OKLAHOMA CITY — Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was nervous about Game 7. Jalen Williams couldn’t sleep.
Hmm. Sounds like the rest of the state of Oklahoma. Optimism, what there was of it, was cautious. Trepidation ruled. A magical Thunder season seemed capable of going kaput. Two weeks of Nikola Jokic can do that.
Trade Chet Holmgren for Giannis Antetokounmpo. Trade Williams. Demand that Sam Presti unload all his draft capital to produce a roster incapable of losing the 2026 title. Thunder fans were losing their minds at the idea that the Thunder wouldn’t get over the West semifinals hump.
And when the Denver Nuggets zipped to an early 11-point lead Sunday, most everyone in Paycom Center or watching on ABC wondered if this Thunder team indeed was too young, too hyped, too not Jokic.
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Oklahoma City's Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Alex Caruso celebrate late in the Thunder's Western Conference semifinals Game 7 win over the Denver Nuggets on Sunday in Oklahoma City. Kyle Phillips, Associated Press
But then Holmgren, Alex Caruso and Aaron Wiggins combined to score seven points on the Thunder’s final three possessions of an otherwise miserable first quarter.
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And Williams busted his slump, with 11 points in the final 2:16 of the first half, giving the Thunder a commanding halftime lead.
And Cason Wallace had a runout off a Nuggets miss and stunningly dunked the ball over, well, more like past, Nikola Jokic, giving the Thunder a 21-point lead midway through the third quarter.
And Gilgeous-Alexander scored 12 points in a 200-second span early in the fourth quarter to remove all doubt.
And Oklahomans went from holding their breath to exhaling with glee to an all-out whirlwind. The Nuggets ran out of gas, and the Thunder ran into the Western Conference finals as the favorite to win an NBA championship.
The Thunder won 125-93 — the Nuggets ended the game on an 11-0 run in the final three minutes — after 66 hours of trepidation that this magical season could derail.
This all-Thunder ScissorTales offers up a report card, a Q&A with Caruso and a nod to TNT, which is in the Thunder’s past and not its future. But we start with the tension of a Game 7 that the Thunder blew into oblivion.
“Not many games you’re going to remember for the rest of your life,” Mark Daigneault said of Game 7.
This was one. The relentless Nuggets, outmanned in overall talent and in number of ballplayers, refused to go away, so here was a Game 7 that could brand the Thunder as a 2025 fraud.
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Shai Gilgeous-Alexander celebrates Sunday after the Oklahoma City Thunder took a 125-93 win over the Denver Nuggets to advance to the NBA Western Conference finals. Kyle Phillips, Associated Press
“I was nervous, to be honest, knowing what’s on the line,” said Gilgeous-Alexander, who seems too cool to ever be nervous. “We worked so hard, the 82-game season, to know if you don’t bring your A game, it could be all over. That nervousness motivated me. I used it to my advantage.”
Gilgeous-Alexander was superb. He scored 35 points on 12-of-19 shooting. So, too, was Williams, who was downright awful in a Game 6 loss at Denver.
Williams in the second quarter Sunday scored 17 points; Denver scored just 20 in that period. Williams finished with 24 points on 10-of-17 shooting, ending all talk that he was a playoff liability, on his way to being the next James Harden.
“I didn’t really go to sleep,” Williams said. “I slept a little bit. I was just excited to play. You don’t know how many Game 7s you’re going to get.”
Truth is, what we expected to happen finally happened. The Nuggets wore down. In the middle two quarters, the Thunder outscored Denver 76-46(!), and Nuggets interim coach David Adelman waved the white flag, removing his starters with 9:36 left in the game.
Caruso was sensational, with his defense on Jokic (yes, Jokic) and energy, and while he didn’t cop to nerves, he did cop to some anxiousness.
“If you don’t feel anything, you’re probably like a serial killer,” Caruso said. “Need to be checked out. I was a little anxious, not in the sense of winning or losing, but in the sense of I was ready to play. Ready to get to the game. It’s about going out there and competing.”
Still, Caruso said he got 9½ hours of sleep Saturday night. Bet the under with that number of the average Thunder fan’s sleep.
