Athletics has live coverage of the Thunder game against Pacers 4 from the NBA 2025 finals.
Indianapolis-How does Oklahoma City Thunder find itself surprisingly down 2-1 for the Indiana Pacers in the NBA final? I can give you two versions of the story, both also valid.
On the one hand, there is the fact on the one more energetic side of Indiana, on several occasions, originally, obstruction, banality and finally to Oklahoma City in match 3. Call it “energy” or “playing with force” or all the euphemism you want to use, but the band does not lie. Thursday, the game looked like a Thunder game to a team during the last game of a four -night trip in five nights. They played with little pace, were beaten at almost all the cowardly balls and completely lacked gas at the end.
It should be noted that the best Thunder player was guilty of many of these fronts. It may not be surprising that Shai Gilgeous-Aalexander was exhausted at the end after a 42-minute passage where he was attacked several times in defense while the Pacers took care of him in attack. What is a little more shocking is what the MVP even at first at first. Eight seconds after the start of the match, he picked up a frustration pushing Andrew Nembhard. A few minutes later, he already seemed exhausted.
Discover this game, where he lets another player increase the ball, makes arrows a little in a circle, then completely pulls the game and grabs his shorts. It was not in the fourth quarter; It was in the fourth minute.
The Indiana plan was to refuse Gilgeous-Alexander to catch the ball anywhere, even 90 feet from the basket. After making baskets, Nembhard regularly run to deny an incoming pass before Gilgeous-Alexander could have a free catch. It was a beautiful adjustment of the Indiana. What was incredible, however, this is how the Thunder agreed to this arrangement. In the game after the game, Gilgeous-Alexander did not make any movement to open or pointed another player for the inbounder to pass.
One wonders if Gilgeous-Alexander was dealing with something physically, because it seemed to keep the energy almost from the opening tip. Or maybe he just had a bad night; It happens. Gilgeous-Alexander was great in games 1 and 2, and I expect the Thunder to give a much more valiant effort in match 4.
But underlying everything that happened in the first three games is another explanation, a bigger question that eats away from me: why can’t the Thunder do 2s?
Oklahoma City made only 47.4% of its 2 -point shots this series, a horrible figure which would have been ranked last by a mile in the regular season. The league average was 54.5%; The worst League team (Charlotte) pulled 49.9%. The bad shooting inside the arc is one of the main reasons for which the Thunder offensive publishes only an offensive note of 113.6 for the series after reaching a bar of 119.2 in the regular season (good for the third of the league) and displayed a brand of 118.6 against a formidable defense of Minnesota Timberwolves during the final of the Western Conference.
Usually, a fight like this could be explained by a 3-point variance, but not here: Oklahoma City made 39.8% of the city center in the three games. The Thunder also draws mistakes at a high rate, which makes their gifts (83.6%) and do solid work on offensive glass. Even reversals – play 3 apart – were a plus, with a very respectable rate of 11.9% for the series.
But the only area that their offense has thought of having a massive advantage was rather a total zero. The Thunder ranked seventh in the league in 2 points at 55.9%, while the Pacers were 23rd in defense in 2 points to 55.4% – the worst brand of any eliminatory team. In addition, 2 -point shot is generally more stable than 3 -point shot, and there should be less variance after three games, because almost twice as much shots are 2S.
If you are wondering, the first three rounds of the playoffs have given no indication that this dramatic change would occur. The Thunder made 54% of their 2 against Denver Nuggets and 55.7% against Wolves. The Indiana allowed the New York Knicks to draw 56.1% in the conference final and, before that, the Cleveland Cavaliers reached 52.8% of injuries.
Based on the results of the regular season, we expect the Thunder to get 57% out of 2 s in this series, and instead, they draw 10 worst points. For three games, this is a difference of around 28 points (allowing some of the additional failures to have been offensive), more than enough to swing the results of the 1 and 3 matches.
By digging more deeply on 2 points problems, the main culprits are the best Thunder players. Among the players Top Fix Oklahoma City in the final, only Chet Holmgren made more than half of his 2s, and he barely had the past at 13 out of 25 (52%). Jalen Williams only made 42.5% of his 2, and Gilgeous-Alexander at only 50%, which is a problem because these two represent more than half of the team’s attempts.
Staff choices were also a factor. Isaiah Hartenstein and Aaron Wiggins were the two most specific shooters of 2 points in the regular season, combining 13.2 attempts per game; They only took 16 the whole final because the role of each has missed.
Limiting rapid breakdown points has been a factor: Oklahoma City has an average of 17.2 fast break points per game during the previous two rounds against Denver and Minnesota, but Thunder has an average of an 8.4 piddling in the final. The subtraction of some of these easy leave has an impact on the percentage of 2 points; The Thunder pulled 64.6% in 5 feet in the regular season and 63.7% in the last two playoffs (even after eliminating the Stampede of four games on Memphis) but only 55.3% in the final.
The shooting statistics also reveal a more commonplace problem: the two best Thunder players have missed a ton of creatable middies. Out of 2 s beyond 10 feet, Oklahoma City pulled 46.4% in the regular season, 49.1% in the last two playoffs… and 36.1% in the final.
Williams deplored after match 1 that many of his failures were on fire in his shooting, “Shots that I rep”, as he said. He missed his four long 2s while Gilgeous-Alexander went 2 out of 8, extremely substantial in a defeat of a point. Even in a performance that is also strong in match 3, Williams was 2 by 7 out of 2 beyond 10 feet while Gilgeous-Alexander was 3 out of 8. Most of them were also clean looks. Even in the victory of the Thunder’s Breakout Game 2, the duo combined to draw 7 on these shots; Solid, but barely a hailstorm.
For the series, this is 14 out of 40 on mid-range plans which were a bulwark of the Thunder’s mid-terrain offensive all season. For Williams, the pulls that went to the left suddenly abandoned him. This one in match 3 is a training shot for him, and he is not even close:
At the end of the third trimester, he had another example of a frustrating failure when he was isolated against Thomas Bryant from the exercise and easily reached a traction, only to make him hit three parts of the edge and bounce back.
Likewise, Gilgeous-Alexander had some difficult shots against the right competitions of the Pacers, but must also have the impression of having left money on the table. It draws approximately 99% when it transforms the basic line of the left block, but this shot on a lukewarm competition by Ben Sheppard did not find the brand:
He bonke another shot from the same place in the second half, although under a little more Nembhard constraint.
So what are we doing with that? It is too reductive to say that the Thunder will simply automatically make more long match 2 to 2 long; This is not how it works. And of course, this is not the only element of the work variance here; At one point, Lu sleeps could cool from 3, for example, and I do not think that the Thunder can count on their “defense of free throws” to save them so many points in the coming games.
If I was thunder, I would be much more concerned with the effort and exhaustion of the puzzle, and in particular on how to manage Gilgeous-Alexander through the games, there is therefore juice to take over at the end.
Nevertheless, thunder probably needs to solve both Problems to win three of the next four and demand the first title of the franchise in Oklahoma. Most expected that a model of victory of the Pacers included their complete rhythm and their pressure pressure from the powerful thunder, but the capricious shooting of 2 points of Oklahoma City is an unexpected complication.
Of course, the medium law law could possibly go back on the Thunder on these shots, but we do not have 82 games to wait. Their margin of error has disappeared. The effort must accelerate and the middies must start to fall.
(Top photo of Jalen Williams and Benédict Mathurin: Maddie Meyer / Getty Images)
