In the most pivotal game of these NBA Finals, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 15 of OKC’s final 16 points as the Thunder stormed back to stun the Pacers in Game 4 to tie the series. That’s what everyone was talking about. An MVP flipping the switch in money time. And he did that. No doubt. The guy is becoming an all-time talent before our eyes.
But SGA wouldn’t even have been in position to close that game if it weren’t for the play of Jalen Williams (and Alex Caruso). In Game 4, Williams scored 26 points and created a bunch of individual buckets as OKC’s offense, with only 12 assists for the game, lost pretty much all flow through three-and-a-half quarters.
Williams is an All-Star. An All-NBA player, in fact. He’s a two-way beast and one of the best isolation scorers in the league. But you don’t hear enough about this because Gilgeous-Alexander is even better. Williams is the Scottie Pippen to SGA’s Michael Jordan, and he was at it again in Monday’s Game 5 with 40 points, six rebounds and four assists as the Thunder held off yet another ferocious Pacers rally before pulling away late for a 120-109 win.
OKC now leads the series 3-2. Game 6 is set for Thursday in Indiana. What a series this has been for all viewers and certainly for the 24-year-old Williams, who has become the fifth player in history to score at least 25 points in three straight Finals games before the age of 25. The other four are Kyrie Irving, Kevin Durant, Shaquille O’Neal and Dwyane Wade. Indeed, Williams is aligning himself with some greatest players in history on the biggest stage of his life.
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Filter for at least five assists and five rebounds to go with the 40 points, and that list you’re looking at above gets trimmed to just four names: Magic, Barry, Westbrook, and now Willams. He scored in just about every way possible on Monday: Catch and shoots, backdoor cuts, paint flashes into power dunks, silky scoop shots with both hands, transition flushes, a one-legger off the glass, an isolation fade-away, 3 of 5 from 3 (his 3-point shot was the only thing not working in this series until Monday) and 9 of 12 from the free-throw line. Just an absolute monster performance.
“He was really gutsy tonight,” Gilgeous-Alexander said of Williams. “He stepped into big plays. Felt like every time we needed a shot, he made it. He wasn’t afraid. He was fearless tonight.”
This is a Kawhi Leonard type scorer with the kind of force he generates as he separates with shoulder and hip dips and powerful last-step lunges and laterals away from even the toughest of defenders. Williams has honest superstar chops yet functions completely comfortably as a wingman, ever shot ready as SGA makes his forays into the lane, never shying away from taking a game over but rarely overzealous to do so, either.
“Great force. I mean, that’s the word. We’ve used that word with him in his development. When he’s at his best he’s playing with that type of force,” OKC coach Mark Daigneault said. “That was an unbelievable performance by him, just throughout the whole game. He really was on the gas the entire night. Applied a ton of pressure. Thought he made a lot of the right plays. We’re going to need a similar type of approach in Game 6 from him.”
If the Thunder finish this thing out, SGA is going to win Finals MVP. Deservedly. But Williams would win it on just about any other team or perhaps in any other series (SGA is playing unbelievable, too). Over his last three games in this series, Williams is averaging 31 points and six boards on 51/40 shooting splits. OKC would’ve been blown out of the building in Game 4 without him. They might’ve fallen victim to another Indiana comeback in Game 5 if not for Williams’ relentlessly efficient scoring.
“He’s one of those guys that you want to see succeed, especially when you know him personally,” OKC big man Chet Holmgrean said following Game 5. “You want to root for him. You want him to do good just because he shows up every single day, does the right things. He’s a good guy off the court, treats everybody well. He’s always respectful. He works really hard. You want to see it pay off for him. We saw it tonight. Not only tonight. We don’t get here without him playing as good as he’s playing. So, we got to make sure he gets his credit, gets his flowers.”
If sliding Williams into the Pippen spotlight isn’t giving him his flowers, I don’t what is. You might call it hyperbole to be putting Williams in the same conversation as Pippen, but we are talking about a particular kind of role — as an overqualified and yet perfectly suited second fiddle to an MVP — more than a true one-to-one comp.
Still, there are a lot of similarities. The two-way stuff. The length and athleticism. Truth is, I would argue that Williams is already a better scorer and shooter than Pippen. I would also remind you, if you think I’m getting ahead of myself, that the guy is 24 years old. It’s a matter of time.
