After the Oklahoma City Thunder blew Game 1 of the NBA Finals in humbling fashion, the most predictable result for Game 2 always seemed to be a comfortable win—and, with a 123-107 outcome that tied the series 1-1, that is exactly what happened.
The nature of that series-opening loss—the Indiana Pacers are hyper-focused zombies touched by an angel—combined with OKC’s unreasonably mature obsession with being even-keeled, made this series feel, for two days, like a tide that’s drawn out to sea right before a tsunami hits. When the Thunder mounted their 23-point lead in the first half, it felt like water crashing onto the shore.
Even without a dramatic advantage in the possession game or their trademark ability to score quickly off of live-ball turnovers, the Thunder still looked more like themselves in Game 2. And when the Thunder look like themselves, they almost always win.
OKC completely sealed off the paint on defense, got there at will in a variety of ways on the other end, and controlled the glass. “They were the best in the league during the year at keeping people out of there. They are great at it,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said after the game. “There are so many things that have to go right on a set of two possessions to get the ball into the heart of their defense. You know, you’ve got to get a stop, a rebound. You’ve got to be able to get the ball up the floor without a turnover, and then you have to be able to get it to the lane and to the rim. It’s a tough task.”
Beyond that, after an ultra-aggressive showing in Game 1, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander operated with more patience and didn’t take the first shot Indiana’s defense gave him—instead thriving with far fewer zero-pass possessions than he finished with in Game 1. His poise, perhaps more than any other factor, helped dictate the outcome of Game 2.
And despite keeping the same starting lineup with Cason Wallace in place of Isaiah Hartenstein, Mark Daigneault’s rotation more closely resembled the one that Oklahoma City rode to these Finals. Ajay Mitchell was nowhere to be seen, Isaiah Joe did not play in the second half, Chet Holmgren and Hartenstein shared the floor (for five defensively stout minutes), and the Thunder never played any centerless units.
“I thought Indiana is kind of an acquired taste. We haven’t played them a ton. They’re not in the West, obviously. They play a very distinct style on both ends. They’re not like a vanilla team. It’s part of their effectiveness,” Daigneault said. “I think we were just a little bit better in a lot of different areas of execution, of pace, organization, decision-making in the paint, aggressiveness at the basket, gathering the ball. We just were a tick forward in all those areas.”
The Pacers can still feel OK about their situation, knowing it’s a long series and that they opened this battle with a miraculous split that leaves the door open for more magic down the line. But after OKC committed a few uncharacteristic turnovers early on in Game 2, the Thunder looked more comfortable in just about every way—better prepared for Indiana’s full-court pressure, unhurried and methodical, with half-court execution that featured much more passing than we saw in Game 1.
“They [were] either denying or staying with Shai, not rotating, and it’s kind of up to us just to make better reads and better plays,” Alex Caruso said before Game 2. “We’ve done that. We’ve been a team that’s done that all year, so it’s not out of the ordinary for us. We’ve been a freedom-of-movement, five-guys-live, make-a-play kind of team all year … some of that is you go back and watch film and understand from an omniscient point of view how they’re going to play us and how we can attack it.”
Attack it they did. The Thunder are a lot harder to beat when they move the ball. That starts with SGA, whose 34 points were buttressed by eight assists and a more patient approach. He got off the ball early and often, with decision-making that was night and day compared to a Game 1 that saw him take a playoff-high 24 field goal attempts inside the arc.
But on the only other night during this postseason on which he launched 30 shots—Game 4 against the Timberwolves, in which the Thunder needed all of his 40 points to win by two—SGA also finished with a playoff-high 10 assists. In Game 1, he had a playoff-low three assists. “I thought his floor game tonight was really, really in a great rhythm,” Daigneault said about the league MVP after Game 2.
Oklahoma City leveraged Indiana’s pressure in smart ways. Gilgeous-Alexander came off better-set ball screens higher up the floor and in the backcourt. He repeatedly split the pick-and-roll and got downhill against various Pacers defenders—from Tyrese Haliburton and Myles Turner to Thomas Bryant and Pascal Siakam—and then sprayed it out to teammates behind the arc.
He rejected screens, caught the Pacers on the wrong side of the pick, and collapsed Indiana’s defense. He isolated on the wing, posted up smaller defenders, and either drew a foul or hit a fadeaway jump shot. Eventually, the Pacers doubled him in this spot and he calmly hit the open man, triggering a few around-the-horn medleys that ended in Caruso splashing home a corner 3 and Aaron Wiggins drilling one from above the break—the two finished 9-for-16 from downtown.
“You try to make them pay for what they throw at you coverage-wise, scheme-wise,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “I think tonight, myself for sure, did a better job of attacking it. … We were a little bit sticky last game. You have games like that. Sucks to be on this stage and have games like that. But it is where we are, right? It’s where our feet are. All you can do is try to be better for the next one.”
Hartenstein and Holmgren sharing the floor was not a major part of Oklahoma City’s win, but Daigneault’s willingness to throw that duo on the court when the Pacers had Bryant and Obi Toppin on the floor felt like a familiar return to form. It’s only one play, but OKC just looks unbeatable when it executes a big-to-big lob. “It’s a good play for us,” Holmgren said. “We got to look for it whenever that situation is kind of given to us.”
“I thought both of them gave us huge lifts on both ends of the floor,” Daigneault said. “That was one area where we improved tonight, was our pick-and-roll coverage against their bigs. They’re a different look because of the rolling, the popping, just the way they play. I thought one area that we really improved was on the defensive end in that area of the game.”
What all this bodes for the rest of this series is obviously unknown. The Thunder already read a similar script earlier in this postseason against the Denver Nuggets, when they blew Game 1, dominated Game 2, and then fell behind again a couple of days later. That series was nip and tuck. It ended in seven and could’ve gone either way. The Pacers do not employ Nikola Jokic, though, and they did not win the title in 2023. They were held in check by the NBA’s best defense and dominated by an MVP who looked far more comfortable in Game 2. It’s fair to suggest that the Thunder appear to be in better shape now than they did in the conference semifinals.
“I thought in Game 1, it was as much to do with us calibrating the opponent in a style very different from really what we’ve seen in these playoffs,” Daigneault said. “I thought we did a good job of that tonight.”
