Pacers vs. Thunder NBA Finals: Jalen Williams takes his star turn as OKC is a win away from championship

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OKLAHOMA CITY — The Thunder weren’t supposed to ascend to championship stature because they lacked a true sidekick to Shai Gilgeous-Alexander; Jalen Williams wasn’t supposed to be equipped to handle such responsibilities.

The Thunder are one game away from winning their first NBA championship because Williams has improved every game, every minute, absorbing information and then mutating into a two-way monster that should scare the hell out of the NBA for years to come.

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The most recent game of his life followed the last game of his life on Friday night, and his performance in Game 5 felt so familiar — even if watching him score 40 to help stave off the Indiana Pacers had some hairy moments.

Monday night’s 120-109 win at Paycom Center — which gave OKC a 3-2 lead in the best-of-seven NBA Finals —showed the best of Williams and a fully actualized version of the partnership between the Thunder’s two best players.

“Oh yeah, for sure. Nobody wins a championship with one guy and nobody’s stepping up,” Gilgeous-Alexander told Yahoo Sports when asked about Williams.

“Like, I don’t care what team it was, you need somebody to step up. You need someone to be the second option. Take pressure off the lead guy. We know that. Everyone knows that, and he’s been working like that his whole career, and he stepped in.

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“He’s stepping into these moments confident as the rest of us are, because we see the work, and we see everything is put in, and we know what he’s capable of.”

It felt familiar because on the other side was Pascal Siakam, the last sidekick to come out of nowhere to aid a supernova in June.

Just like Toronto was always a team full of competitors and winners who would ultimately lose when it counted, that’s what Oklahoma City would be thought of unless someone else stepped up.

When Siakam rose to become Kawhi Leonard’s capable sidekick, the trajectory on the Raptors went from the team always being punked by LeBron James’ Cleveland Cavaliers to the team that finally won a championship.

Now, Leonard had just arrived in Toronto before the 2018-19 season, a made man from his days in San Antonio. But the doubts were all around, just like reasonable questions were being asked of these Oklahoma City Thunder.

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Gilgeous-Alexander had already finished second in Most Valuable Player voting and the Thunder were ahead of schedule last season, but most believed it would be Chet Holmgren as the dynamo next to him when the Thunder finally broke through.

Instead, it’s Williams — selected in the same draft as Holmgren, but 10 picks later — who was part of the treasure trove of picks GM Sam Presti acquired from the Los Angeles Clippers in the Paul George deal, which went down soon after that Toronto Raptors 2019 triumph in the NBA Finals.

The Thunder will always say the right things, but the true test comes in actions that are a reflection of belief and trust. So when Gilgeous-Alexander allowed Williams the space to essentially play point guard early in Game 4 when SGA was being hounded all over, it was confirmation.

“Every moment,” Gilgeous-Alexander told Yahoo Sports. “I trust him completely, like I trust myself.”

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Gilgeous-Alexander turned into an aggressive facilitator in Game 5 (10 assists, 31 points), and Williams played as if he was shot from a cannon, attacking the rim like the gym was empty and taking passes from a trainer and connecting.

“I think first, the biggest game thing, I’ve gotten kind of numb to. Every time we play in the Finals, it’s the biggest game of your life,” Williams said. “I’d be lying if I said I could imagine doing what I did tonight. I definitely could have seen myself here a long time ago, I just didn’t think it would happen this fast.”

It’s a blur, not just the rise, but the way Williams will become the model other franchises will try to duplicate following this series. It’s what Orlando hopes will happen with Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner and what the Houston Rockets are banking on happening with Amen Thompson and any one of their productive young players.

Williams had the awareness to understand while Gilgeous-Alexander had his moment in a gotta-have-it Game 4, the opportunity to have his own would come as the Pacers tried to course-correct.

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It’s what he was preparing for when having what Thunder coach Mark Daigneault called “ugly plays, ugly games” earlier in the season, even as the Thunder were rolling to a franchise-best 68 wins.

“I think tonight a lot of the things that Dub [Williams] got in the game tonight are things we talked about earlier in the season,” Daigneault said. “He wasn’t having games like this in November, December. His focus on the improvement led him to being the player he is right now.”

And the Thunder weren’t seduced by Game 4’s win that turned the series with a formula that wasn’t sustainable. The Thunder don’t win games by getting run off the 3-point line, by playing from behind or grinding through out-of-tempo fourth quarters.

The win validated them as a team that can continue to put the puzzle pieces together when things aren’t necessarily clear, but they couldn’t live that way for the rest of this series.

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The 40 minutes of hell needed to return, along with playing off the desperate crowd that had been on its feet some 15 minutes prior to the national anthem. They needed to put the Pacers back on their heels with pressure and discomfort.

They accomplished their goals in Game 5 and even had the added benefit of Tyrese Haliburton being a shell of himself due to a lower leg injury that limited him to just four points and prompted the question of whether coach Rick Carlisle should’ve kept going with him after the Pacers gamely made a comeback.

The comeback felt too familiar to the Thunder, or at least it should’ve. The Thunder allowed the Pacers to hang around in Game 1 before being shocked with less than a second left, but they returned the favor in Game 4, tying the series at two games.

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The Pacers survived OKC’s early onslaught, but the Thunder seemed to have a little more left in the tank. T.J. McConnell had the quarter of his life (13 points) in the third, and Siakam’s triple with 8:30 left in the fourth made it a two-point game.

But the Thunder were ready with a second wind, and they turned the Pacers into a clown car of an outfit at the most surprising time.

How many possessions was it when the Pacers could barely get a shot up, or a decent entry pass to a teammate without miscommunication and disruption?

Then there was Williams, ready and able, standing outside the 3-point line, waiting on a kick-out after an offensive rebound on the very next play.

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It was the start of an 18-4 run, the start of putting the Pacers away, the start of the Thunder beginning to smell Champagne.

“By no means am I perfect in these moments,” Williams said. “You’re able to generate good habits when you have the right way of going about it and you have a process.”

That process is 48 minutes away from paying off. And if the MVP trusts him, so should the rest of us.

This news was originally published on this post .