shai gilgeous-alexander

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander had 30 points and 12 assists and the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder extended their season-opening winning streak to eight games with a 126-107 victory over the Clippers at Intuit Dome on Tuesday night.

Isaiah Joe added 22 points and Cason Wallace and Aaron Wiggins each had 12 to help the Thunder overcome an early surge by the Clippers to set a franchise record for consecutive victories to start a season.

Gilgeous-Alexander, who played for the Clippers in his rookie season before he was traded to the Thunder, was nine of 14 from the floor and four of five from three-point range.

James Harden scored 25 points and John Collins added 17 for the Clippers. They were without Kawhi Leonard (ankle) and Bradley Beal (knee) on the second night of a home back-to-back.

Derrick Jones Jr. scored 16 points as the Clippers lost consecutive home games after winning the first three in their own building.

After trailing by as many as 13 points in the first half, the Thunder took the lead for good at 81-78 on a three-pointer from Aaron Wiggins with 3:34 remaining in the third quarter. Oklahoma City closed the quarter on an 8-2 run to take a 94-86 lead.

The Thunder put the game away with a 11-0 run to open the fourth quarter for a 105-86 advantage. It was an extended 17-0 run going back to consecutive three-pointers from Isaiah Joe and Gilgeous-Alexander to end the third.

INDIANAPOLIS — Season on the line, the Indiana Pacers did what they’ve done time and time again. They bucked the odds.

And the NBA Finals are going to an ultimate game.

Obi Toppin scored 20 points, Andrew Nembhard added 17 and the Pacers forced a winner-take-all Game 7 by rolling past the Oklahoma City Thunder 108-91 Thursday night.

The first Game 7 in the NBA Finals since 2016 is Sunday night in Oklahoma City.

“The ultimate game,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said.

Pascal Siakam had 16 points and 13 rebounds for Indiana, while Tyrese Haliburton — playing through a strained calf — scored 14 points. The Pacers started slowly and then turned things into a blowout.

In a way, Game 6 was a microcosm of Indiana’s season. The Pacers started the regular season with 15 losses in 25 games, have had five comebacks from 15 or more down to win games in these playoffs, and they’re one win from a title.

“We just wanted to protect home court,” Haliburton said. “We didn’t want to see these guys celebrate a championship on our home floor. Backs against the wall and we just responded. … Total team effort.”

T.J. McConnell, the spark off the bench again, finished with 12 points, nine rebounds and six assists for Indiana.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 21 points for the Thunder, who pulled their starters after getting down by 30 going into the fourth. Jalen Williams added 16.

“Credit Indiana,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “They earned the win. They outplayed us for most of the 48 minutes. They went out there and attacked the game.”

Good news for the Thunder: Home teams are 15-4 in finals Game 7s. Bad news for the Thunder: Cleveland won at Golden State in the most recent of those and one of the three other home-team losses was in 1978 — by Seattle, the franchise that would move to Oklahoma City three decades later.

Indiana missed its first eight shots and got down 10-2. The arena, roaring just a few minutes before at the start, quieted quickly. Hall of Famer Reggie Miller, sitting courtside in a Jalen Rose Pacers jersey, was pacing, kneeling, generally acting more nervous than he ever seemed as a player.

No need.

After the slow start, the Pacers outscored the Thunder 68-32 over the next 24 minutes. An Indiana team that hadn’t led by more than 10 points at any time in the first five games — and that double-digit lead was brief — led by 28 early in the third quarter. The margin eventually got to 31, which was Oklahoma City’s second-biggest deficit of the season.

The worst also came in these playoffs: a 45-point hole against Minnesota in the Western Conference finals. The Thunder came back to win that series, obviously, and now will need that bounce-back ability one more time.

“Obviously, it was a very poor performance by us,” Daigneault said.

The Thunder, desperate for a spark, put Alex Caruso in the starting lineup in place of Isaiah Hartenstein to open the second half. There was no spark. In fact, there was nothing whatsoever — neither team scored in the first 3:53 after halftime, the sides combining to miss their first 13 shots of the third quarter.

And the outcome was never in doubt.

INDIANAPOLIS — Game on the line, season quite possibly on the line, the Oklahoma City Thunder had only one place to turn.

They went to the MVP.

And Shai Gilgeous-Alexander delivered, scoring 15 of his 35 points in the final 4:38, capping Oklahoma City’s rally from a 10-point, second-half deficit and sealing a 111-104 win over the Indiana Pacers 111-104 on Friday night to tie the NBA Finals at two games apiece.

“He definitely showed who he is tonight,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said.

It was all SGA for OKC down the stretch. The Thunder closed the game on a 16-7 run; he had all but one of those points.

