Take a deep breath, folks. Wednesday's tilt between the Cleveland Cavaliers and Oklahoma City Thunder was the game of the year to this point. And if this is what June's NBA Finals are going to look like, we're in for a real treat.
The Thunder and Cavaliers went back and forth for 48 of the most intense minutes of regular-season basketball you'll ever see. Neither led by double digits at any point, and the Cavaliers didn't ultimately pull away until they won a critical challenge with 1:19 remaining to retain possession leading by three. They closed the game out from there, winning 129-122 and moving to an NBA-best 32-4 on the season while the Thunder, now 30-6, saw their 15-game winning streak snapped.
So how did they get there? How did Cleveland score 129 points on the best defense in the NBA? How did the Thunder lose control of a game they led for most of the first half?
Let's dig through what we learned from Wednesday's clash of the titans and come up with the three biggest takeaways from Cleveland's win over Oklahoma City.
Thunder lose for same reason they lost in playoffs
The Thunder may lose games, but they almost always do so on their own terms. Their basic approach to defense is to play as aggressively as humanly possible. They want to generate turnovers and use them to get out into the break. They want to force the ball out of the hands of opposing superstars. The Thunder have the NBA's best defense, but it's beatable if you're capable of beating it with one hand tied behind your back.
Oklahoma City once again dictated the terms of engagement on Wednesday. Donovan Mitchell spent the entire game in the Dorture Chamber, scoring just 11 points on 3-of-16 shooting. Cleveland turned the ball over 15 times, not a lot by Oklahoma City standards, but above their average of 13 turnovers per contest. The game largely played out the way that the Thunder wanted it to. The problem is that their style allows opponents one very specific, high-value shot: corner 3s. Specifically, corner 3s shot by opposing role players.
No team allows more corner 3-point attempts per game than the Thunder at 11.3. Cleveland took 14 of them on Wednesday and made eight. This game swung, in large part, on the fact that Max Strus, Dean Wade and Caris LeVert made their 3s (10 for 15 combined) while Oklahoma City's role players didn't.
If that sounds familiar, it probably should. Remember Oklahoma City's second-round loss to Dallas last season? The Thunder built their game plan around trapping Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving, which allowed the Mavericks to take a staggering 16.2 corner 3s per game. P.J. Washington and Derrick Jones Jr. made them at rates they typically hadn't, and the Thunder were knocked out in six games.
This is the fundamental danger in the way that the Thunder play defense. If an opponent has enough ball-handling and shooting, it can minimize the turnovers and make up for the production lost out of their stars. Mitchell was slowed down, but nobody else was. Darius Garland (18 points, seven assists), Evan Mobley (21 points, 10 rebounds, seven assists) and Jarrett Allen (25 points, 11 rebounds, six assists) were fantastic, and when the Thunder defense crashed on them, they knew they had those corner 3s available to them. Cleveland's role players made them, and the rest is history.
Does this mean the Thunder need to change their approach to defense in order to win a championship? Of course not. They're the No. 1 defense for a reason, and most of the time, opponents aren't shooting 8-of-14 from anywhere except the paint. It just means that they're relying on shooting variance more than most defenses are comfortable with. Imagine being a blackjack player that always lands on 20. You're going to win most of your hands, but there's nothing you can do if the dealer comes up with 21. That's what happened against Dallas last spring. To some extent, it's what happened against Cleveland tonight. But that wasn't the only important factor working in Cleveland's favor.
Could Chet Holmgren have stopped the Cavs' paint dominance?
The raw numbers don't quite do Cleveland justice in the paint. The Cavaliers outscored the Thunder by six in that area and out-rebounded them by two. Not exactly a domination. But just look at how the last few minutes played out. All of Cleveland's points in the last four minutes came either in the paint or at the foul line because of what happened down low. Cleveland pulled in four critical offensive rebounds in an 18-second span between the 1:37 and 1:19 marks. Across the entire game, Allen had nearly as many offensive rebounds by himself (seven) as the Thunder did as a team (nine).
