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Tim MacMahon
OKLAHOMA CITY — For better or worse, the Oklahoma City Thunder had an eerily familiar feeling when the final buzzer sounded Thursday night.
The Indiana Pacers had captured Game 1 of the NBA Finals, taking their first lead of the night on Tyrese Haliburton‘s 21-foot pull-up jumper with 0.3 seconds remaining. The Thunder blew a 15-point lead in the fourth quarter of their 111-110 home loss.
It was only Oklahoma City’s second home loss of this postseason, and it unfolded in very similar fashion to the Thunder’s previous defeat at the Paycom Center. In that instance, the Denver Nuggets rallied from a 13-point deficit midway through the fourth quarter to win the Western Conference semifinals series opener, taking the lead on Aaron Gordon’s 3-pointer with 2.8 seconds remaining.
“Well, it sucks,” Thunder forward Jalen Williams said, summarizing the sting of letting the Finals opener slip away. “But we have been here before.”
Oklahoma City, which has the second-youngest Finals roster in NBA history, can point to its collapse against the Nuggets as proof that this team can bounce back from an excruciating series-opening setback. The Thunder responded by beating the Nuggets by 43 points in Game 2 and won the series in seven games.
“How you lose doesn’t really matter,” said Thunder superstar Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, whose 38 points were the third most in a Finals debut, according to ESPN Research. “Obviously it sucks — last-second shot, the energy in the arena and stuff like that. But we lost at the end of the day. We lost Game 1.
“We’ve lost Game 1 before. On the other side of that, we came out a better team. That’s our goal.”
The Thunder are 4-0 after losses during this playoff run, winning the next game by an average of 20.5 points. Oklahoma City lost consecutive games only twice during its 68-win regular season.
Oklahoma City coach Mark Daigneault challenged his team to “get ourselves to zero,” which is Thunder jargon for not allowing the emotion of a game to linger, win or lose.
“The playoffs take you to the limit,” Daigneault said. “They put your back against the wall — in games, in series. If you make it this far, you have to endure to do that. It gives you rich experiences that you can draw on. The biggest experience we’ve had is understanding that every game’s new game. The most important game in the series is always the next one, regardless of the outcome. We would’ve liked to win tonight, but tonight was a starting point, not an end point.”
The Thunder knew all about the Pacers’ comeback prowess before falling victim to it in Game 1.
This is the fifth time this postseason that Indiana rallied from a deficit of at least 15 points to win. That’s the most by any team in a playoff run since at least 1998, according to ESPN Research.
“You tip your hat to them,” Daigneault said. “They made plays. They’ve done it all playoffs. This is part of their identity. They have a lot of belief. They never think they’re out of it, so they play with great confidence even when their back’s against the wall. They proved that tonight.”
Thursday’s game also marked a continuation of one of the most spectacular individual clutch runs in NBA history. Haliburton sank his fourth game-tying or go-ahead bucket in the final five seconds of a game during these playoffs. He hit this shot over Oklahoma City guard Cason Wallace, who has earned a reputation as an elite on-ball defender.
“You don’t want to live and die with the best player on the other team taking a game-winner with a couple seconds left,” said Alex Caruso, the oldest player on the Oklahoma City roster and the only one who has won an NBA championship. “You want to try to control the game coming down so it doesn’t fall into that.”
The Thunder failed to do that in the Finals opener.
Oklahoma City’s top-ranked defense dominated the first half, holding the Pacers to 45 points while forcing 20 turnovers. However, the Thunder converted those turnovers into only nine points, allowing Indiana to remain within striking distance.
Indiana found an offensive comfort zone after halftime. The Pacers protected the ball much better, committing only five turnovers in the second half, when they scored 66 points while shooting 51.1% from the floor, including 10-of-20 from 3-point range.
But the Thunder still had ample opportunity to close out the game. Oklahoma City missed its final three shots from the floor after the Pacers made it a one-possession game. That included a couple of errant shots by Gilgeous-Alexander — a missed layup in traffic with 1:07 remaining and a midrange fadeaway that didn’t fall one possession before Haliburton’s game-winner.
“The series isn’t first to one; it’s first to four,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “We have four more games to get; they have three. That’s just where we are. We got to understand that and we got to get to four before they get to three if we want to win the NBA championship.
“It’s that simple. It’s not rocket science. We lost Game 1. We have to be better.”