Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Supporting Cast Power Thunder to NBA Finals Game 2 Win

Mark the date: June 8, 2025.

The day the Oklahoma City Thunder showed up at the NBA Finals.

That team that played on Thursday? That wasn’t Oklahoma City. Allow an opponent to shoot 47.6% from the floor? Not OKC. Shoot 46.2% from three-point range? Not OKC. Forcing turnovers and not capitalizing on them? Come on. In Game 1, the Thunder could never get their lead higher than 15. In Game 2, Oklahoma City led by 23 in the first half, en route to a 123–107 win over the Indiana Pacers to even the series, 1–1.

“Tonight,” said Alex Caruso, “was a better representation of how we play.”

Indeed. Game 2 was closer to the Thunder team we have grown used to, the 68-win juggernaut that can beat you a dozen different ways. The defense was stingy. Indiana shot 45.1% from the floor. It shot 35% from three. Tyrese Haliburton scored 17 points. Through three quarters—when the game actually mattered—he had five. Pascal Siakam was 3 of 11 from the floor. Obi Toppin was 1 of 8. For the second straight game, Oklahoma City held Indiana to 34 points in the paint.

“Defensively they have a lot of different guys who can guard the ball, fly around,” Haliburton said. “They are really physical.”

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was statistically solid in Game 1. But he needed 30 shots to get his 38 points and occasionally looked too aggressive. At least from my corner of Paycom Center. In Game 2, Gilgeous-Alexander was outstanding. He scored 34 points on 21 shots. He handed out eight assists. He collected five rebounds. He went 11 for 12 from the free throw line. The MVP routinely split defensive traps, creating havoc in the half court.

“As a whole we did a better job of attacking,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “We were a little bit sticky last game. You have games like that. Sucks to be on this stage and have games like that. But it’s where we are, right? It’s where our feet are. All you can do is try to be better for the next one.”

Game 1 stung Gilgeous-Alexander. They should have won by double digits. Instead, they lost by a point. Gilgeous-Alexander was not going to let that happen again. He scored 15 points in the first half. He scored 12 in the third quarter. He backed down Bennedict Mathurin, powered past Andrew Nembhard and outworked Aaron Nesmith. When the shot was there, he took it. When it wasn’t, he found the guy with the better one. His eight assists on Sunday went to six different players.

“I think when your best player is out there and he trusts you to make a play, it just gives you more confidence,” Jalen Williams said. “He understands that. I think that’s one of the roles he’s gotten really good at and grown at, and it just makes our teams better.”

Gilgeous-Alexander had help. Lots of help. From Caruso. Has there been a more seamless fit to a team than Caruso? His defensive intensity powered Oklahoma City in the Western Conference playoffs. In Game 2, he added a little offense, scoring 20 points and knocking down four of his eight threes.

From Chet Holmgren. Holmgren was bad in Game 1. He scored six points and was 2 of 9 from the floor. In Game 2, he was better, scoring 15 points on 6 of 11 shooting. Oklahoma City started small again, keeping Cason Wallace in the starting lineup for Isaiah Hartenstein. But Thunder coach Mark Daigneault wisely went back to the two-big lineup early, helping Oklahoma City turn a rebounding butt whooping in Game 1 (56–39) into a win in Game 2 (43–35).

That wasn’t Daigneault’s only smart move. He gave Aaron Wiggins heavy first-half minutes. Wiggins has been a part of Oklahoma City’s rotation all postseason. He averaged 12 to 15 minutes per series in the conference playoffs. He scored 21 in a Game 1 win over Memphis and had 11 in a critical Game 4 win in Denver. But he played just nine minutes on Thursday, scoring three points. He played 21 minutes on Sunday, scoring 18.

“I give him a lot of credit because he was a huge part of our success this season and in the playoffs, his role has been variant night to night,” Daigneault said. “But he hangs in there. He was massive tonight. Went in there with great confidence. Great professionalism, great readiness and a huge performance for us in that situation.”

Like his boss, Thunder general manager Sam Presti, Daigneault craves information. Film, statistics, anecdotes—whatever. He had a lot of information on the teams Oklahoma City played in the conference playoffs. On Indiana, he had very little. The Pacers, said Daigneault, “are an acquired taste.” They are a conceptual team, Daigneault said, and “you have to be kind of a conceptual defense against them.”

“They’re a very distinct team,” Daigneault said. “They’re not like a vanilla team. They play a very distinct style. It’s part of their effectiveness. It’s both ends of the floor … I just [think] in a lot of areas it would be easy to just say that one thing looked better tonight. But that would be oversimplifying. I think we were just a little bit better in a lot of different areas.”

Now it’s Indiana’s turn to counter. The Pacers had a successful trip to Oklahoma. They leave with a split and home court advantage. But Indiana knows it was fortunate to win Game 1. And that it has to avoid falling into the kind of holes it did in Game 2. The Thunder have made Indiana a jump shooting team. They made enough to win Game 1. They have to do more to win the series.

“We have to find ways to get in the ball in [the paint],” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. “It’s just there are so many things that have to go right to get the ball into the heart of their defense. You’ve got to get a stop, a rebound. You’ve got to be able to get the ball up the floor without a turnover and then you have to be able to get it to the lane and to the rim. It’s a tough task. There were some stretches where we did some good things attacking the paint but there weren’t enough.”

Said Haliburton, “It feels like there’s five guys around you every time you’re in the paint. We know that the paint is our emphasis and the paint our friend. The more that we’re able to attack the paint, usually better things happen for us. So it’s just about getting threes your way. If you just swing the ball around and take late shot clock threes, it’s really difficult.”

Indiana will be better at home. Its role players should be better at home. But Oklahoma City showed on Sunday why it won 68 games, why it went 12–4 in the conference playoffs, why it was an overwhelming favorite entering this series. The Pacers will have to do something special. Because the Thunder just showed up.