OKLAHOMA CITY — They had been beat up, battered and embarrassed on their home floor, and as the Oklahoma City Thunder prepared for a rematch with the Los Angeles Lakers on Tuesday, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander delivered to the team a blunt message: Never again. The Thunder had been humiliated on Sunday, carved up by Luka Doncic, buried under an avalanche of threes from Dorian Finney-Smith, Gabe Vincent and Austin Reaves. LA earned that win but, said Gilgeous-Alexander, “you get beat up in the hood and you spin back the next day, you can't get beat up again. It's not an option.”
“Tonight was going to be a fight,” Gilgeous-Alexander said on his walk out of Paycom Center. “We had to, I guess you could say, get our lick back.”
The story coming out of Oklahoma City’s 136–120 victory will be Doncic’s fourth quarter ejection, a questionable whistle that left Lakers officials fuming. No matter. For the Thunder, it goes in the win column just the same. Gilgeous-Alexander was magnificent, racking up 42 points; 10 in the fourth quarter. He led the team in assists and out-rebounded everyone but Isaiah Hartenstein. He was 5 for 9 from three-point range and 9 for 11 from the free throw line. On a night Oklahoma City needed it, the presumptive MVP played like one.
“His confidence,” marveled Thunder coach Mark Daigneault, “is unwavering.”
Even as Oklahoma City ran away with the Western Conference, skeptics asked, were the Thunder really ready? Skilled guards and a 10-deep rotation is nice in the regular season. But the playoffs call for physicality, discipline and experience. Oklahoma City was the youngest team in the NBA to start the season and is the second-youngest team ever to finish first in the West. They flamed out in the second-round last year. A growing number of critics believe this year they will do the same.
The Lakers offered ammunition to that attack on Sunday, eviscerating the NBA’s top-ranked defense. Doncic, who tormented the Thunder as a Maverick in the conference semifinals last season, picked up where he left off in a Los Angeles uniform. There was nothing fancy. Just high ball screens and brute force. Doncic had 30 on Sunday. It felt like 50.
To Gilgeous-Alexander, the loss was unsettling. So much had gone right during this Thunder season. They opened the year 30–5 and reached 50 wins before anyone else in the conference touched 40. Jalen Williams was an All-Star, Lu Dort again one of the league’s top defenders and the Hartenstein-Chet Holmgren frontcourt had solved Oklahoma City’s problems in the paint. Yet as the season wound down, complacency crept in. A trip to Houston last Friday ended with a 14-point loss. The Lakers did worse. Teams fighting for playoff positioning had an edge the Thunder had lost.
“It’s something we haven’t been used to,” says Gilgeous-Alexander. “But we knew the recipe. Be ourselves, get back to fundamentals and do what we do.”
They did that on Tuesday. The defense forced 18 turnovers. Offensively, the Thunder shot 50% from the floor. Los Angeles again started hot from the three-point line, connecting on nine of its first 12 from deep. This time, Oklahoma City didn’t fold. The Thunder trailed by one when Doncic was tossed with seven-and-a-half minutes to play. They went on a 29–12 run after, with Gilgeous-Alexander’s offense and Dort’s defense leading the way.
“I mean, those guys at this point, they're going to go down swinging,” said Daigneault. “They may fail, but they're not hiding. That's the mark of a great competitor. Great competitors fail, but they don't hide. And those guys don't hide.”
Across the organization, Oklahoma City knows it owes the Lakers a thank you. It’s impossible to stay focused when you wrap your conference up in mid-March, when the talk around you is dedicated more to MVPs and All-NBAs than playoff positioning. Eight teams have spent weeks jockeying for spots in the Eastern Conference. In the West, five are trying to avoid the play-in. Even Cleveland, which at one point had a Thunder-sized lead, has peaked over its shoulder at Boston.
Oklahoma City needed a reminder of how hard it is to win at the highest level. The Lakers have been one of the NBA’s best second-half stories, integrating Doncic on the fly, leaning on a scrappy defense to stay in games and Doncic and LeBron James to close them. On Tuesday, as I was asking Daigneault if he was grateful for opportunities like this late in the season, he nodded even before he answered.
“We're young, and one of the things about us is we can continue to get better if we continue to focus on getting better,” said Daigneault. “If we started coasting, that wouldn't have been great for us. And the string of opponents that we've had for the most part over the last two and a half, three weeks, it's been really good for us and has made us better.”
“That team [the Lakers] makes you better. If your help is, like, leaning in the wrong direction, they're going to make the right play, like nine out of 10 times. And so [Sunday’s] game, having to respond to that, having to make some adjustments, having to emotionally respond, that was good for us. These are all relevant things for us, and they help us improve, and that's what we continue to be focused on as we run through the end of the regular season.”
For Oklahoma City, expectations will be high when the playoffs begin next week. Age and inexperience won’t be excuses, and Gilgeous-Alexander wouldn’t have it any other way. He has seen a lot in six years with the Thunder, winning, losing, growing. There are no more points for progress. He has a team around him with the talent to win a championship and as he disappeared into the warm Midwestern night, Gilgeous-Alexander made it clear he is determined to make the most of it.
“We all have been through the experience,” says Gilgeous-Alexander. “We've been through a whole other season of basketball. We've had a whole other year to get better and we should be better prepared for the situation. Yeah, we should be ready. We are ready.”
This article was originally published on www.si.com as After Lakers Rout, Thunder Rediscover Their Fight Just in Time for Playoffs.
