Thunder struck with a midrange shooting slump at the wrong time in NBA Finals

New York Times

18 hours ago

INDIANAPOLIS — How do the Oklahoma City Thunder surprisingly find themselves down 2-1 to the Indiana Pacers in the NBA Finals? I can give you two versions of the story, both of which are equally valid.
On one hand, there is the sheer fact of a more energetic Indiana side repeatedly outhustling, outscrapping, outrunning and ultimately outlasting Oklahoma City in Game 3. Call it 'energy' or 'playing with force' or whatever euphemism you want to use, but the tape doesn't lie. Rewatching the game on Thursday, the Thunder looked like a team on the last game of a four-games-in-five-nights trip. They played with little pace, were beaten to nearly every loose ball and completely ran out of gas at the end.
Advertisement
Of particular note was that the Thunder's best player was guilty on many of these fronts. Perhaps it's not surprising that Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was worn out by the end after a 42-minute stint where he was repeatedly attacked on defense while the Pacers picked him up full court on offense. What's a bit more shocking is how out of sorts the MVP looked even at the beginning. Eight seconds into the game, he picked up a frustration foul shoving away Andrew Nembhard. Minutes later, he already seemed exhausted.
Check out this play, where he lets another player bring the ball up, jogs in a circle for a bit, then completely taps out of the play and grabs his shorts. This wasn't in the fourth quarter; it was in the fourth minute.
Indiana's plan was to deny Gilgeous-Alexander from catching the ball anywhere, even 90 feet from the basket. After making baskets, Nembhard routinely raced in to deny an inbound pass before Gilgeous-Alexander could have a free catch. It was a nice adjustment by Indiana. What was amazing, however, was how meekly the Thunder acquiesced to this arrangement. On play after play, Gilgeous-Alexander either made no move at all to get open or pointed to a different player for the inbounder to pass to.
One wonders if Gilgeous-Alexander was dealing with something physically, because he seemed to be conserving energy almost from the opening tip. Or maybe he just had a bad night; it happens. Gilgeous-Alexander was awesome in Games 1 and 2, and I expect the Thunder to give a much more valiant effort in Game 4.
But underlying everything that happened in the first three games is another explanation, a bigger-picture question that's gnawing at me: Why can't the Thunder make 2s?
Advertisement
Oklahoma City has only made 47.4 percent of its 2-point shots this series, a ghastly figure that would have ranked last by a mile in the regular season. The league average was 54.5 percent; the worst team in the league (Charlotte) shot 49.9 percent. The poor shooting inside the arc is a key reason the Thunder offense is only posting a 113.6 offensive rating for the series after rolling to a 119.2 mark in the regular season (good for third in the league) and posting a 118.6 mark against a fearsome Minnesota Timberwolves defense in the Western Conference finals.
Usually, a struggle like that could be explained by 3-point variance, but not here: Oklahoma City has made 39.8 percent from downtown in the three games. The Thunder are also drawing fouls at a high rate, making their freebies (83.6 percent) and doing solid work on the offensive glass. Even turnovers — Game 3 aside — have been a plus, with a very respectable 11.9 percent rate for the series.
But the one area their offense figured to have a massive advantage has instead been a total zero. The Thunder ranked seventh in the league in 2-point shooting at 55.9 percent, while the Pacers were 23rd in 2-point defense at 55.4 percent — the worst mark of any playoff team. Additionally, 2-point shooting is usually more stable than 3-point shooting, and there should be less variance after three games because nearly twice as many shots are 2s.
If you're wondering, the postseason's first three rounds didn't provide any indication that this dramatic shift would happen. The Thunder made 54 percent of their 2s against the Denver Nuggets and 55.7 percent against the Wolves. Indiana allowed the New York Knicks to shoot 56.1 percent in the conference finals and, before that, the injury-addled Cleveland Cavaliers made 52.8 percent against them.
