Los Angeles, United States: The Oklahoma City Thunder, fueled by an efficient 34 points from Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, thumped the Indiana Pacers 123-107 on Sunday, punching back hard to level the NBA Finals at one game apiece.
NBA Most Valuable Player Gilgeous-Alexander connected on 11 of 21 shots and added five rebounds, eight assists and four of Oklahoma City’s 10 steals as the Thunder bounced back from an agonizing game one defeat on their home floor.
Jalen Williams added 19 points, and center Chet Holmgren bounced back from a lackluster six-point game one to score 15 points with six rebounds for the Thunder, who limited Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton to 17 points, three rebounds and six assists with five turnovers.
Haliburton, who drilled the last-gasp game-winner for Indiana in their 111-110 series opening triumph, had just five points through the first three quarters.
Despite his 12 points in the fourth, the Pacers never looked like mounting the kind of comeback that saw them erase a 15-point fourth quarter deficit in game one.
“They play a full 48 minutes and you can’t just throw the first punch,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. You’ve got to try to throw all the punches all night.
“That’s what we did. We threw enough punches tonight to get a ‘W.'”
With their latest bounce-back performance — they haven’t lost two in a row yet in these playoffs — the Thunder denied the Pacers the 2-0 lead they had grabbed in their three prior series.
But Gilgeous-Alexander said there’s still room for improvement as the best-of-seven championship series heads to Indianapolis for games three and four on Wednesday and Friday.
“We did some good things tonight,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “We did some things bad and we’ve got to be able to get better, get ready for game three.”
Alex Caruso scored 20 points off the bench and fellow reserve Aaron Wiggins made five three-pointers on the way to 18 for the Thunder, who closed a back-and-forth first quarter on a 9-0 run to lead 26-20.
With his first basket Gilgeous-Alexander took his tally of combined points for the regular season and playoffs to 3,000, becoming the 12th player in history to reach the milestone.
Holmgren punctuated the period with a three-pointer and Oklahoma City only ramped up the pressure in the second, putting together a 19-2 run and pushing their lead to as many as 23.
The turnovers that bedevilled the Pacers in game one began to creep up again, but Indiana offered a glimpse of just how dangerous they can be as they reeled off 10 unanswered points to slice the deficit to 13 before Oklahoma pulled away again to lead 59-41 at halftime.
“They did a good job being disruptive,” Indiana’s Pascal Siakam said. “They got out in transition. They were super-aggressive, which is what they do.”
– Still a race –
The Thunder took a 93-74 lead into the fourth and were never really challenged even as Haliburton finally started to heat up.
He made three three straight Pacers baskets, but his driving dunk with 8:12 remaining only cut the deficit to 20.
Myles Turner added 16 points and Siakam had 15 as seven Pacers players scored in double figures, but the Thunder maintained their record of not losing back-to-back games in these playoffs.
“Felt like we really let the rope slip there in the second quarter,” Haliburton said, but while he admitted the Pacers have yet to find an answer to the Thunder’s suffocating defense he Indiana did their job in splitting the first two games on the road.
“It’s still a race, first to four,” he said. “We are going to our home court tied one-one.”
