It took seven games, but the Thunder finally got by the Nuggets with a blowout Game 7 win in the Western Conference semifinals. It was a game that validated the team’s entire roster.
Game 7 was supposed to be the last great battle between two championship-worthy teams in the Denver Nuggets and Oklahoma City Thunder. Instead, Sunday afternoon it played out like a horror movie in middle America for the Nuggets.
That feeling was already lingering for the team before the game, with Aaron Gordon clearly hobbled by a reported Grade 2 hamstring strain. He suited up and was somehow impactful early in the game but clearly wasn’t close to 100% physically. Michael Porter Jr. was already injured and didn’t looked like himself all series.
The knockout punch landed in the second quarter, when the Thunder went on a run that felt like their validation and the eulogy for the Nuggets all at once. Oklahoma City went on an 18-5 run that ended the quarter and effectively ended the Nuggets’ season as the Thunder went on to win 125-93 and advance to face the Minnesota Timberwolves in the Western Conference finals.
That run wasn’t just the key to Game 7; it showed that the way the Thunder built their team could work in the biggest of moments. The Thunder didn’t just climb the Nikola Jokic mountain, they did it leaning into their biggest strengths.
Defensive Dominance
The Thunder outperformed the Nuggets all game, generating good looks from the start. The thing that prevented them from pulling away earlier was the thing that prevented them from ever being comfortable in the series: shooting.
Whether it was Game 7 jitters or the continuation of a team-wide slump, the Thunder didn’t connect on several good 3-point looks early in the game. To be fair, some of these open looks were clearly strategic decisions by the Nuggets. With their best defender not healthy in Gordon, the Nuggets decided letting Lu Dort and Aaron Wiggins shoot open 3s early on and hoping they’d miss was the best strategy they could use. And it paid off for a while.
The Nuggets took a five-point lead into the second, but the Thunder, the best defensive team in the league all year, turned it on defensively in the second quarter. The Nuggets had just 20 points and Jokic, who had been able to keep his turnovers to a minimum the last three games, struggled with the defensive pressure. The Thunder were able to focus on stopping him even more with Gordon injured and ineffective and Jamal Murray struggling.
Toward the end of the second quarter, the Nuggets committed two live-ball turnovers on consecutive possessions that led to easy transition baskets for the Thunder. It was the embodiment of the difference of the series with the Nuggets always on the brink of disaster against the stifling Thunder defense. They fought it off admirably with brilliance and championship mettle, but, in the end, they couldn’t overcome it.
The Nuggets had their chance earlier in the quarter, when Isaiah Hartenstein sat due to foul trouble and the Thunder opted to go without Chet Holmgren or him on the floor. If ever there was a chance to revive the Jokic post-up game, which had struggled all series, this was it.
Except, the Thunder erased this opportunity by simply not allowing him to get the ball. It’s hard to overstate how impressive Alex Caruso was fighting against Jokic this series. Jokic won that matchup most of the time, but Caruso made him work really hard to do so. And in Game 7, the matchup tipped toward the Thunder because Caruso and his teammates made it so difficult for Jokic to catch the ball anywhere near where he was comfortable.
It’s easy to gameplan and say “let other players beat you” but a lot harder to execute. A team can’t just have two guys guarding Jokic at all times without bleeding points. The doubles and help had to come at exactly the right time and the recovery had to be on point as well. Jokic doesn’t have to put the ball in the basket to beat teams.
But the Thunder made sure he had no lanes to beat him with his passing either. By forcing him to work so hard just to get the ball where he wanted it, the Thunder had already run out most of the shot clock before they had to be in rotation. Flying around in recovery for 10 seconds is a lot easier than doing it for 20.
When the Nuggets couldn’t capitalize against a small lineup, the Thunder looked to have the upper hand. And then came the end-of-quarter run, which Caruso was of course a part of as well with a key steal.
The Thunder traded Josh Giddey for Caruso in the offseason with this exact game in mind. Giddey had some good moments this year, but the Thunder needed a player who could make winning plays without the ball. A player who took nothing off the table on either end but accepted a limited offensive role. A difference maker of a different kind who made the team’s strengths and weaknesses stronger. They needed Caruso.
With the defense holding up its end of the bargain, the Thunder just needed someone besides Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to help drag them to the finish line offensively. Jalen Williams was that guy.
Williams had a series to forget offensively but a Game 7 to remember, specifically in the second quarter. After taking the right shots and missing in Game 6, he found a rhythm and poured in 17 of his 24 points in the second quarter. It was tied for the most points he’d scored in a quarter all season.
Gilgeous-Alexander was brilliant again with 35 points on 12-of-19 shooting. It looked like Jokic might be the star who had figured out the defense against him leading into Game 7, but it was SGA who shrugged off everything the Nuggets threw at him to make it look easy in the finale. He finally found his 3-point shot as well, shooting 3 of 4 on 3-pointers.
The rest of the team still struggled on 3s, but it didn’t matter. With their two best offensive players leading the way and a stifling defense, the Thunder had more than enough to win.
Deep Trouble
It can be a mistake to assume when one team wins a seven-game series that all of the strengths of that team are the most important qualities any team can have, and all the deficiencies of their opponents are fatal flaws that mean they were destined to lose.
Certainly, the Nuggets could have won Game 7, and the conversation would’ve been about how much their experience and Jokic’s brilliance could make up for any of the differences between the two teams.
But it’s hard to look at the way this series went and not think that the depth difference between these two teams is really important. The Thunder had eight players they trusted in this series, and Cason Wallace and Caruso were basically sixth and seventh starters.
Meanwhile, the Nuggets never knew what they were getting from any players off their bench and had to rely so heavily on their starters, even with Porter Jr. injured the whole series and Gordon hurt for Game 7. They were essentially down to Christian Braun, Murray and Jokic by the end of the series. That clearly took a toll on their team.
The Nuggets played the maximum 14 games in their two rounds this postseason. Murray and Jokic ranked first and second, respectively, in minutes per game among players whose team advanced to the second round. They looked understandably tired in Game 7.
Meanwhile, the Thunder had an easy first-round series and used the bench enough against the Nuggets that none of their players averaged even 37 minutes per game coming into Game 7. They didn’t look fresher just because they were younger; they were also more rested. And even though the series went seven games, the Thunder left no doubt in the end which team deserved to advance to the conference finals. They had the third-best point differential in a seven-game series in NBA history.
Depth may not matter as much in the playoffs as it does in the regular season, but it’s still a lot easier to navigate the playoffs with eight or nine players you can trust. There is often a push-pull between having a superstar or having a loaded roster. The Thunder have both, and that’s the main reason they’re moving on and the Nuggets are not.
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