without star guard Ja Morant<\/a>, who bruised his left hip in a hard fall in Game 3. The Thunder erased a 29-point deficit after he left, the second-biggest comeback in a postseason game since detailed play-by-play began being kept in 1996-97. <\/p>\n\u201cTheir fight tonight was impressive, Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. \u201cDown 3-0, down Morant and down 11 with four (minutes) to go. Lot of respect for them competitively.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chet Holmgren, Isaiah Hartenstein and Isaiah Joe had 11 points apiece for the Thunder, with Hartenstein adding 12 rebounds.<\/p>\n
Scotty Pippen Jr. matched his career high with 30 points and grabbed 11 rebounds. Desmond Bane and Santi Aldama had 23 points apiece.<\/p>\n
\u201cScotty did a tremendous job throughout the end of the season. He was very consistent on both ends,\u201d Grizzlies interim coach Tuomas Iisalo said.<\/p>\n
The game was close through three quarters with neither team building a significant advantage. Oklahoma City led 88-85 entering the fourth. At that point, the Thunder were 4 of 29 from 3-point range. <\/p>\n
Williams\u2019 3-pointer with 5:41 left in the game gave the Thunder a 102-92 lead, the first time either team reached a double-digit advantage. The lead would reach 11 before Memphis rallied and a 3-pointer from Bane with 7.1 seconds left cut it to 116-114. <\/p>\n
Williams split a pair of free throws with 6 seconds left and the Thunder fouled Bane intentionally. He made the first but Memphis could not rebound his intentional miss of the second.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe could have been a little bit tighter when we built the lead (to 11 in the fourth quarter),\u201d Daigneault said. \u201cI thought we got a little bit loose on defensive possessions specifically. Once it tightened up, I thought everything from execution to clock management \u2026 was all very positive.\u201d<\/p>\n
After six lead changes and five ties in the half, Oklahoma City led 60-59 at the break.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe fought, everybody on this team. Like, there was zero quit in this team,\u201d Iisalo said, adding the Grizzlies just couldn\u2019t close out the game.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP NBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/NBA<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) \u2014 Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 38 points and the Oklahoma City Thunder advanced to the Western…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2386,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7,366,187,497,949,1624,364,135,1622,293,177,6,446,11,586,475,179,1185,1623,209,66,575,483],"class_list":{"0":"post-2385","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-chet-holmgren","10":"tag-denver-nuggets","11":"tag-desmond-bane","12":"tag-isaiah-hartenstein","13":"tag-isaiah-joe","14":"tag-jalen-williams","15":"tag-los-angeles-clippers","16":"tag-mark-daigneault","17":"tag-memphis","18":"tag-memphis-grizzlies","19":"tag-nba","20":"tag-nba-basketball","21":"tag-nba-playoffs","22":"tag-ok-state-wire","23":"tag-oklahoma-city","24":"tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","25":"tag-santi-aldama","26":"tag-scotty-pippen","27":"tag-shai-gilgeous-alexander","28":"tag-sports","29":"tag-temetrius-morant","30":"tag-tn-state-wire"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114412152727618970","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2385\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}