Receiving the ball at the nail, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander examined his options. As Royce O’Neale played textbook one-on-defense, the reigning MVP took a few dribbles backward. Going behind the back, he bumped the decent defender out of his way for the fadeaway short-range jumper that missed.<\/p>\n
The Oklahoma City Thunder<\/a> suffered a heartbreaker in their 108-105 loss<\/a> to the Phoenix Suns<\/a>. Devin Booker scored a game-winner on a deep pull-up 3-pointer in the final seconds. Gilgeous-Alexander couldn’t return the favor.<\/p>\n It was that type of night in a rare stinker. Gilgeous-Alexander finished with 25 points on 8-of-22 shooting and six assists. He shot 1-of-5 from 3 and went 8-of-9 on free throws.<\/p>\n This is about as bad as things get for Gilgeous-Alexander. Usually reliant on his jumper, it abandoned him in Phoenix. The Suns did a great job of throwing multiple high-end defenders at the reigning MVP. While OKC is at the top of most defensive stats, Phoenix is usually the runner-up.<\/p>\n That resulted in Gilgeous-Alexander not getting comfortable. He only had seven points in the first half. If he were his usual self, this game would likely be over at halftime. A dreadful night continued into the second half. Even when he drove to the basket, he couldn’t get calls. Over the last month, that’s been a disturbing trend.<\/p>\n Oh well. None of that would matter if Gilgeous-Alexander closed things out. He’s done so countless times. When the Thunder are in a clutch situation, he’d come to the rescue a la Superman. Instead, he missed his last four jumpers. OKC’s offense dried up. And without their superstar scorer, the buckets were difficult to come by.<\/p>\n Fair to say the Thunder need more from Gilgeous-Alexander. You can’t go on the road against a good team and not show up. Even with a bad start, he was given a golden opportunity to erase it with big-time buckets down the stretch. Instead, Booker outshone him in this one.<\/p>\n “They just played better than us. I felt that way. In moments where we slam the door, we didn’t. In moments where we go from seven to 15, we didn’t. We just didn’t have our best night,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “That happens sometimes. Hats off to them. Good team. Came and won the game tonight.”<\/p>\n It’s been the case for half the season, but it can’t be repeated enough that the Thunder will deal with the best version of the opponent about every night. The reigning NBA champions are a team that the opposition circles their calendar. After two losses, the Suns finally grabbed one.<\/p>\n “Being who we are and what we’ve accomplished, teams are going to come in here with a heightened sense of the game. They’re going to test themselves against the defending champions. They’re going to test themselves and really see where they are,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “I know that because when I’ve played in the past against the defending champs, that’s how I felt. Last year against Boston, it was a chance to see where we were at the time. That’s how it goes.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Receiving the ball at the nail, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander examined his options. As Royce O’Neale played textbook one-on-defense, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":518464,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3783],"tags":[7,4346,311,4674,2292,623,6,626,67,26087,310,475,179,3966,3965,61,628,2065,472,4142,7780,622,209,66,83,604,312],"class_list":["post-518463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oklahoma-city-thunder","tag-basketball","tag-booker","tag-city","tag-devin","tag-devin-booker","tag-gilgeous-alexander","tag-nba","tag-negative","tag-news","tag-oneale","tag-oklahoma","tag-oklahoma-city","tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","tag-oklahomacity","tag-oklahomacitythunder","tag-overall","tag-overall-negative","tag-phoenix","tag-phoenix-suns","tag-royce","tag-royce-oneale","tag-shai","tag-shai-gilgeous-alexander","tag-sports","tag-sports-news","tag-suns","tag-thunder"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115843616723837861","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518463","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=518463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/518464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}