If the Pacers end up losing this series to the Thunder, they are never going to forget Game 4 — when a 3-1 lead was right there for the taking only for the Thunder to close on a 12-1 run to steal a 111-104 victory to send the Finals back to Oklahoma City tied, 2-2.
It’s not over. The Pacers have already beaten the Thunder in their building, even if it required the latest in a long line of playoff miracles. But Friday night was the first time it was really starting to feel like the Pacers, not the basketball gods, were in control of their championship destiny as they had clearly worn the Thunder down in both spirit and style.
Gone was any semblance of OKC’s usual ball and player movement as everything became tough, one-on-one offense to the tune of just 12 team assists, none of which came from Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Nobody could make a 3-pointer (3 for 17 on the night). Meanwhile Indiana, for the first time in this series, looked completely unfazed by OKC’s defense in the early going.
OKC was ready to fall. You could feel it. And had it happened, it would’ve all but ended this series as on only one team in history, the 2016 Cleveland Cavaliers, has come back from a 3-1 deficit to win the NBA Finals.
Now, in what feels like the blink of an eye, Indiana, as an almost double-digit underdog (+9.5) to win Game 5, is right back to a +400 long shot to win the series, per DraftKings.
“We knew when we woke up this morning, 3-1 is a lot different than 2-2 going back home,” Gilgeous-Alexander said during his on-court postgame interview. “We played with desperation to end the game and that’s why we won. We gotta try to maintain the same desperation going into Game 5, Game 6, whatever it may be.”
He’s right on both fronts. A 2-2 series with home-court back in the Thunder’s advantage is, to state the obvious, a hell of a lot different than a 3-1 hole, and the Thunder definitely played with desperation. Again, that’s really all they had — a desperate drive to keep what has been a dream, even historic season alive.
There will be no talk of the Pacers blowing anything here. Sure, they will look back and see things that they could have done better. Rick Carlisle said Indiana’s inability to rebound and get stops down the stretch prevented them from getting into transition. He said the offense went “stagnant.” But most, if not all, of the credit for that goes to the Thunder defense, which held the Pacers to just 18 points over the final 14 minutes.
Next up in the Thunder hero line were Jalen Williams and Alex Caruso, who combined for 47 points to keep OKC afloat during some really lean stretches until SGA finally could flip the MVP switch in do-or-die time. Some notes on Gilgeous-Alexander from the CBS Sports Research department:
- Most points (15) in the final five minutes of a Finals game on record.
- Most clutch points (14) in a Finals game on record.
- Second player in the last 20 years with 15-plus points on 100/100/100 shooting splits (3-3 FG, 1-1 3-pt FG, 8-8 FT) in the final five minutes of a playoff game.
Finishing with 38 points (on 30 shots), Gilgeous-Alexander scored 15 of Oklahoma City’s final 16 points. He flat-out willed his team down stretch, forcing himself to the foul line and hitting insanely tough, self-created jumpers with a hand in his face. These back-to-back buckets to take the Thunder from down four to up one in the final minutes were Kobe Bryant-like.
Call that last one a push-off if it makes you feel better. It won’t get you anywhere. That is just straight up tough. Nothing else to it. SGA took this game over when the Thunder were all but being read their last rites. The man’s superstar status, as if this actually needs to be said, is beyond reproach.
Still, just because the Pacers didn’t blow this game doesn’t mean they didn’t watch a golden opportunity slip right through their fingers. Looking back, the first sign of trouble was when Indiana led by one point at the close of the first quarter despite it feeling like they had totally controlled the game to that point.
It happened again at the end of the third quarter. Indiana had a 10-point lead with under two minutes to play and had multiple opportunities to push it to 14 or 15 heading into the fourth. Instead, they missed three jumpers and three of four free throws, and when Williams hit a shot to close the quarter, Indiana’s lead was just seven heading into the final frame. That was a major psychological win for the Thunder.
Perhaps the Thunder, in some karmic sense, deserved this win that they didn’t necessarily earn, at least if you’re a Pacers fan. After all, did Indiana really deserve Game 1, which the Thunder led for all but .03 seconds? To say this series, and these playoffs in general, have been unpredictable would be an understatement. When something feels like a good bet, go the other way.
As this game went along, the Pacers felt like a better and better bet to win. Instead, a team trailing by at least five points going into the fourth quarter came back to win for the third time this series, which has never happened before in the NBA Finals. Historical precedent means nothing anymore. These are wild times in what has already been a wild series. And thankfully for everyone watching, it’s far from over.
“This is greatest opportunity going. It’s really hard and it’s supposed to be hard,” Carlisle said. “This is where we’re gonna have to dig in and circle the wagons and come back stronger [for Game 5]. … This [loss] is a big disappointment, but there’s three games left.”