Based on the regular-season results, we'd expect the Thunder to be shooting 57 percent on 2s in this series, and instead, they're shooting a full 10 points worse. For three games, that's a difference of about 28 points (allowing for the fact that some of the extra misses were offensive rebounded), more than enough to swing the outcomes of Games 1 and 3.
Advertisement
Digging deeper on the 2-point woes, the main culprits are the Thunder's best players. Of the top fix Oklahoma City players in finals minutes, only Chet Holmgren has made more than half his 2s, and he's barely eeking past at 13-of-25 (52 percent). Jalen Williams has only made 42.5 percent of his 2s, and Gilgeous-Alexander just 50 percent, which is a problem since those two account for more than half the team's attempts.
Personnel choices have likely been a factor, too. Isaiah Hartenstein and Aaron Wiggins were the team's two most accurate 2-point shooters in the regular season, combining for 13.2 attempts per game; they have only taken 16 the entire finals as the role of each has shriveled.
Limiting fast-break points has been a factor: Oklahoma City averaged a whopping 17.2 fast-break points per game in the previous two rounds against Denver and Minnesota, but the Thunder have averaged a piddling 8.4 thus far in the finals. Subtracting some of those easy run-outs definitely impacts 2-point percentage; the Thunder shot 64.6 percent inside 5 feet in the regular season and 63.7 percent in the last two playoff rounds (even after I eliminated the four-game stampede over Memphis) but just 55.3 percent in these finals.
The shooting stats also reveal a more mundane issue: The Thunder's two best players have missed a ton of makable middies. On 2s beyond 10 feet, Oklahoma City shot 46.4 percent in the regular season, 49.1 percent in the last two playoff rounds … and 36.1 percent in the finals.
Williams lamented after Game 1 that many of his misses were on shots in his wheelhouse, 'shots that I rep,' as he put it. He missed all four of his long 2s while Gilgeous-Alexander went 2 of 8, hugely consequential misses in a one-point loss. Even in an otherwise strong performance in Game 3, Williams was 2 of 7 on 2s beyond 10 feet while Gilgeous-Alexander was 3 of 8. Most of them were clean looks, too. Even in the Thunder's breakout Game 2 win, the duo combined to shoot 7 of 13 on these shots; solid, but hardly a hailstorm.
For the series, that makes them 14 of 40 on the midrange shots that have been a huge bulwark of the Thunder's half-court offense all season. For Williams, the pull-ups going left have abandoned him suddenly. This one from Game 3 is a practice shot for him, and it's not even close:
Late in the third quarter, he had another example of a frustrating miss when he was isolated against the lumbering Thomas Bryant and easily got to a pull-up, only to have it hit three parts of the rim and bounce out.
Similarly, Gilgeous-Alexander had some tough shots against good contests from the Pacers but also has to feel like he left some money on the table. He shoots about 99 percent when he turns baseline from the left block, but this shot over a lukewarm contest from Ben Sheppard didn't find the mark:
He bonked another shot from the same spot in the second half, albeit under a bit more duress from Nembhard.
So, what do we make of this? It's too reductive to say that the Thunder are just going to automatically make more long 2s next game; that's not how this works. And of course, this isn't the only element of shooting variance at work here; at some point, Lu Dort might cool off from 3, for instance, and I don't think the Thunder can count on their 'free-throw defense' to save them quite as many points in the upcoming games. Needless to say, if I were the Thunder, I'd be much more concerned about the effort and exhaustion piece of the puzzle, and particularly about how to manage Gilgeous-Alexander through games so he has some juice left to take over at the end.
Advertisement
Nonetheless, the Thunder probably need to solve both problems to win three of the next four and claim the franchise's first title in Oklahoma. Most expected that a Pacers' victory template would include their full-court pace and pressure gassing the mighty Thunder, but Oklahoma City's wayward 2-point shooting is an unforeseen complication. Sure, the law of averages might eventually tilt back the Thunder's way on these shots, but we don't have 82 games to wait. Their margin of error is gone. The effort needs to ramp up, and the middies have to start falling.
(Top photo of Jalen Williams and Bennedict Mathurin: Maddie Meyer / Getty Images)