Thunder’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander toasts teammates after ‘worst start’ of his career

The Oklahoma City Thunder are one step closer to going back to the NBA Finals. After getting demolished in Game 4, it seemed like the San Antonio Spurs came out aggressive again in Game 5. That, along with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s slow start, made it look like San Antonio would put the Thunder back on their back foot in the series.

Instead, the Thunder rallied around their struggling star. Oklahoma City came back in the same quarter and managed to finish the first with a two-point lead. That lead ballooned to 11 points after Gilgeous- Alexander found his groove in the second quarter. SGA would finish the game with 32 points on 7-19 shooting from the field with nine assists, two steals, a block, and six turnovers, most of the latter stat coming in the first half.

After the game, Gilgeous-Alexander thanked his teammates for helping carry the game while he was struggling to get his shot.

“I might have had the worst start to a basketball game of my career, but the group held it down, kept us in the game,” Gilgeous-Alexander said during the post-game interview. “Somehow, we still won the first quarter, but that’s just a testament to the guys in the locker room. Oh, I’ve been saying it all year. We’re a group of one through 15. You know, we wouldn’t be this deep in the season without these guys, everybody on the team, and it just showed again tonight.”

Gilgeous-Alexander had been struggling since Game 4, so his horrible shooting to start the first quarter was not a good sign for the Thunder. Instead of hanging their heads, though, OKC did what they always do and pushed even further. It didn’t help that a few careless fouls from the Spurs defense got Gilgeous-Alexander to the line, where he was able to find his shot again.

The Thunder aren’t out of the woods yet, of course. The close-out game is always the hardest game to win, and that’s doubly true against this Spurs team that’s always figured out an adjustment for OKC. With this performance from the bench, though, the Thunder should have great odds of closing out this series.

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