The Thunder’s five-step plan to avoid a 2-0 NBA Finals hole

The Oklahoma City Thunder forced 25 turnovers in Game 1 of the NBA Finals, the most in any Finals game this century. Their star point guard scored 38 points, 24 more than their opponent’s star guard. They trailed for all of 0.3 seconds of game time.

And yet, the Indiana Pacers went into Oklahoma City, weathered a terrible start and stole Game 1 by a 111-110 score. As the Pacers continue a postseason full of miraculous comebacks, the Thunder are left to wonder what went wrong — and how they can prevent it from happening again in Sunday’s Game 2 (8 p.m. ET, ABC).

Oklahoma City is still the better team in this series and therefore remains heavily favored despite the 1-0 deficit. But the Thunder used up a lot of their margin for error in Game 1. Here are their five steps to bouncing back, to both even the Finals and reclaim the advantage beyond.

1. A quick mental recovery

The Thunder’s most important requirement has nothing to do with basketball strategy and everything to do with mentality. They must put Game 1 behind them, despite how it ended; they can’t afford to lose Game 2 at home, too, like the New York Knicks did in the Eastern Conference finals after their own Game 1 calamity.

Fortunately, with the calm, collected Shai Gilgeous-Alexander leading the way, the Thunder have experience of this sort. After a stunning Game 1 collapse against the Denver Nuggets in the second round, Oklahoma City entered Game 2 on a mission, scoring 87 first-half points en route to a 149-106 victory. And after losing Game 3 against Denver in overtime, the Thunder showed enough mettle and fortitude to come back on the road in Game 4.

That effort should prove vital in the Finals, because Indiana will be better prepared going forward, as well. In the first half of Game 1, the moment seemed too big for the upstart Pacers, who committed 19 turnovers. But they settled down in the second half, to the tune of only six giveaways, which paved the way for their comeback.

Gilgeous-Alexander scored 38 points in Game 1, but his sidekicks didn’t follow suit. Holmgren and Williams are a bellwether for their team: When they’re on, OKC is nearly unbeatable, but when they can’t carry the typical burden of Nos. 2 and 3 scorers, the Thunder are vulnerable to an upset.

The latter version of both players showed up in Game 1. Williams shot 6-for-19, including 1-for-10 on shots away from the rim. Holmgren scored just six points on 2-for-9 shooting, and he was benched for the final stretch as coach Mark Daigneault closed with a small-ball lineup.

That letdown was especially problematic because the Thunder switched their starting lineup for the first time this postseason, inserting Cason Wallace for Isaiah Hartenstein to remove their double-big look. That tweak placed more pressure on Holmgren, who didn’t live up to it in his first Finals game.

(Hartenstein, conversely, was effective in 17 minutes off the bench, with nine points and nine rebounds. Indiana’s lack of a bruising center means this isn’t the best matchup for him, in theory, but he very well might deserve more playing time going forward.)

It wasn’t just that Holmgren was invisible on offense. He also suffered a rare off night defensively, losing his man on multiple 3-pointers that helped Indiana close the gap in the fourth quarter. While Holmgren finished with six points and six rebounds, Indiana’s big men thrived: 15 points and nine boards for Myles Turner, plus 17 points (and five huge 3-pointers) for reserve Obi Toppin.

Add in Pascal Siakam outplaying Williams in the battle of No. 2 options, and Indiana’s supporting cast did just enough to make up the gap between Gilgeous-Alexander and Tyrese Haliburton, who struggled all night until his last-second winner.

3. Snappier ball movement

Indiana entered the Finals with a clear defensive strategy: Let Gilgeous-Alexander take tough shots, but don’t compromise the rest of the defense to help against the MVP.

That approach forced Oklahoma City into unprecedented offensive stagnation. The Thunder threw just 208 passes in Game 1, per GeniusIQ tracking — the fewest for any team in any game all season, regular season or playoffs. Adjusted for pace, it’s the second-fewest passes in a playoff game in the tracking era (since 2013-14).

The previous playoff performances this season with the fewest pace-adjusted passes were the Cleveland Cavaliers in Game 1 against Indiana, and the Cavaliers in Game 5 against Indiana. That makes sense, as the Pacers employed a similar strategy against Donovan Mitchell as they did against SGA.

While Gilgeous-Alexander, like Mitchell, mostly handled the heavy responsibility heaped onto his shoulders, there was little playmaking for his teammates. The Thunder recorded just 13 assists in Game 1; their previous low in the playoffs was 19. (Their previous low in the regular season was 16, when the starters sat in game No. 82.)

To be fair, the Thunder would have tallied more assists if they’d shot better (more on that issue in a moment). But they should spend the off days before Game 2 identifying ways to counter this Pacers strategy by increasing their offensive flow, which could help get SGA’s teammates more involved and keep the team in rhythm in future clutch scenarios.

4. Better finishing around the basket

In retrospect, Oklahoma City lost Game 1 in the first half, when the hosts failed to build a larger lead despite forcing 19 turnovers. The Thunder’s defense looked as impregnable as ever, but the offense was holding them back.

That’s because Oklahoma City’s finishing was, to use a technical term, absolutely terrible. According to Cleaning the Glass, the Thunder shot 20-for-36 at the rim in Game 1 (which is in the 14th percentile of all games this season) and a so-bad-it’s-almost-unbelievable 3-for-18 from floater range (2nd percentile).

An inability to finish inside is the main reason they struggled to turn all those turnovers into points. The Thunder scored just 0.4 points per steal in Game 1, per Cleaning the Glass. Throughout the rest of the season, for context, they averaged 1.4 points per steal, or more than three times higher.

Much of the credit here belongs to Turner, who finished with three blocks and altered many more attempts. The Thunder shot just 1-for-9 against the Pacers center in the paint, per GeniusIQ; after Gilgeous-Alexander made an acrobatic layup for the game’s first points, the Thunder missed every close-range shot the rest of the night when Turner was the nearest defender. Many of those misses, to circle back, were rough Holmgren whiffs in traffic.

Still, the Thunder can, and should, finish better in upcoming games. Based on factors like the shooters’ identities and defender location, GeniusIQ estimates that the Thunder would have been expected to score eight more points in the paint than they actually did. If they’d only finished like their track record suggests they should, the Thunder would have won Game 1.

5. More considered prevention of the Pacers’ open corner 3s

The Thunder also would have won Game 1 if they hadn’t let the Pacers run wild from the corners. This is the most acute vulnerability for the otherwise dominant Thunder defense: As a tradeoff for cutting off the rim, they allowed the most corner 3s of any team this season, per Cleaning the Glass.

The Pacers took advantage in Game 1, with their highest corner 3 frequency of any game this season. They made 10 of those 16 attempts (63%), shooting 7-for-9 (78%) in the second half, and they needed every one of those buckets to complete their comeback.

When reviewing film, Oklahoma City will probably accept some of those high-value attempts, which were either contested or the result of diverting help elsewhere. Indiana also outperformed its 3-point shot quality by a hefty margin, per GeniusIQ.

But on other occasions, a Thunder miscommunication left a Pacer wide open from a corner, which is an untenable lapse at this stage.

Though the indefatigable Pacers don’t make it easy, the Thunder can clean up those miscues.

They’ll need to, at any rate, as they’re on the back foot now and must fix their Game 1 issues if they plan to win the first NBA title in Oklahoma City history.