Give Mobley and Allen plenty of credit. The strength Mobley added last offseason has been on display all season, but his finishing in this game, in which he shot 8-of-13 from the floor, was perhaps the best example we've yet seen of his growth. Two years ago, Isaiah Hartenstein was part of the Knicks front court that embarrassed Allen so badly in the playoffs that he would later say that "the lights were brighter than expected."
The lights certainly weren't too bright on Wednesday. Allen outplayed Hartenstein. And he may have been the best player on the floor for Cleveland.
But in those crucial final minutes, it was clear that the Thunder were a big man short. They spammed the same play several times. Garland called for Hartenstein's man to screen for him well beyond the 3-point line. That forced Hartenstein to venture out beyond the arc himself, as Garland would have otherwise walked into open, pull-up 3s. Hartenstein switched onto Garland from there, and Garland would pass the ball over him to whichever big man set the screen -- Mobley or Allen. They are both such good passers that they could then easily feed the ball inside to the other star big man, who would have a scoring opportunity with Oklahoma City's only viable defender far away from the play. Mobley and Allen had 13 combined assists in this game, often passing to one another. Hartenstein was the only Thunder player capable of bothering them consistently.
You know who might have helped? Chet Holmgren, the Defensive Player of the Year frontrunner before his hip injury. Had Holmgren been on the floor, he could have been the low man in those high pick-and-rolls and taken the easy looks near the basket away from Cleveland's big men. That doesn't necessarily mean that the Thunder would have won with Holmgren. A whole bunch of other things change if Oklahoma City has to alter its rotation to accommodate him. But it does mean that the easy stuff Cleveland lived off of down the stretch wouldn't have been as available.
The Thunder and Cavaliers play again in a week. Holmgren won't be ready to return by then, so we won't see how he factors into this matchup ahead of time if this is indeed who we get in the Finals. But his absence was noted on Wednesday. He changes everything for the Thunder.
Thunder should add a creator at the trade deadline
The Thunder offense is by no means bad. It ranks eighth in the NBA. It's just not quite as versatile as Oklahoma City would likely prefer. The basic premise, aside from converting all of those turnovers into fast-break points, is to use Shai Gilgeous-Alexander's rim gravity to suck defenses into the paint and then pass the ball out for wide-open triples. Only three teams take more wide-open 3s per game than the Thunder, and Oklahoma City ranks ninth in terms of overall 3-point tries.
The Cavaliers showed some of the danger in that approach for the Thunder. Gilgeous-Alexander was great, scoring 31 points on 13-of-27 shooting. Jalen Williams was similarly productive, adding 25 points of his own. But Mobley and Allen walled off the paint as they typically do, and Cleveland was determined to limit Oklahoma City's 3-point volume. The Thunder took only 31 3s in this game, down from their season average of 38.6. With those high-value triples off of the board, the Thunder were heavily reliant on Gilgeous-Alexander and Williams making hard, intermediate shots. They did so, hitting 10 of their 14 mid-range looks and 12 of the 21 shots they took in floater range, but their overall shot quality was nowhere near what Cleveland was getting in the corners and at the basket.
This isn't the first big game in which the Thunder have struggled to generate easier shots against elite opponents. Their last two NBA Cup games, against the Bucks and Rockets, come to mind as well. It's a symptom of putting so much of the creation burden on two players. Cleveland relies heavily on three creators in Mitchell, Garland and Mobley, but virtually everyone they use is capable of finding their own shot in at least some fashion. The Thunder have a lot of players who live on what Gilgeous-Alexander and Williams can make for them.
This is a solvable problem, especially when Holmgren comes back. But with the trade deadline roughly one month away, it's one the Thunder should look to address. They have all of the draft capital and mid-sized salary filler they need to improve. Whether it's a swing on another high-end shooter like Cam Johnson or potentially another ball-handler like Collin Sexton, the Thunder offense just needs one last jolt to keep up with its dominant defense.
