Story & Photos
By Michael Kinney
While technically it wasn’t a must-win, everyone who came into the Paycom Center Tuesday night knew it was one for Oklahoma City. Going down 3-2 and heading back to Denver was not a position any team wanted to be in, no matter how talented.
Yet, for 43 minutes, that appeared to be where the Thunder was headed.
However, keyed by the clutch shooting of Lu Dort and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander being Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Oklahoma City pulled out a 112-105 victory to take a 3-2 series lead.
“The answer is never a hero play or anything out of the ordinary. It’s being who we are,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “It’s trusting each other, playing with all five on both ends. Whatever the problem is, we can fix it with the collective effort.”
After trailing by as much as 12 points in the second half, the Thunder stormed back to tie the contest at 100-100. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander put Oklahoma City ahead when he was fouled by Jamal Murray while hitting a short jumper. The ensuing free throw gave the Thunder a 103-100 lead.
Nikola Jokic came back to tie the contest with a fade-away 3-pointer from the top of the key over the extended arms of Chet Holmgren. Oklahoma City’s Jalen Williams buried a 3-pointer from the corner to give the home team a three-point advantage.
After a timeout, Denver missed another 3-pointer, and Williams got to the loose ball and tossed it back to Gilgeous-Alexander with a minute left in the game.
After letting the clock run down, Gilgeous-Alexander pulled up from deep and buried a clutch three-pointer that gave Oklahoma City a six-point advantage. That was enough to put the contest away.
“What the great players do is they rise in the face of those challenges and adversities,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “And I just thought he got more and more composed as the game went on. And despite the fact that the pressure was mounting and it got hotter in there, he got cooler and just kind of settled into it, made the right plays, let the game tell him what to do.”
Gilgeous-Alexander paced the Thunder with 31 points on 12 of 23 shooting. He added 7 assists, six rebounds, two blocks and two steals in 39 minutes of action.
Five other players from Oklahoma City reached double figures. Williams led the group with 18 points and nine rebounds. Isaiah Hartenstein added 15 points while Chet Holmgren added 14 points and eight boards.
Dort scored all 12 of his points from behind the arc on 4 of 8 shooting.
Nikola Jokic led all scorers with 44 points in 44 minutes. He added 15 rebounds, five assists and two steals. Murray finished with 28 points.
Jokic scored 13 of the team’s 19 fourth-quarter points as the Nuggets went cold from the field at the wrong time. The team made only 13 of 46 from 3-point range.
“This is a really disappointing loss,” Denver interim coach David Adelman said. “The guys in there should be disappointed. It’s a heavy loss and we have to bounce back quickly to win Game 6 and give ourselves a chance to come back, have a game like this, but finish it.”
After trailing 80-68 midway through the third quarter, Oklahoma City was able to trim the lead down to 86-78 heading to the fourth.
The Nuggets got away from any semblance of their normal brand of basketball and kept hoisting up 3-pointers. While the same shots dropped in the third quarter, they bounced off the rim in the fourth.
This allowed the Thunder to hang around. Even though Oklahoma City was also shooting poorly, they were within striking distance.
That is when Dort turned into a combination of Larry Bird and Reggie Miller. With the Nuggets converging on Gilgeous-Alexander, he was left open on the perimeter and made them by burying a trio of 3-pointers that had the Thunder fan base on their feet.
“Shout out to the crowd,” Dort said. “The crowd got a lot of emotion out of me tonight.”
Up until that point, he was having a lackluster offensive night. But coach Mark Daigneault stuck with the veteran.
“I don’t bet against Lu. It’s that simple,” Daigneault said. “There’s just a special thing about him. He’s always going to stand back up. He’s not perfect, but he’s always going to respond and he’s always going to compete.”
That set up the final minutes for Gilgeous-Alexander and Williams to close out the Nuggets.
“It won us the game, for real,” Williams said of Dort.
Game 6 is set for 8:30 p.m. Thursday in Denver. Oklahoma City will have a chance to close out the series while the Nuggets will be fighting to keep their season alive.
“We’re going to go play the game in Denver, and then we get to come back,” Murray said with a smile.
Instagram: mkinneymedia
X (Twitter): MKinneyMedia
Youtube: Michael Kinney Media
Photos/Prints (SmugMug): Michael Kinney