Thunder guard Alex Caruso is getting a 2nd NBA Finals chance, this time with fans
Alex Caruso is the only current Oklahoma City Thunder player who has previous experience playing in the NBA Finals.
That said, even he has no idea what this year's series will feel like.
Caruso was on the Los Angeles Lakers team that beat the Miami Heat in the 2020 NBA Finals in the bubble at Lake Buena Vista, Florida, meaning the games were played all in one place, with almost no fans, and an atmosphere that will in no way compare to what awaits when this year's finals start in Oklahoma City on Thursday night.
'The finals in the bubble still had the tangible feel of a finals,' Caruso said. 'You knew what was up for grabs. That adrenaline before the game, obviously, I don't think it would probably be the same adrenaline level that you feel with fans, just being on the other side of it now. But understanding what's at stake was still very apparent.'
The Thunder will take on either Indiana or New York in this year's series. Game 1 is in Oklahoma City, where the Thunder are 43-7 this season. They're 80-18 this season overall — not counting a loss in the NBA Cup title game, which doesn't count — and that's why Caruso doesn't feel the need to do a whole lot of how-to-handle-the-finals coaching right now.
'You don't have to do anything special. You just have to be who we are,' Caruso said. 'That's worked for us throughout this whole year. So, I'm just continuing to emphasize with the guys, just do what we've done all year. Compete at a high level, play together, play as a team. When we do that, we're pretty good.'
At 31, Caruso is the old man of the Thunder — the oldest player on the roster, despite there being more than 80 other active players in the NBA older than he is right now.
The NBA said the Thunder are the second-youngest team to make the finals in the last 70 seasons, with an average age of 25.56. That's about a half-year per player older than Portland was when the Trail Blazers made the finals in 1977.
'We've got one of the youngest teams in the league still,' Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. 'And these guys are growing at a really rapid rate. And we've had a lot of individual players really grow quickly and grow in impactful ways in a short period of time.'
But they rely on Caruso in many ways as well. A team loaded with young talent — MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren — is still willing to listen and learn, which is where Caruso comes in.
'There's never a second where he's not engaged in the competition, fully engaged in the competition,' said Daigneault, who coached Caruso with the G League's Oklahoma City Blue and coaches him now with the Thunder. 'And I think that right there, the contagiousness of that and the consistency of that, is really the impact. It doesn't matter if it's a drill in shootaround or whether it's a side out of bounds play on a short shot clock. That guy, Alex Caruso, is completely engaged in that moment.'
And Caruso will be completely engaged in the finals, with hopes of getting a second ring — and a first parade.
Those 2020 finals ended in October because of the COVID-interrupted year, and training camps resumed just a few weeks later. There was no traditional offseason after that title by the Lakers, and Caruso still laments missing out on some of the fun.
'There's parts of winning a championship that I didn't get to experience through that first championship,' Caruso said. 'I never got to go on a parade. The turnaround for the next season was like a month. I went to Cabo for a couple of days and then started working out again because the next season was about to start. There's a little bit of enjoying the success that I didn't get to necessarily participate in. But I've got another chance to get it done and try again with fans and with a parade and all that.'
___
AP NBA: https://apnews.com/nba
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Associated Press
18 minutes ago
- Associated Press
Kilmar Abrego Garcia's lawyer decries ‘preposterous' charges on return to US
The Associated Press is an independent global news organization dedicated to factual reporting. Founded in 1846, AP today remains the most trusted source of fast, accurate, unbiased news in all formats and the essential provider of the technology and services vital to the news business. More than half the world's population sees AP journalism every day.
