CLEVELAND — No long faces. No pointing fingers. No faith wavered.
You can’t win them all — despite recent evidence to the contrary — and no one regular-season game, no matter how hyped, is going to be enough to change your mind about anything.
The Thunder come to Cleveland as the hottest team in the NBA and at the height of a 15-game winning streak, the only blemish on their lackluster performance against the Milwaukee Bucks in the NBA Cup Finals. And that result won’t even count toward the regular season standings.
But the way they do, Wednesday is the only team in the league that can credibly claim to be better than the Western Conference leader. The Cleveland Cavaliers enter the showdown with a 10-game winning streak and the best overall record in the NBA.
This isn’t just another cold January night in Cleveland.
Broadcast giant ESPN changed its schedule to show the game in prime time. This is the first time in NBA history that a 10-game winning streak and a 15-game winning streak have occurred, and only the third time in league history that two teams are expected to win 70 or more games – 70 (Thunder) and 73 (Cleveland) — met in the playoffs. regular season. It’s also a matchup between the NBA’s No. 1 defense (Thunder) and the No. 1 offense (Cleveland).
The Thunder lost to the Cavaliers 129-122 in a game that featured 30 lead changes and the two teams were never closer than three possessions. The Cavaliers improved to 32-4, while the Thunder fell to 32-6. No other team in the NBA has won 28 games.
The difference on the night was the Cavaliers’ two elite seven-footers in Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen, who were too difficult for the Thunder to handle. One Thunder big man, Isaiah Hartenstein, had a big night (18 points, 11 rebounds, 8 assists), but the Thunder desperately need another big man in Chet · Help from Chet Holmgren, who has been out since November 10th. Hip fracture.
Mobley scored 21 points, 10 rebounds and 7 assists, while Allen contributed 25 points, 12 rebounds (8 on the offensive end), 6 assists and 3 steals. The key possession of the fourth quarter came with less than two minutes left and the Thunder trailing by two when Allen got an offensive rebound off Darius Garland’s missed 3-pointer and was knocked out by Gilgeous. ·Alexander fouled. Allen missed his second free throw and was rebounded by Mobley. When Cavaliers star Donovan Mitchell missed the ensuing jumper, Allen grabbed the rebound. Then, when Mobley missed a three-pointer, Allen grabbed a rebound. There was another turnover, and when Mitchell grabbed a rebound (determined after a coach’s challenge), Mobley ended up converting a short jumper to give Cleveland a five-point lead and the game ended.
But when the TV lights went out and the echoes of the crowd’s roar finally subsided, there was nothing in the Thunder locker room to suggest they’d missed their chance, or that they hadn’t made a statement.
Lou Dort, the peerless perimeter defender and Canadian national team star, was chowing down on barbecue after helping Mitchell score 11 points on 3-for-16 shooting (less than half his season average). , it can be considered as a profit. “Masterpiece from Lu Dort,” Gilgeous-Alexander said of his fellow Canadian’s defense. “Nothing new.”
Gilgeous-Alexander opted for a burger and drank some Gatorade, even though Hartenstein chided him about the sugar content. “I need electrolytes, I’ve been exercising,” he protested.
As he finished his postgame meal and it was time to assess the wrong ending to the much-hyped regular-season showdown between two teams that lead the league and will likely meet in the NBA Finals, he didn’t Any reaction. Gilgeous-Alexander’s frustration or disappointment.
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Winning brings calmness, and the Thunder embody that. Even when I asked if there was any connection between two high-profile games in the past three weeks — the NBA Cup Finals loss to Milwaukee and Wednesday night’s loss to the Cavaliers — Gilgeous-Alexander barely blinked.
“We’ve only lost twice in this month and a half,” he shrugged. “It sucks that they’re both high-profile games. But like I said, we’re all human and we can’t be perfect. Two losses in a month and a half, no matter what stage of the game I’m at, I’m going to stick with it. “
He may be right. Their offense struggled against the Bucks — they scored a season-low 81 points — and against Cleveland, head coach Mark Daigne bemoaned their defense as the Thunder allowed points. The most points they have given up this season, 25 points, is more than they give up on average.
“Defensively, based on what we’ve done all season, we let them loose, but that’s what they do to you, you have to be really, really good on every possession to get stops,” he said.
Gilgeous-Alexander has been on an absolute high since having a terrible game (by his standards) in the Cup Final. In 10 games on Wednesday night, the Toronto-born, Hamilton-raised point guard averaged 34 points, 6 rebounds, 6 assists, 2.3 steals and 1.5 blocks per game, shooting 30% from the field. He shot 56% from three-point range and 42% from the field.
His numbers and the Thunder’s win make him a worst-case scenario MVP favorite, tied with the Denver Nuggets’ Nikola Jokic.
A strong performance on Wednesday may have helped his cause, but Gilgeous-Alexander — again, by his high standards — was only good, not otherworldly good. He finished with 31 points, but shot 13 of 27 from the field and just 1 of 6 from three-point range. While he did have three steals and two blocks, his five turnovers were uncharacteristic.
Does the size of the Cavaliers’ rim bother him? Once again, the success Gilgeous-Alexander and the Thunder are having means a loss and a rough night in the paint — he was 3-of-9 from mid-range — won’t bother him.
“They’re good rim protectors, two of them,” he said of the Cavaliers’ big man tandem. “So if one of them goes down, there’s always one around the rim. They do a good job of roaming and staying around the rim.”
The Thunder are in the midst of what could be a historic season — still seeking their first NBA title since the Seattle SuperSonics moved to Oklahoma City in 2008-09 — and in The start of a tough East Coast road trip that just swept the past week with the New York Knicks and Boston Celtics facing off at home.
There are still many challenges ahead, and perhaps history to be made. So even after a matchup between two elite teams at this point in the regular season, the overwhelming feeling is one of gratitude for the opportunity and moving on to the next game.
“It’s fun, just like any other night in an 82-game season,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “An opportunity to compete, an opportunity to play against the best teams in the world, the best players, that’s what the NBA is about, that’s what you wake up for, that’s what you go to bed with excited about. It’s fun , we were the underdog tonight, but you can’t win them all… We’re not going to win the rest of the season… Still proud of everybody because at the end of the night, we got better and better. I think we did it.”
Additionally, the Thunder will have a chance to correct this mistake. The Cavaliers will face Oklahoma City on January 16th.
