,000 for the season.)
This will be the 25th time a player has scored 3,000 in a season; Gilgeous-Alexander will be the 12th person to do it. Michael Jordan did it 10 times, Wilt Chamberlain did it five times and nine other players — Bob McAdoo, Elgin Baylor, James Harden, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Kevin Durant, Kobe Bryant, Luka Doncic, Rick Barry and Shaquille O’Neal — did it once.
___
AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/NBA