“We played with desperation to end the game,” Gilgeous-Alexander said, “and that’s why we won.”

Jalen Williams added 27, Alex Caruso had 20 and Chet Holmgren finished with 14 points and 15 rebounds for the Thunder. They did it the hard way — with a season-low three three-pointers, and no assists from Gilgeous-Alexander for the first time all season.

Pascal Siakam scored 20 for Indiana, which got 18 from Tyrese Haliburton and 17 from Obi Toppin.

Game 5 of the series — now essentially a best-of-three — is at Oklahoma City on Monday night.

“This kind of a challenge is going to have extreme highs and extreme lows,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. “This is a low right now and we’re going to have to bounce back from it.”

The Thunder basically saved their realistic chance at winning the title. Teams with a 3-1 series lead in the NBA Finals have gone on to win the championship 37 times in 38 past chances. The Pacers looked well on their way to being the 39th team with such an edge, before Gilgeous-Alexander saved the day.

“We knew it when we woke up this morning; 3-1 is a lot different than 2-2 going back home,” Gilgeous-Alexander said.

The Pacers came out flying, scoring 20 points in the first 4:59 — only the second time all season the Thunder gave up so many so quickly. They led by as many as nine early, but were unable to pull away.

And things got chippy for the first time in the series: Toppin was called for a Flagrant 1 on Caruso midway through the second quarter, then Toppin was the recipient of a Flagrant 1 from Lu Dort just before the half. The Pacers closed on a 15-6 run, taking a 60-57 lead into the break.

Toppin’s baseline dunk late in the third put Indiana up 86-76, its first double-digit lead of the series coming late in the 15th quarter of the series. Back came OKC: A 13-3 run tied the game early in the fourth at 89, the first of a handful of those down the stretch.

Tied at 91. Tied at 95. Tied at 97. And, finally, the lead: Gilgeous-Alexander’s step-back with 2:23 left put the Thunder up 104-103, their first lead of the second half.

They kept it the rest of the way.

“We wanted to win,” Siakam said. “I thought we played well enough for some stretches … but unfortunately, it didn’t happen.”

Reynolds writes for the Associated Press.

It screamed watershed moment, the forever luckless Clippers outfoxing the eternally exalted Lakers for the services of not one, but two superstars.

The news stunned the NBA: In a matter of hours, the Clippers had traded for Paul George and signed Kawhi Leonard.

Six years later, the deal for George is considered tragically lopsided, the Clippers fleeced and forced to watch assets they surrendered lift the Oklahoma City Thunder to within three wins of an NBA championship.

The trade wouldn’t be looked upon harshly had the Clippers won a championship in the five seasons that George and Leonard played together. But the deepest the team advanced was the Western Conference finals in 2021.

George left as a free agent last offseason, signing with the Philadelphia 76ers. Leonard has played in only 266 of 472 games with the Clippers because of injuries. The Clippers paid George $195.9 million and have paid Leonard $194.6 million — with Leonard under contract for another two years and $100.3 million.

Meanwhile, one of the two players shipped to the Thunder along with five first-round draft picks, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, has blossomed into the NBA‘s most valuable player. And the 2022 draft pick acquired from the Clippers was used to select Jalen Williams, a rising star who averaged 21.6 points a game this season.

Both are bargains. Gilgeous-Alexander — known as SGA — was paid just $13.5 million his first three seasons with the Thunder before signing a five-year, $173-million contract that will take him through the 2026-27 season. Williams has made $13.7 million in three seasons and will be paid $6.6 million next season, the last of his rookie contract.

And it’s a deal that just keeps giving — to the Thunder, who as a result of the trade get the Nos. 15 and 24 picks in this year’s draft and the Clippers’ first-round pick in 2026.

Asked to evaluate the deal moments after the Clippers defeated the Thunder in January 2024, George grudgingly acknowledged that the pendulum had swung toward Oklahoma City.

“I just think both sides won,” he said. “I did think it was quite a lot that the Clippers were willing to give up. … When that trade first happened, we knew Shai was going to be really, really good, but he’s special.”

George sighed and continued: “I guess in a way, Oklahoma won that trade with the picks and future MVP, but both sides won.”

The fact is, the Clippers couldn’t say no to the deal. Why? Because Leonard was a free agent coming off an NBA title with Toronto in which he was Finals MVP, and he was weighing offers from the Lakers and Raptors as well as the Clippers.

Signing Leonard was paramount, and he had given the Clippers something of an ultimatum: Trade for a star and I’m yours. Otherwise, it’s hello Lakers.

Clippers owner Steve Ballmer needed to be convinced that giving up the slew of draft picks was a smart move. Leonard signing with the Lakers was an unthinkable outcome to Clippers coach Doc Rivers, and he jokingly told Ballmer the Clippers would need to relocate to Seattle if that happened.