This was an uneven series, with the Thunder showing it had the better team, but the Nuggets had the best player, in Jokic. The Thunder’s depth and talent eventually won out, in a big way.
Truth is, this might have been the NBA championship game. Just as the Thunder are now, the Nuggets would have been the favorite to win the title, had they won Game 7.
But Daigneault told his squad it didn’t have to be anything special in Game 7. Just be the team it has been all season.
“When we play how we did tonight, it wasn’t perfect, but large majority of the game, we were kind of in control,” Caruso said. “Our physicality, our pressure on the ball, finishing on the ball, getting out in transition, we have so much talent, that kind of doubles down on how special we can be.”
The blowout renewed Oklahomans’ belief in the Thunder. The Nuggets stole Game 1 and made it hairy for a full two weeks. Until Game 7, when the Thunder found its accelerator and the entire state exhaled.
Nuggets Thunder Basketball (copy)
Denver's Nikola Jokic, center, was markedly less effective in Sunday's Game 7 than he had been in earlier games of the series, scoring 20 points on 5-of-9 shooting. The 6-foot-11 Jokic was primarily defended Sunday by 6-5 Alex Caruso, left. Kyle Phillips, Associated Press
Report card: Caruso on Jokic a great idea
A 125-93 Game 7 deserves a report card with A after A after A. So here goes:
Guarding Jokic: A. Daigneault has used the 6-foot-5 Caruso on the huge Jokic in the series, but nothing like Sunday. With the Nuggets running their offense through Jokic near the top of the key, Caruso was deployed to antagonize Jokic, allowing Holmgren to run free and protect the rim. Center Isaiah Hartenstein didn’t play poorly in his 17 minutes, but still, it was just 17 minutes, because Caruso was so effective. The double-big lineup of Holmgren and Hartenstein together was outscored by six points Sunday. Daigneault sensed that early and went with a different strategy. Jokic finished with 20 points on 5-of-9 shooting; think about that, nine shots for Jokic in a make-or-break game. Jokic did get 11 foul shots (making nine), and he added nine rebounds and seven assists, but five turnovers. Truth is, Jokic seemed tired, along with the rest of his teammates.
Shortened rotation: A. Daigneault did not have a pristine series. But his button-pushing was on the mark in Game 7. Daigneault shortened his rotation, going only eight deep until 7:40 remained in the fourth quarter. That meant more minutes for Wallace (28:35), Caruso (25:45) and Wiggins (19:22). Wallace was sensational with his ballhawking, and Caruso, like usual, turned the game. The Thunder outscored Denver by 40 points with Caruso on the court and by 38 with Wallace on the court. Those are the highest plus-minus totals by a bench player in Game 7 history.
Aggression: A. The Thunder played with force, both offensively and defensively, after the first few minutes. The Nuggets took advantage of that aggression, living at the foul line in the first quarter. But eventually, the Thunder got there, too, and finished with more foul shots (24-22) than did Denver. And OKC’s defensive pressure was amazing. The Nuggets committed 22 turnovers, and the Thunder outscored Denver 37-7 in points off turnovers. The Thunder had 16 steals, and the deeper the game went, the less resolve the Nuggets mustered. The Thunder was more aggressive offensively, too; OKC outscored Denver 77-54 in paint points.
Rebounding: A. The Thunder made just 10 first-quarter shots; three came via offensive rebounds. Through three quarters, which is all that matters, each team had 15 offensive rebounds. But the Thunder took much greater advantage, outscoring Denver 19-11 in second-chance points. Holmgren was strong, with 11 rebounds, but Hartenstein and Luguentz Dort each had four offensive rebounds, most of them in the first half.
Thunder stars: A. Gilgeous-Alexander and Williams played well in the same game only twice in this series. The other game was OKC’s 149-106 rout in Game 2. SGA and Williams combined to score 59 on 22-of-36 shooting, with just one turnover, 11 assists and four steals. This team is hard to beat when both SGA and Williams shine.
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Oklahoma City's Alex Caruso, bottom left, hands a souvenir to a young fan after the team's win against the Denver Nuggets in Game 7 in the Western Conference semifinals of the NBA basketball playoffs on Sunday in Oklahoma City. Kyle Phillips, Associated Press
Q&A: Alex Caruso
Q: How do you guard Jokic?