Generally speaking, Pippen is the superstar-wingman standard that Williams is more than living up to, and truthfully, it’s probably the No. 2s who are the best barometers, at least individually speaking, for a team’s championship potential. They’re the ones who take the pressure off. Who allow the superstars to be their dominant selves by forcing a defense to spread its focus to multiple players and places. SGA was asked, following Game, how much easier Williams makes his life.
“A lot easier,” SGA said. “Not only for myself, but for the rest of the guys. He can shoulder a load. I’ve said this before. He does so many things for us as a basketball team on both ends of the floor when he’s the best version of himself. But yeah, like you said, he was great tonight. Makes a world of a difference when he’s that good, for sure.”
If you look across the league, the superstars are the constant variable, and to at least some degree they cancel one another out. The Knicks know what they’re going to get from Jalen Brunson just as the Timberwolves know what they’re going to get from Anthony Edwards; the variability starts at Karl-Anthony Towns and Julius Randle. When the Nuggets enter a series, you don’t ask yourself how Nikola Jokic is going to play. You know the answer to that. He’s going to play incredible. The question you ask yourself is: How is Jamal Murray going to play?
With as much talent as there is in today’s game, almost every team has a superstar. But it’s only when the No. 2s play like stars, too, that you’ve really got something. Kyrie Irving was incredible last year for the Mavericks, who made the Finals, where Jayson Tatum’s was Boston’s best player but it was Jaylen Brown winning Finals MVP.
Stephen Curry is always going to be unbelievable, but the 2022 Warriors won the title because Andrew Wiggins played the best basketball of his life, and they became a viable contender again this year not because they had Curry, but because they added Jimmy Butler. Before they had their second guy, they stunk.
The 2016 Cavaliers didn’t recover from a 3-1 deficit to beat the Warriors because they had LeBron James, who dominates every time he steps on a floor, but because they also had Irving, one of the greatest No. 2s ever who was right alongside James getting bucket after bucket. Tyrese Haliburton is Indiana’s best player, but the reason they are playing for a championship right now is because Pascal Siakam has been a brilliant No. 2.
The proverbial “second guy” is what truly separates the good teams from the great ones, and the Thunder are a great one because Williams is playing like a first guy. Look around the league right now and ask yourself — and be honest, all you LeBron fans — how many No. 2s you would take over Williams. Jaylen Brown? Nope. Towns? No way. Jimmy Butler? Funny. James Harden? Jamal Murray? Siakam? A healthy Damian Lillard? Tyrese Maxey? All come up short of Williams.
At this stage, you’d have a tough argument to take LeBron, who’s now the No. 2 to Luka Doncic, over Williams. Anthony Davis or Irving, whichever of those two you think is Dallas’ number two, is a debate, but Irving is going to be out most of next year, so Davis is the No. 1. Devin Booker is interesting, but as soon as Kevin Durant gets traded Booker is no longer a No. 2.
If Durant goes to Minnesota or New York to play wingman to Brunson or Edwards, he would have a case against Williams as the league’s top sidekick. But honestly, I’m still taking Williams, surely when factoring in the stages of their respective careers and the long road Williams has ahead of him to get even better. This is already a 22 PPG playoff scorer and top-end defender.
Put that kind of production next to an MVP, and the results are exponential. Williams and Gilgeous-Alexander combined for 71 points in Game 5. They are just the second duo in the last 40 years to score 40 and 30 in the same Finals game, joining the aforementioned LeBron and Kyrie, who did it in 2016 and 2017.
That’s the level we’re talking about here. This is all-time stuff. Williams is asserting himself as one of the best players in the world even as the second-best player on his own team. This is Pippen territory, or at least it’s a Pippen track that Williams is on. He may never be the Jordan, but he doesn’t have to. SGA has that covered.
Williams will always be a little bit in the shadow as long as he’s next to Gilgeous-Alexander, but every once in a while the lights will shine directly on him. Monday was one of those nights. He was the best player on the court for what has been the league’s best team all season, a team that is one win away from a winning what could be the first of many championships. They have all the ingredients. The MVP. The all-time defense. And Williams, the dream wingman who is perhaps, right before our eyes, establishing himself as the league’s number one No. 2.
