Berry Tramel
OKLAHOMA CITY — Mark Daigneault is not a by-the-book coach. He experiments in the regular season. He’s not afraid to go against convention in the playoffs. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Didn’t seem to work Thursday night in Game 1 of the NBA Finals. Indiana’s Tyrese Haliburton capped a torrid comeback with a 20-foot jumper with 0.3 seconds left that gave the Pacers a 111-110 victory at Paycom Center.
NBA Finals
Best-of-seven: Pacers lead 1-0
Game 1: Indiana 111, OKC 110
Game 2: Indiana at OKC, 7 p.m., Sunday
Game 3: OKC at Indiana,7:30 p.m., Wednesday
Game 4: OKC at Indiana, 7:30 p.m, Friday, June 13
Game 5 (if necessary): Indiana at OKC, 7:30 p.m., Monday, June 16
Game 6 (if necessary): OKC at Indiana, 7:30 p.m., Thursday, June 19
Game 7 (if necessary): Indiana at OKC, 7 p.m., Sunday, June 22
TV/Radio: All games on ABC and KYAL-97.1
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The Thunder report card is not glittering for a game OKC dominated and should have won:
Closing lineup: D
Daigneault closed both halves without a center. He had Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jalen Williams teamed with defensive dynamos Luguentz Dort, Cason Wallace and Alex Caruso. That lineup proved to be disastrous to end the game. OKC led 106-98 with 3:24 left, Wallace having just replaced Chet Holmgren. But that defense didn’t get the job done. The Pacers scored on six of their final seven possessions and made five of eight shots, plus a couple of foul shots. Didn’t work offensively, either, with just four points in that 3:24, all by Gilgeous-Alexander. Maybe some Isaiah Hartenstein screens would have been useful with the game in the balance. But the closing lineup was better late in the first half, outscoring the Pacers 10-8 in its 3:39 together.
Berry Tramel: Tyrese Haliburton works his magic, and the Thunder falls in NBA Finals
Starting lineup: B
Daigneault surprisingly started Wallace instead of Hartenstein. The smaller lineup went OK. Nothing special. The Thunder had a 12-10 lead with 5:05 left in the first quarter, when Daigneault made his first substitution. Daigneault also played the starters for an extended length to start the third quarter, and OKC outscored Indy 18-17 in that span of 6:46. That’s a combined 30-27 in 13:19 of action. The quintet of Wallace, Dort, SGA, Williams and Holmgren was better offensively than most other lineups, making 13 of 27 shots (OKC otherwise made 26 of 71). The defense was not quite as effective. In those 13-plus minutes, the Pacers shot 50% (11 of 22) with six turnovers.
2-point shooting: D
The Thunder made 28 of 68 2-point shots. That’s reason Number 1 why OKC lost. The Thunder shot 55.9% on 2’s in the regular season and had shot 55.4% in the West playoffs. Then came the 41.1% dud against the Pacers. In the paint, the Thunder made just 23 of 54, 42.6%.Williams made just five of 15 2-pointers; Holmgren was just two of eight in a truly awful performance. Gilgeous-Alexander, a 2-point master, made just 11 of 24. The Thunder isn’t going to win a 3-point showdown with Indiana. OKC has to be better from 2’s.
Transition defense: A
The Pacers love to run. Indiana doesn’t even need a takeaway to get out on the fast break. Sometimes, the Pacers don’t even need an opponent’s missed shot to get out on the run. But Indiana had just 10 fast-break points in Game 1. And it wasn’t because the Pacers missed shots. Indiana got off only five shots in transition and made four. The Thunder defense got back and stymied Haliburton, who has been an open-court phenom in these playoffs. The game-winner notwithstanding, OKC mostly kept him corralled.
Transition offense: D
The Pacers committed 20(!) first-half turnovers, including giveaways on six straight possessions late in the second quarter. Indiana finished with 25 turnovers. But the Thunder produced just 11 points off those turnovers. OKC typically feeds off turnovers the way Amazon feeds off compulsive shoppers. The Thunder was averaging 23.75 points off turnovers in the playoffs, the NBA leader by a wide margin. That was on 18 opponent turnovers a game. You had to figure Indiana’s 25 turnovers would result in at least 30 Thunder points. But no. OKC got off only eight shots in transition, making four. The Thunder committed just seven turnovers, but four came immediately after Indiana turnovers. Twenty-five Indiana turnovers should have turned Game 1 into a big-time rout. Instead, the Pacers hung around and gave themselves a chance to win.
Luguentz Dort: A
The best player on the floor in Game 1. Dort opened the game by manically running around to grab loose-ball rebounds. He got hot and hit five 3-pointers in an 11½-minute span that gave the Thunder a big cushion. Dort played great defense on Haliburton, who had a pedestrian game. Haliburton’s game-winner came while he was defended by Wallace — Indiana coach Rick Carlisle wisely didn’t call timeout when the Pacers rebounded a Gilgeous-Alexander miss with 10 seconds left, else Dort would have latched onto Haliburton.
Daigneault went to his bench early — 10 Thunders played in the first quarter, then rookie Ajay Mitchell joined the fray early in the second quarter. But the bench seemed rattled with the lineup change. Carlisle ended up using his bench more than did Daigneault, 74:56-70:51. The Pacer bench outscored the Thunder’s 39-28 (Obi Toppin stopped throwing the ball away and started making 3-pointers), and the Indiana bench made 14 of 24 shots, to the Thunder’s nine of 21. But the Thunder generally thrived when Indiana’s reserves played — the Pacers outscored OKC by 13 points with Toppin on the court, but otherwise T.J. McConnell was minus-13, Ben Sheppard was minus-12, Thomas Bryant minus-9 and Bennedict Mathurin minus-8. Caruso was his usual productive and destructive self, and Hartenstein (nine points, nine rebounds) is almost unfair as a backup center.
NBA Finals Pacers Thunder Basketball
Fans cheer before Thursday's Game 1 of the NBA Finals in Oklahoma City. Nate Billings, Associated Press
Loud City was great, as always. And yes, it’s the Finals. The Thunder fans ought to be great. But several Pacers, unprompted, commented on the noise level and the difficulty of playing in such an environment. “This arena is madness,” Carlisle said. “The decibels were insane. There's a lot going on. Grateful to hang in and give ourselves a chance in the end.”
berry.tramel@tulsaworld.com
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