Caruso: “It’s a lot of hard work, obviously. He’s a phenomenal player. His resume’ speaks for itself. But he’s a difficult matchup because he just does so many different things, to get others involved and influence the game. For me, it’s just about competing. Like, there’s nothing to say before. It’s Game 7. You’re either going to the next round or your summer has started. So for me, it was just about being relentless with my energy, the effort to make it tough on him. And obviously the guys around me did a good job of helping and swarming that, because I’m not doing that on my own. But just making stuff hard on him. Understanding how the game was going to be called, understanding the flow of the game, where you can be physical, where you can’t. Just try to make him work for stuff.”
Q: Did you finally wear out the Nuggets?
Caruso: I think their leaders are elite competitors, so the rest of the team follows, and they always have that mindset. Talk about wearing out through the series, but I think our pressure and our energy, maybe not as much through the series, but through the games that we won, was the difference. The games that we ended up winning were games we had high intensity, full throttle, pressure, finishing possessions, physicality on defense. And I think we did a good job of that tonight.”
Q: How was the atmosphere?
Caruso: “Yeah, I love this place. They yell. I told people after Game 5 here, I think that’s the loudest basketball arena I’ve ever been in that moment, after we hit the second 3 and get the defensive rebound and go up six and Shai gets fouled. This place, it was like deafening. It’s just a testament to how much the community cares, how much this city cares about basketball and this team. I think it’s reciprocated. We play with a ton of energy and a ton of effort and leave it all out there. They’re excited to do their part and cheer us all on. That’s the biggest thing I think in sports. Fans want to see effort. They want to see you play with energy and play hard and compete. I think this team embodies that. That’s easy to get behind. They do a great job supporting us. It’s been a lot of fun to see in the playoffs.”
Mailbag: Playoff shooting
This Thunder team is making fans think about questions.
Tim: “I am curious to know if the 3-point percentage in NBA games goes up or down in the playoffs, in comparison to the regular season for the past 15-20 years. My guess is that percentage goes down, since the defensive pressure is more intense. Yet some teams (the Celtics) continue to launch them at a record pace.”
Berry: Great question. And quite relevant, considering the Thunder (and the Nuggets) shot more poorly in this just-concluded series. The Thunder shot 32.6% from deep in this series, after shooting 37.4% during the regular season.
I went back 15 years and found a lot of interesting information. The three biggest discrepancies between 3-point shooting in the regular season and the playoffs came in the Years 1, 2 and 3 of that 15-year look. In 2010-11, the difference was 1.7 percentage points (.358/.341; in 2011-12, the difference was 1.6 percentage points (.349/.333); and in 2012-13, the difference was 1.5 percentage points (.359/.344).
But in 2023-24, the difference again reached 1.5 percentage points (.366/.351).
The discrepancies are not linear. Three times in the 15 years, the playoff shooting has been better than the regular-season shooting: .354/.355 in 2021-22, .358/.360 in 2019-20 and .358/.361 in 2016-17.
The average difference is 0.7 percentage points worse in the playoffs. The mean difference is 0.6 percentage points worse in the playoffs. So yes, in general, shooting gets a little worse in the playoffs.
The List: NBA television networks
The Thunder has played its final game on TNT, for the foreseeable future. TNT is in the final year of its contract with the NBA, and TNT’s final claim on the NBA is the Eastern Conference finals.
Here are the networks that have televised NBA games nationally, ranked by numbers of years:
1. TNT: 37 years, 1988-2025
2. ABC: 32 years, 1964-73 & 2002-2025
3. ESPN: 25 years, 1982-84 & 2002-25
Roundball Rock
The NBA and John Tesh's Roundball Rock theme song will be back on NBC this fall. Reed Saxon, Associated Press file
4. NBC: 20 years, 1954-62 & 1990-02
5. TBS: 18 years, 1984-2002
6. CBS: 17 years, 1973-90
7. USA: 5, 1979-84
8. Hughes: 2 years, 1962-64
berry.tramel@tulsaworld.com
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