OKLAHOMA CITY – By the time Shai Gilgeous-Alexander put on his designer shades and made his way to the interview room, the shock had settled from his Oklahoma City Thunder team’s meltdown in the final minutes of their Western Conference semifinal series opener.
The Denver Nuggets rallied from a 14-point second-half deficit to hand the West’s top seed a 121-119 home loss in Monday’s Game 1. Oklahoma City committed a series of blunders to become the first team in a decade to lose a playoff game that it led by at least nine points in the final few minutes.
The silver lining to blowing a series opener at home, according to Gilgeous-Alexander, is that an Oklahoma City squad that cruised to a league-best 68 regular-season wins gets to see how it can handle adversity.
“It should be fun,” Gilgeous-Alexander said after the Thunder’s first loss this postseason. “We’re going to find out what we’re made of, what we’re really made of. Nobody expected it to be smooth sailing this whole journey. No journey in life is, and we know that. Today’s a bump in a road — unexpected. No one expects to lose, especially that way, but it’s the game of life. So it’s about how you respond to getting knocked down.”
Denver outscored Oklahoma City by a 19-6 margin after Gilgeous-Alexander’s 3-pointer with 4:31 remaining stretched the Thunder’s lead to double digits for the final time. Nuggets center Nikola Jokic scored 11 of his game-high 42 points in that span to keep Denver within striking distance.
Gilgeous-Alexander’s dunk with 11.0 seconds remaining, the final of his 33 points, was the Thunder’s only field goal in the final three minutes.
“I can do a better job of getting us organized and getting us quality looks,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “Then down the other end, I thought some of the fouls that put ’em on the line without using clock obviously helped them get back into it. So it was both ends, it was everybody. We’re all in it together. We need to execute better. I need to coach better. They need to execute the plan better, and we just need to be a better team in Game 2.”
The Thunder’s strategy of fouling while protecting a three-point lead in the final 15 seconds backfired. Oklahoma City’s Alex Caruso twice took quick fouls — burning a total of only 1.9 seconds after a pair of Gilgeous-Alexander free throws and his dunk — allowing Denver to extend the game.
“I could probably just run some more time off the clock, and I probably need to do a better job of that,” said Caruso, who had an otherwise outstanding performance with 20 points, six assists, five steals and two blocks. “That’s probably what I’ll beat myself up about the most with that last scenario. But you don’t want to be in that position. … The game wasn’t won and lost in the last 15 seconds. We had plenty of opportunities before that to win the game.”
Oklahoma City also had a chance to at least assure that it wouldn’t lose in regulation when big man Chet Holmgren went to the line with 9.1 seconds remaining. But he missed both free throws, leaving the door wide open for the Nuggets to claim their first lead since the first quarter.
Seconds later, Denver’s Aaron Gordon drilled an above-the-break 3 off an transition assist from Russell Westbrook. A three-quarters court heave by Oklahoma City’s Jalen Williams was errant, setting off a wild celebration by the Nuggets in front of a stunned sellout crowd at the Paycom Center.
“It’s the playoffs. We have to embrace it,” Daigneault said. “We have to embrace the struggle of the playoffs. We have to embrace the adversity of the playoffs. The playoffs are a mountain to climb, so it’s not going to be easy for anybody.”
Source: espn.com