Wall Street Journal
21 minutes ago
- Wall Street Journal
Landmark House v. NCAA Settlement Approved by Judge, Allowing Colleges to Pay Athletes
A federal judge in California finally approved a $2.6 billion settlement for college athletes that upends a century-old tenet of college sports—the notion that schools cannot pay the athletes that play for them. U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken on Friday ushered in a new era—a professional era—for college sports by signing off on a plan for the NCAA and the five most prominent sports conferences to settle a class-action lawsuit with current and former college players. The deal will give backpay to some, as well as creating a system in which each Division I school will be able to distribute roughly $20 million a year to their athletes. Schools are poised to begin implementing the new model this fall. The decision has been months in the making, drawn out in its final weeks by the judge's insistence that the NCAA find a way to stop current athletes from losing their roster spots. The settlement would 'enable NCAA schools to share their athletic revenues with Division I college student-athletes for the first time in the history of the NCAA,' Wilken wrote in her 76-page opinion. She added that it was 'expected to open the door for Division I student- athletes to receive, in the aggregate, approximately $1.6 billion dollars in new compensation and benefits per year, with that amount increasing over the next ten years.' Each school that elects to share revenue with athletes will start by distributing more than $20 million in the coming academic year. That amount will reach about $32.9 million per school by 2034-35, the end of the injunctive-relief settlement, Wilken wrote. The settlement brings the biggest changes yet to college sports, which until recently had banned athletes from earning much more than a scholarship, room and board. It comes on the heels of years of upheaval that have included loosened restrictions on off-the-field compensation for players, liberalized transfer rules and blockbuster television deals for schools and the chaotic conference realignment that followed. Yet during all of that time, many college sports leaders had still resisted paying athletes directly from the billions of dollars in revenue they helped generate. Now, that restraint is off. Schools have been readying for months for the settlement effects to land on their athletic departments, most immediately by transforming how they recruit and manage rosters in football and basketball. 'People have been doing a lot of work on a contingent basis to try to create the infrastructure that's envisioned by the settlement,' NCAA President Charlie Baker said ahead of the final approval. 'It'll definitely be rocky and kind of messy coming out of the gate, because big things are that way.' Private equity has already been circling college sports, pledging to inject capital into schools but also to advise them on how to grow their sports business. And athletic departments are openly wrestling over what the ruling means for the future of Olympic sports on campus. Most of these sports do not generate much revenue, but American campuses serve as the primary Olympic training ground for Team USA. The settlement largely immunizes the NCAA against similar claims, a provision the association considered essential as it seeks to move past decades of court battles over payments for players. But it will almost certainly not end litigation over the shape of college sports. It isn't clear whether the money needs to be distributed equitably in accordance with Title IX, the federal statute that requires publicly funded institutions to provide equal opportunities to male and female athletes. Aside from preparing for schools to distribute roughly $20 million a year to athletes, the settlement didn't specify how exactly much should be allocated to each sport. The majority will likely go to football, the financial engine of most athletic departments, as well as men's basketball. Female athletes have raised questions over the payouts they are set to receive and what fair compensation looks like for them going forward. 'This settlement doesn't come close to recognizing the value I lost,' LSU gymnast Livvy Dunne said in an unsuccessful attempt to object to the settlement. There's also the open question of whether athletes getting paid by their institutions are working for them—a distinction that could open up schools to more legal challenges. But even without employee status, the settlement will transform the relationship between players and schools. Write to Louise Radnofsky at Laine Higgins at and Rachel Bachman at
CNET
21 minutes ago
- CNET
Summer Game Fest 2025: News, Trailers and Everything Announced
Summer Game Fest Summer Game Fest 2025 is just getting started, and the weekend of games kicked off with a showcase of nearly 50 game trailers -- scroll down for all of them in our live blog as it happened. The showcase was held live at the YouTube Theater in Los Angeles and simultaneously livestreamed out to the world, but CNET was in the seats blogging as it happened. The biggest reveal was without question the debut of Resident Evil 9, but there were plenty of other highlights, like new footage of Death Stranding 2: On the Beach (due out June 26), the reveal of the next game from Yakuza developers RGG, and a muppet boxing game (really). How to watch Summer Game Fest 2025 livestream The Summer Game Fest 2025 livestream was broadcast on the event's YouTube page and the Twitch page for The Game Awards, Geoff Keighley's annual end-of-year awards show.