“Steve Ballmer was nervous about the picks,” Rivers told The Times in 2019. “I said, ‘Steve, you keep saying six picks for Paul George is insane, but you’re saying it wrong. It’s not six for Paul; it’s six for Paul and Kawhi. So three for each. I would do that.’ You have to look at it in those terms.”

Knowing the Clippers desperately needed to consummate the deal, Thunder general manager Sam Presti demanded SGA — who was coming off an impressive rookie campaign — respected forward Danilo Gallinari and the draft picks.

Unforeseen was that SGA would rapidly rise from promising youngster to foundational piece to perhaps the best player in the NBA. He led the league in scoring this season with 32.7 points a game. He put up 34 points, eight assists and five rebounds in the Thunder’s win over the Indiana Pacers in Game 2 of the Finals on Sunday.

In Game 1, a stunning Pacers comeback was helped by two late missed shots by SGA. Still, he scored 38 points, and his 72 in his first two NBA Finals games is a league record.

“I’m being myself,” Gilgeous-Alexander told reporters. “I don’t think I tried to reinvent the wheel or step up to the plate with a different mindset. Just try to attack the game the right way. I think I’ve done a pretty good job of that so far.”

Through 18 playoff games, SGA is averaging 30.4 points, 6.8 assists, 5.6 rebounds and 1.8 steals. Only Michael Jordan and LeBron James have recorded those numbers during a playoff run of 16 or more games.

None of this is a complete surprise. SGA provided the Clippers with opportunities to feel seller’s remorse soon after the trade. On Dec. 22, 2019, he scored 32 points with five assists and two steals in a 118–112 Thunder victory. Two years later almost to the day, he made a three-pointer at the buzzer to give the Thunder a 104–103 win.

Next is closing out the Finals and delivering a title to Oklahoma City — something that has proven elusive for the Clippers, the oldest franchise in North American professional sports to have never played in a championship game.

“This is where we are, you can’t go back in the past,” SGA said. “You can only make the future better. That’s what I’m focused on.”

The Clippers can only do the same.

OKLAHOMA CITY — This has been Oklahoma City’s formula all season: Lose one game, respond in the next.

That’s exactly what the Thunder did in Game 2 of the NBA Finals.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 34 points, Alex Caruso added 20 off the bench and the Thunder beat the Indiana Pacers 123-107 on Sunday night to tie these finals at one game apiece.

Jalen Williams scored 19, Aaron Wiggins had 18 and Chet Holmgren finished with 15 for the Thunder. It was the franchise’s first finals game win since the opener of the 2012 series against Miami.

“We did some things good tonight. We did some things bad,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “We’ve got to be able to get better and be ready for Game 3.”

Tyrese Haliburton scored 17 for Indiana, which erased a 15-point, fourth-quarter deficit in Game 1 but never made a push on Sunday. Myles Turner scored 16 and Pascal Siakam added 15 for the Pacers, the first team since Miami in 2013 to not have a 20-point scorer in the first two games of the finals.

Game 3 is Wednesday at Indianapolis, in what will be the first finals game in that city in 25 years.

“A bad first half, obviously, was a big problem,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. “And we just played poorly. A little better in the second half. But you can’t be a team that’s reactive and expect to be successful or have consistency.”

Gilgeous-Alexander’s first basket of the night was a history-maker: It gave him 3,000 points on the season, including the regular season and playoffs. And later in Game 2, he passed New York’s Jalen Brunson (514) as the leading overall scorer in these playoffs.

But the real milestone for the MVP came a couple hours later, when he and most everybody else on the Thunder got a finals win for the first time.

A 19-2 run in the second quarter turned what was a six-point game into a 23-point Thunder lead. It might have seemed wobbly a couple of times — an immediate 10-0 rebuttal by the Pacers made it 52-39, and Indiana was within 13 again after Andrew Nembhard’s layup with 7:09 left in the third — but the Thunder lead was never in serious doubt.

“They did a good job being disruptive,” Siakam said. “They got out in transition. … They were super aggressive, which is what they do.”

With the noise level in the building often topping 100 decibels — a chain saw is 110 dB, for comparison purposes — the Thunder did what they’ve done pretty much all season. They came off a loss, this time a 111-110 defeat in Game 1, and blew somebody out as their response.

Including the NBA Cup title game, which doesn’t count in any standings, the Thunder are now 18-2 this season when coming off a loss. Of those 18 wins, 12 have been by double digits.

“That’s a long 48 hours when you lose Game 1 like that, coming into Game 2,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “The guys did a great job of just focusing on what we needed to do to stack to a win tonight. That’s how we got it.”