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MINNEAPOLIS — With the NBA’s Most Valuable Player award already in tow, and a pivotal Game 4 of the Western Conference finals on the docket, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander didn’t overreact to the importance of it all.
A Game 3 in which he looked like anything but an MVP could have turned into a significant speed bump for him and the Oklahoma City Thunder. Instead, on Sunday, the day after SGA and his teammates suffered their worst loss of the year, there was a continuation of normalcy. The film session was calm, if not pointed. Owning a performance in which the Minnesota Timberwolves beat OKC by 40 points proved easy for Gilgeous-Alexander and the rest of the Thunder roster.
SGA understood that a better performance on Monday night didn’t mean forcing the action or forcing shots. It meant going through a regular routine. It meant being meticulous in preparation for what proved to be a 128-126 series-turning win over the Timberwolves at Target Center. It meant staying calm amid chaos and doing the things that got him that MVP trophy in the first place.
“For me? I wanted to get lost in the competition,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “That’s what I think worked for me tonight. I think collectively, we all did a good job of staying in the moment. We all had a bad taste in our mouth from last game. So I think we all did a good job of controlling what we were able to control. We could have been a bit better for sure. It definitely wasn’t perfect. But we did a good job of giving ourselves a chance to get a win.”
The Thunder are one win away from an NBA Finals appearance, and a young roster is growing up before our eyes. To get to this point, the Thunder had to survive seven games of haymakers from Nikola Jokić and the Denver Nuggets. To get to this point, the Thunder had to survive Monday night’s instant classic with a Timberwolves team that, for large stretches of the game, refused to miss shots.
But amid the chaos, Gilgeous-Alexander turned in perhaps the best playoff performance of his career — a 40-point, 10-assist and nine-rebound masterpiece. It was the kind of performance that defines an MVP. It was the kind of performance that cements a guy as one of the best of the best. Gilgeous-Alexander consistently came through with big shots and big plays time and again, with an entire building rooting against him.
Jalen Williams dropped 34 points of his own, and Chet Holmgren went for 21 points, seven rebounds and three big blocked shots, going a long way toward ensuring the Thunder walked away with a road split and the 3-1 series lead. The Thunder controlled the scoreboard much of the way. There were six lead changes and two ties. But none of those lead changes came beyond the first quarter, and only one tie, 79-79, came in the second half.
The Timberwolves threw punch after punch. But Oklahoma City answered all of them. After Saturday night’s Game 3 blowout, Oklahoma City wanted to make sure it played like the team that won 68 games in the regular season. Anything less than that probably would have resulted in a 2-2 series tie heading back to OKC.
“Tonight was just a brawl from the jump,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “I thought we did a good job of leveling up. I thought Minnesota played with the same level of physicality that they played with on Saturday night. The difference is that we rose up tonight and we matched that physicality. Their role players deserve a lot of credit. Their shotmaking was ridiculous. We had to withstand a lot of runs. So for us to do that and overcome it on the road was a great team win.”
Gilgeous-Alexander took over the scintillating game in its biggest moments. His third-quarter buzzer-beater off the glass gave the Thunder a 90-85 lead and stopped a Minnesota run. He made 12 of his 14 free-throw attempts, many of them coming in the final three minutes as the Timberwolves lingered within a single possession. Whenever the Thunder needed a big shot, or a big play, Gilgeous-Alexander provided it.
Gilgeous-Alexander became the fifth player in NBA history with a 40-10-9 game in a conference finals. Beyond the statistics, he controlled almost every possession. On Saturday, Minnesota defended him pretty well. The Wolves shut off driving lanes. They kept him from getting into a rhythm.
On Monday, what Gilgeous-Alexander did was special in the mastery of it. He got to any spot on the floor whenever he wanted, which is difficult to do in a playoff setting. He made the correct reads on almost every possession. Of his 10 assists, eight of them went for 3-pointers. This includes his pass in the final five minutes that went between the legs of Jaden McDaniels for a Williams 3-pointer that made the score 116-109.
In Game 4, SGA made sure he was the best player on the floor and the best player in the series. He got plenty of help from Williams, Holmgren and a defense that got stops when needed. But it was a performance befitting of his MVP trophy and a performance that truly announced him worthy of being called one of the best players in the world.
“I thought we did a good job of continuously moving the scoreboard,” Daigneault said. “We especially did that late in the game, when there were situations down the stretch where it was a possession game. I thought the guys did a great job, taking it a possession at a time.”
In many ways, this was another step for a young Thunder team. And it was another test that they passed. This is the fourth game of this playoff run in which Oklahoma City faced significant pressure to win. The Thunder have won all four of those games.
What’s most encouraging is that they have won in different ways. In Game 4 of the second round against Denver, down 2-1 in the series, OKC rallied from an eight-point deficit in the fourth quarter. In Game 5 against the Nuggets, the Thunder found themselves down 80-68 late in the third quarter and won the game with a fourth-quarter blitz. In Game 7 of that series, OKC blew Denver out.
The resiliency OKC has shown has gone a long way towards shaping the group. The Thunder have been a great regular-season team for two years. This is the first time they’ve also become a great playoff team. Those lessons learned have the Thunder one win away from their first finals appearance since the 2012 team that lost to LeBron James and the Miami Heat in five games.
“The journey hasn’t been easy, and it’s not meant to be easy,” Williams said. “These are the experiences that will make us better. I think we did a good job of talking each other through each play and through everything that we wanted to accomplish. That’s not to say that we weren’t going to make some mistakes. I think we need to be better at defensive rebounding, and not allowing second chances. But, overall, I think our mindset tonight was great, in terms of just being super aware of what we were trying to control the whole game.”
Tony Jones is a Staff Writer at The Athletic covering the Utah Jazz and the NBA. A native of the East Coast and a journalism brat as a child, he has an addiction to hip-hop music and pickup basketball, and his Twitter page has been used for occasional debates concerning Biggie and Tupac. Follow Tony on Twitter @Tjonesonthenba
