The Oklahoma City Thunder are coming off their worst offensive performance of the entire season. In Game 6 of the NBA Finals on Thursday, they scored an anemic 82.7 points per 100 possessions in non-garbage-time minutes (and just 73.4 per 100 in the halfcourt), according to Cleaning The Glass. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the league’s MVP, committed eight of the Thunder’s 16 turnovers in the first three quarters. Heading into the fourth, Oklahoma City had only six assists, had missed 17 of its 20 3-point attempts and was down by 30 points.
If the Thunder beat the Indiana Pacers and Gilgeous-Alexander hoists the Larry O’Brien Trophy on Sunday, that beatdown will be forgotten. Ahead of Game 7, though, it’s not clear whether their offensive issues were ominous or anomalous. On the one hand, Indiana cannot count on Oklahoma City looking that indecisive or shooting that poorly with the title on the line. On the other, Game 6 was far from the first time during these playoffs — or even this series — that the Thunder failed to find any semblance of rhythm.
“I’m not pointing out anything that’s not obvious: Our defense has been more consistent, in these playoffs especially, than our offense has,” Oklahoma City coach Mark Daigneault told reporters Saturday. “I think generally, offense is harder in the playoffs for everybody. The same is true for Indiana in this series. Their offense is not where it was in the regular season or even earlier in the playoffs. I think it’s just harder to score when you play a team over and over and over again. We’ve got to continue to try to find solutions with what they are doing.”
What the Pacers are doing changed on Thursday. Instead of pressuring Gilgeous-Alexander the full length of the court, they picked him up lower and double-teamed him more aggressively. Much like the Minnesota Timberwolves did three games into the Western Conference finals, Indiana decided to give him less of a runway coming off pick-and-rolls.
“We haven’t seen that from them this series,” Thunder guard Cason Wallace said, “and it startled us a little bit. But we’ve seen it. We’re going to fix it.”
The Pacers were also more willing to switch Pascal Siakam and T.J. McConnell onto Gilgeous-Alexander. Particularly in the latter scenario, the Pacers helped off Oklahoma City’s perimeter players aggressively to take away Gilgeous-Alexander’s driving lanes. The way they were shrinking the floor and flying around, they looked a lot like the Thunder defensively.
“They did a really good job of being in the shell spots,” Oklahoma City wing Isaiah Joe said. “They were tight in their loads and they guarded well with all five players. They scrambled to the best of their ability. But I think it started with [them being] tight in the paint and trying to take that away first and make us play on the outside.”
Gilgeous-Alexander is capable of scoring in traffic and making contested jumpers. Too often, though, he forced the issue instead of getting off of the ball. This played into Indiana’s hands.
For most of the series, the Thunder have struggled to generate ball movement in the halfcourt. This is not all on Gilgeous-Alexander. With better spacing and more timely cuts, his reads would be simpler. Oklahoma City wing Aaron Wiggins said the offense was “congested” in Game 6, and the team needs to better at collectively “being available for each other, making the game easy for each other.” Wiggins missed the shot, but look at him relocate for an open 3 after a double-team against Gilgeous-Alexander and a perfectly timed cut by Jalen Williams at the end of the third quarter:
About five minutes before that, OKC ran a set play to free Joe for a 3. If the offense is in the mud again early in Game 7, Daigneault might need to call on Wiggins and/or Joe for more minutes than usual, if only to give the team a better chance of generating 3-point attempts.
Regardless of who is on the floor and how the Pacers defend them, the Thunder can’t afford to get stagnant on Sunday. Indiana wants them to hesitate, to overthink and to slow down. Designed plays can be a part of the solution, but Oklahoma City is at its best when it is flowing freely from one action to another and putting the defense on its heels.
“You certainly want to learn the lessons, get the game plan into the game, but not at the expense of aggressiveness, confidence, instincts,” Daigneault said. “I think that has been a strength of ours this season. We certainly have to lean on that. We have to understand the work is done and we have to trust the work. The muscle is built. We have to flex that muscle. That’s what [Game 7] will come down to for us.”
When the Thunder force turnovers and find easy buckets in transition, their halfcourt offense tends to loosen up. When they turn the ball over themselves, Indiana tends to look like the team of destiny. With the exception of the opener, in which the Pacers overcame an incredibly sloppy start to steal a last-second victory, the team that has committed fewer live-ball turnovers has won every game in the Finals.
Both Gilgeous-Alexander and Indiana star Tyrese Haliburton talked about controlling the controllables on Saturday, but this series is a reminder that nothing — ball security, rebounding, even energy and intensity — is truly “controllable” in the way that it’s usually implied. These two teams “kind of rely on the same stuff for their success,” Daigneault said, and they’re both doing everything in their power to play a clean game on one end and create chaos on the other.
Maybe OKC will target Haliburton more in pick-and-roll situations, given that he’s playing on a strained calf. Maybe it will start Alex Caruso for the first time in the series, and maybe it will try to pace-and-space it up by playing without a center for a significant stretch. The offensive adjustments will be particular to this one game, with the highest stakes there are in the sport, but the battle will be the same one the Thunder have been fighting all series: Can they turn defense into offense, limit Indiana’s runs and be the faster, more connected team, or will it be the other way around?
“It’s a contest of wills,” Daigneault said.