On Sunday, the Oklahoma City Thunder didn’t look as deep as they used to.
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SAN ANTONIO — The Oklahoma City Thunder’s depth, magnificent throughout this season and this Western Conference finals series, had no magic to give Sunday night. Depth went from a helpful tool to dire.
Down Jalen Williams and Ajay Mitchell, two of the team’s most important creators, the Thunder delivered their flattest game of the postseason, a 103-82 Game 4 loss that evened their series with the San Antonio Spurs. A game that did not reek of desperation, but instead felt weighed down by the depth chart.
Yes, the Thunder played without a bevy of ballhandlers at different points during this season. But this is not Detroit in February. Or Utah in November. Can the Thunder conjure offense against such a harsh defense without the necessary initiators?
“We can,” coach Mark Daigneault said postgame. “I thought we left a lot to be desired on that end of the floor. We didn’t have the sharpness, force or precision necessary to crack them.”
After Mitchell’s prominence in the Los Angeles Lakers series, OKC entered the West finals with roughly 3 1/2 star talents on the roster. But the injuries, as well as Chet Holmgren’s disappearance, have made the life of back-to-back MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander a lot more difficult than anticipated.
Holmgren blossomed as a play finisher this season. He improved as a rebounder. He regained mobility after last year’s hip procedure. He rounded into stardom and made the All-Star team.
In this series, though, he’s been quiet. Overpowered on the glass. Irrelevant in the offense. Incapable of launching his jump shot. Down in volume and attempts, which might not have been such an issue previously with OKC’s numbers but undoubtedly is now.
In 26 minutes on Sunday, Holmgren tallied 10 points on eight shots. His mythical contemporary, Victor Wembanyama, produced back-breaking plays. He scrubbed the top of the backboard for several fast-break dunks. He vacuumed any trace of OKC momentum with a half-court heave to close the first half.
He took 22 shots, seven of them 3s, and scored 33 points. The Spurs dominated his minutes, a plus-29 on the night.
The Thunder bench, fresh off a 76-point display in Friday’s Game 3, scored only 18 before Sunday’s fourth quarter. Alex Caruso, heroic for much of this series, played just 14 minutes. Two nights earlier, Jared McCain and Jaylin Williams were gamebreakers. NBA Jam hot. The perfect two-man antidote to the starters’ deficiencies. They were necessary wrinkles for an ever-changing series.
In Game 4, they combined to shoot just 2 of 17.
It’s different when the offense is more dependent on their rhythm and when a defense is fixated on them. San Antonio generally stayed home on shooters after being blasted from deep in Game 3. Its collapses on SGA felt more timely and effective. That can happen when his two best complementary ballhandlers aren’t available to attack the rare gaps in San Antonio’s defense once he gets off the ball.
The Thunder offense was more predicated on the cohesion of five-man lineups than at any other point in the series. OKC had 17 turnovers on the night. Its display from deep, just 6 of 33, was its worst in these playoffs. The Thunder were outclassed in the paint, shooting 43.9 percent on those shots.
“A lot of these playoff games come down to physicality and force,” Daigneault said. “Your force has to be better than their physicality on defense, and your physicality has to be better than their force on offense. That’s kind of the trenches of a playoff game. … You’ve gotta give yourselves more bites at the apple.”
Perhaps the Thunder’s most rhythmic, unforced stint in the game came in the opening minutes, when center Isaiah Hartenstein walked into a handful of floaters. That the remainder of the period was spent struggling to get SGA the ball should’ve portended Game 4’s results.
Daigneault will need to sort through the team’s process versus the dramatic, outlier results. He’ll need to determine how much of the ugly was sustainable and how much can be ironed out in Tuesday’s Game 5.
The Spurs did not piece together a masterpiece in Game 4 themselves. They made just nine of their 33 3-point attempts on a night they scored 103 points. Among the tangible differences, though, was that they played with desperation.
“They played like their season was on the line, and we didn’t,” Holmgren said.
The task now, separate from availability, is to conjure urgency and competence. Efficiency and order. San Antonio’s defense will make that difficult. In the Thunder’s pair of wins, the fearlessness of their reserves challenged Wembanyama’s rim protection. In their losses, his impact is loud. Beyond him, Stephon Castle’s smothering of SGA remains consistent.
This series, not unlike most, is morphing from game to game. The odds, the circumstances, the personnel. Just days ago, OKC held an advantage after its most convincing and momentous win of the postseason.
On Sunday, it waved the white flag fairly early in the fourth quarter, its offense deteriorating well before then.
“The series is 2-2, basically 0-0, and it’s first to two games now,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “It’s not at the front of my mind, but it is a fact and the reality of where we are.”
Gilgeous-Alexander, experienced in the changing landscape of a series, remains undeterred. But his dwindling resources could soon become too overwhelming.
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Joel Lorenzi is a Staff Writer for The Athletic covering the NBA via Chicago. Prior to joining the Athletic, he covered the Oklahoma City Thunder for The Oklahoman for two seasons. He’s the recipient of the 2023 USBWA Rising Star Award. A graduate of the University of Missouri, Joel was born and raised on the West Side of Chicago. You can follow Joel on X @JoelXLorenzi.
