Pacers couldn't keep other stars from FT line. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is another level
INDIANAPOLIS – Across the Eastern Conference semifinals and finals, Indiana earned its figurative master's degree in defending ball-dominant scoring guards in playoff settings.
Donovan Mitchell scored 33 or more points in all but one of five games against the Pacers for Cleveland. Jalen Brunson poured in 31-plus in four of six games for New York. Crucially, they attempted a combined 118 free throws, an average of between 10 and 11 per game.
The Pacers won both series, with neither going to Game 7, which tells a certain story. But doctoral-level work begins with Game 1 of the NBA Finals on Thursday in Oklahoma City, when Indiana will graduate from covering a succession of excellent guards to perhaps the very best in the NBA — recently crowned MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
'This guy was born to be great,' Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said Tuesday. 'You can just tell.'
If the Eastern Conference's side of the playoffs has been marked by Indiana's dramatic turns and Tyrese Haliburton's emergence as a full-blown, all-league star, the West has been defined by the Thunder's remarkable dominance. Oklahoma City won a league-best 68 games in the regular season and, while the Nuggets took them to seven games, Minnesota bowed out after five games, and Memphis got swept.
Carlisle himself suggested earlier this season the Thunder are 'the best team on the planet right now,' and Gilgeous-Alexander sits at the center of it all.
He finished the regular season comfortably the NBA's scoring champion, boasting by an order of magnitude the best plus-minus in the league. That paved the road for Gilgeous-Alexander to be named league MVP last month.
Reaching the Finals moved him into elite company as one of just six players to win the scoring title and MVP honors, and make the Finals in the same season. A lead guard keeping company with players like Steph Curry, Michael Jordan and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, running the show for his 68-win team has made these Finals easy to handicap for the bookmakers.
Oklahoma City is a heavy favorite.
'We know what the expectation is, who's gonna be the better team,' Carlisle said, 'but that's all part of it.'
Turning that expectation on its head starts with finding ways to limit Gilgeous-Alexander's impact. Which means learning from the successes and failures against Mitchell and Brunson, and leaning on players like Andrew Nembhard — who was excellent defending Brunson in the Pacers' Game 6 closeout Saturday — in individual situations.
The term 'free-throw merchant' has become easy shorthand for players quick and clever enough to force defenders into difficult decisions. Step lightly and allow easy baskets, or contest in tight situations and risk foul trouble, in a league whose stars admittedly spend a fair amount of time at the stripe.
No player has shot more free throws this postseason than Gilgeous-Alexander, who has taken 147 freebies in 16 games.
Nembhard said defending Gilgeous-Alexander means approaching the player conscious of his strengths and skills, but approaching the challenge of slowing down an opposing star with 'the same mentality.'
'It's a mixture of both,' Nembhard said Tuesday, 'playing hard and competing as well as strategy and understanding tendencies, and trying to figure guys out.'
The fouls thread that wove its way through the Knicks series isn't likely to disappear in the Finals, with Gilgeous-Alexander so difficult to contain and so adept at drawing fouls. Discipline, Nembhard said, will be critical, particularly in defending with legs and bodies, not hands.
'Keep your hands away,' he said. 'Keep your hands off them.'
No matter how disciplined Indiana's defense, nor well-executed its coverages, the Pacers know Gilgeous-Alexander will leave an imprint on the forthcoming series.
The question will be how much, and its answer — whether Indiana can contain Oklahoma City's budding superstar while the Pacers provide a platform for their own to thrive — might determine who wins this year's NBA title.
'He has a demeanor, he has a coolness, an attitude, he's unflappable. He knows who he is, and he has great belief in himself,' Carlisle said. 'From afar, as I've been watching this guy, it's pretty breathtaking.'
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