Shai Gilgeous-Alexander made a beeline across the court, untucking his jersey and staying stone-faced as he went from the Thunder bench to the exit tunnel.
Lu Dort trod the same path, his eyes mostly down.
And Jalen Williams left the court with a towel over his head, a look he often rocks after games, but on this night, there were no smiles, no shenanigans and definitely no entertaining postgame interviews.
Next time we see these guys, they’ll be trying to win a Game 7.
On a night Oklahoma City had opportunities to close out Denver on its home hardwood, the Thunder instead lost 119-107, and now, this young bunch finds itself about to step into the ultimate pressure cooker. This Western Conference semifinal is no longer a best-of-seven series. It’s now a one-and-done, win-or-go-home scenario on Sunday afternoon.
It’ll be nerve-wracking and gut-churning.
It’ll be grand.
“It’s gonna be very fun,” Gilgeous-Alexander told reporters in Denver after Game 6. “It’s gonna be the highest-intensity basketball that you ever played, but at the same time, it’s still just basketball.”
Basketball on crack, maybe.
When it’s a knockout game, after all, anything can happen. That’s what makes the NCAA Tournament so great; an underdog only has to beat a team once, not three or four times. And frankly, that’s why the NBA has best-of-seven series. It’s a set-up that normally allows the best teams to triumph.
But of course, Game 7 is the best of both worlds. We get the benefits of a series. The familiarity. The contempt. The history. But we also get the pressure of a winner-take-all game. One play, one pass, one shot, one turnover, one mistake, even one misstep, could determine the game.
How will the Thunder respond?
Well, that’s quite literally anyone’s guess because we’ve never seen this bunch in this situation. For all that it’s done — the back-to-back top seeds in the Western Conference as the youngest, then the second-youngest team in the NBA, the 68 wins this season, the historic metrics and so much more — one thing that it hasn’t done is play a Game 7.
And it’ll be cannonballing into the cauldron against a Nuggets team that will be playing its second Game 7 in these playoffs and its seventh Game 7 in the Nikola Jokic era. These guys have felt the pressure, have dealt with the nerves and have managed the emotions.
Now, unlike their Game 7 triumph a couple of weeks ago against the Clippers, they haven’t always won.
In 2019, the Nuggets beat the Spurs in a seven-game first-round series but then lost to the Blazers in the conference semis in seven games.
The next year, the Nuggets had a pair of Game 7 wins, first against the Jazz, then against the Clippers.
Last year, Denver had a Game 7 meltdown against Minnesota, blowing a nearly three-touchdown, second-half lead in the conference semifinals and losing the chance to defend its NBA title.
I’ll say it again: Anything can happen.
A crazy side note to the experience that Jokic and Co. have in Game 7s is that they’ve never played a Game 7 on the road. Three in Denver and two in the COVID bubble. It’s a new challenge for the veteran team.
And it’s a big advantage for the young team.
The Thunder has been more comfortable in this series when it’s at home. Even though it lost Game 1, it led for almost three full quarters while Game 2 was nearly a wire-to-wire win in which OKC led by as many as 49 points. In Game 5, the Thunder outscored the Nuggets 34-19 in the fourth quarter.
In home games during this series, OKC is shooting 49.1% from the floor and 39.8% from behind the arc.
In road games, it is shooting 42.3% and 25.7%.
And still, Game 7s are different.
Look at OKC’s most recent Game 7. It happened in the Orlando bubble, and yes, that Thunder team was almost completely different than the current one. Still, the kookiness of that game is a cautionary tale.
The Rockets beat the Thunder that day because James Harden won the game with his defense while Dort was the best offensive player on the court. Houston’s game-winning shot, if you can believe it, was a mid-range jumper.
In other words, up was down and down was up and the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train ran backward.
But here’s some good news: Two of the guys in the Thunder blue that day in the bubble are wearing it still. Gilgeous-Alexander and Dort were big pieces then, so they got to experience a Game 7. In the bubble, yes, but the tension was there all the same.
Any lessons?
“We need to go out there, have fun, play free,” SGA said.
Easy to say. Hard to do.
That’s because Game 7s are unlike anything else in sports. They are scary and difficult. They are beautiful and rare. They are gory and glorious.
Time to see on which side the young Thunder comes down.
Jenni Carlson: Jenni can be reached at jcarlson@oklahoman.com. Like her at facebook.com/JenniCarlsonOK, follow her at @jennicarlsonok.bsky.social and twitter.com/jennicarlson_ok, and support her work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.
