WCF Bolts: Cry About It
The Thunder won a brutal second round series against the reigning MVP and recent champs. Across seven games OKC was in survival mode too often, but an emphatic closeout victory stabilized the . SGA and Alex Caruso were monsters on offense and defense, respectively, and aside from their ongoing shooting drought, the Thunder look like themselves again.
Thunder (finally) bury Nuggets, advance to Western Conference Finals
OKC 125 DEN 93 (Thunder win conference semifinals 4-3) After a painful, here-we-go-again start saw the Nuggets up 21-10 halfway through the first quarter, the Thunder players flipped Loud City’s switch from jittery to electrified in a raucous, overwhelming victory to advance to the Western Conference Finals for the first
Cray Allred
It was Alex Caruso (11 pts, 3 stl, 3 ast, 1 potential all-time championship addition) winning both the interior, undersized fight against Jokic and leading the Thunder's passing-lane-blitzkrieg. Cason Wallace (7 pts, 5 ast, 2 stl, 1 cathartic Joker Poster) and Chet (13 pts, 11 rbs, 2 stk) played large in the smaller rotation, while both iHart and Lu Dort were reduced to 17 minutes of playtime...In short, the Thunder played like themselves. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (35 pts, 4 ast, 4 stk) was the composed, MVP conductor of OKC's orchestral mosh pit, mixing graceful footwork and touch on offense with a frenzied gauntlet of contests and deflections on defense. He accelerated from 4 first quarter points, to 8 in the second, to 11 in the third, to 12 backbreaking points in his brief fourth quarter run. Like so often in the regular season, Shai turned out the lights with his third three-pointer of the game, directing a friendly bounce off the front of the rim with his follow through then checking out with with 7:40 remaining and the Thunder up 38.
SGA and the Thunder conquered Jokic, one of the best players of all time.
Zach Lowe had Howard Beck on to talk Thunder/Nuggets and Thunder/Wolves:
