Oklahoma City Thunder made things easier in the normal season.
They finished with one of the best records in the history of the league and set the teams behind with an average of 12.9 points and set a NBA sign for the biggest score difference.
However, Thunder’s second round series against Denver Nuggets, especially Nuggets Superstari Nikola Jokic and Denver’s general experience would never be easy.
Thunder adopts the struggle of the series on Tuesday with the 5th game of the Western Conference series in Oklahoma City.
“We are a better team than we are at the beginning of the series,” Oklahoma City coach Mark Daigneault said. He said. “We continue to learn and we continue to grow with all these experiences. Since the start of the series has passed only a week, but these games are rich and rich with the lessons. Every time you punch and return, you create more confidence, you build more mental satiety, you draw more attention.”
In the last three games, Jokic obtains only 21 (33.3 percent) of the field, 22 (18.2 percent) beyond the arc, and only 5.0 assists per competition. It only hit less than 40 percent once in the normal season, but has not reached this threshold since the 1st game of the series.
Two of the 91 Career Playoff matches came in the last two matches in Denver.
“This is a little bit of everything,” Jokic said the reasons behind their struggles. “They play a really good defense for me. They really go into my body, spherical, physical. … For me they shrink the floor. Of course I have to do a better job, but it’s a part of this game.”
But even with Jokic’s struggles, Nuggets made him a three -game series.
“We have to give ourselves a chance, Jok Jokic said. “We must be more physical, aggressive.”
Like Oklahoma City’s Jokic, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the Finalist for the NBA most valuable player award, gets an average of 27.5 points and attracts 47.5 percent from the ground and more than nine times per game.
Oklahoma City’s first two matches of the series received at least 33 points.
Gilgeous-Alexander said, “This series threw us many random things, unexpected or many things except the norm.” He said. “I think we just did a really good job not to admit where we are and not to deviate from who we are and who we are all season.”
The series also stressed the depth of Oklahoma City.
Thunder has 10 players playing in every match of the series and each is 10 or more minutes per competition.
Denver, mostly used a rotation of seven people in the series, the only bench player on Sunday’s 92-87 loss played for more than nine minutes.
“We need to get more than more people,” Nuggets Temporary Coach David Adelman said. “And maybe I have to play more than eight men.”
-FELD level media
