INDIANAPOLIS — Shai Gilgeous-Alexander told anyone who would listen earlier in these 2025 NBA Finals: Yes, he’s the one with the Most Valuable Player trophy and the matinee idol billing, but the Thunder are far from a solo act.
“No one-man show achieves what I’m trying to achieve with this game … those guys are the reason why we’re as good of a team as we are,” he said following Oklahoma City’s series-leveling Game 2 win. “I just add to it.”
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Gilgeous-Alexander added plenty on Friday: a game-high 35 points, headlined by an all-time-clutch, postseason-career-high 15-point fourth quarter, to propel the Thunder past the Pacers to a series-evening — and possibly season-saving — 111-104 win at Gainbridge Fieldhouse.
But surviving a physical, nasty, fever-pitched Game 4 to send this best-of-seven series back to Oklahoma City all knotted up at two games apiece took much, much more than just a handful of final-frame buckets by the MVP.
Oklahoma City Thunder guard Alex Caruso defends Indiana Pacers guard Tyrese Haliburton during the second half of Game 4 of the NBA Finals on Friday, June 13, 2025, in Indianapolis. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)
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“We had a lot of guys make winning plays that can kind of be invisible to the untrained eye,” said Thunder big man Chet Holmgren, who scored 14 points and pulled down 15 rebounds in 37 hard-fought minutes. “It’s not showing up necessarily in the stat sheet. It’s not like a highlight that’s going to be played over and over. It’s not one single instance.”
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It didn’t take one single instance; it took everything that everyone had to offer. And two nights after Indiana’s bench tilted the series in its favor, Oklahoma City reminded the basketball-watching world that it’s got a hell of a lot to offer.
Jalen Williams certainly felt like he had a lot more to offer. He scored a team-high 26 points in OKC’s Game 3 loss, but point totals don’t necessarily tell the whole story of a performance.
“I don’t think Dub played his best game last game,” ace reserve Alex Caruso said. “I don’t think he would say that either. I kind of just expected him to come out and answer the call.”
He did:
With Gilgeous-Alexander once again wearing Pacers stopper Andrew Nembhard all over the court like an ill-fitting orange or blue tuxedo, Williams carried the OKC offense early, scoring 12 points in 11 first-quarter minutes. He brought the ball up the court more often in Game 4 than he had all series — a ploy by Thunder head coach Mark Daigneault aimed at saving SGA some of the hard-driven miles of advancing the ball with Nembhard stationed squarely in his shadow the full 94 feet, as he was in Game 3. When the Pacers pushed their lead to double digits late in the third quarter, Williams got to the free-throw line for a pair and hit a tough closing-seconds fadeaway to get OKC back within seven heading into the fourth — a more manageable distance from which to mount a comeback effort to save their season.
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“There’s a reason he’s an All-NBA player, an All-Star, at just, I think he’s 23, if that’s correct,” said Caruso. (Just turned 24 in April, Alex. Probably want to get him a belated birthday card.) “I mean, he’s a phenomenal talent.”
A versatile one, too. Williams battled on the defensive end, jousting with Pascal Siakam and doing his damnedest to keep the Pacers’ ascendant demigod from snatching the series in his two bare hands. (Siakam finished with 20 points, eight rebounds, five assists, five steals and a block in 35 massive minutes, but went scoreless in the deciding fourth quarter.) He competed on the glass, grabbing seven rebounds, including a pair of big defensive boards late.
And with Indiana leading in crunch time, it was Williams who paired with Gilgeous-Alexander in the two-man game, with the MVP trotting up to set ball screens knowing Indiana would switch the action, resulting in Nembhard shifting over to Williams while Aaron Nesmith guarded SGA — a matchup he clearly felt much more comfortable attacking. The result, as Daigneault said, was “kind of our best rhythm of the night” — and a game-sealing 12-1 run.
“We’ve worked on that over the course of the last couple years,” Gilgeous-Alexander said after the win. “Both of us can do multiple things with the basketball: shoot, pass, handle. We try to just play off our instincts and play off each other, be aggressive, make the right basketball play. If we do so, we usually end up with a pretty good shot, because of the players we are.”
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The player Williams is, as Gilgeous-Alexander noted, is one capable of doing “so many things … on a basketball court.” And after a monster Game 4 — 27 points on 8-for-18 shooting, seven rebounds, three assists in 36 minutes spent running point and guarding an All-Star staring down an existential deficit in the NBA Finals — we now know Williams is capable of coming up with precisely what his team needs, precisely when the Thunder need it.
“I think my biggest thing is just stepping into the moment, success or fail, just kind of living with the results,” Williams said. “I put a lot of work into my game, so I just go out there and play. I just don’t want to ever play a game and look back where I wasn’t aggressive, afraid to do a move, whatever the case may be.”
“Aggressive and unafraid” pretty well encapsulates the way Luguentz Dort approaches every single possession he plays, especially on the defensive end.
“Lu and all the other…
Dan Devine
