Lack of engagement spells doom for any team in any sport, as Thunder proved
The lesson from Thursday night’s abominable showing by the Thunder?
Forgive me for this one, but it really is the first thing to pop in my head.
The next time you see a college football coach blame a convincing loss against a lesser team on “execution” or the lack of it … that coach is lying.
This is a Game 6 column, I promise, but the lesson remains informative because the Thunder walked into Gainbridge Fieldhouse a six-point favorite to win an NBA championship on the Pacers’ home floor.
Instead, after delivering the first punch, they were pummeled until a fourth quarter that didn’t matter, because the score going into it was Indiana 90, Oklahoma City 60.
The final score was 108-91.
Who cares.
Now, back to the lesson.
You hear it from coaches of all sports, at many levels, but you here it most of all from college football coaches, who, through some combination of shielding their players from criticism and their foolish, yet constant, need to redefine what just occurred on their own terms, rather than site horrendous readiness, urgency and effort, not to mention disinterest, detachment and lack of focus, will instead call upon particular failures of execution that are both “fixable” and “correctible,” as though the problem is detail oriented and not a not-ready-to-play malaise.
And, thanks to what the Thunder managed in Indianapolis, the next time you’re prepared to accept Brent Venables’, Mike Gundy’s, or one of their opponents’ skippers’ attempt at such dishonest spin after an egg has so clearly been laid, you’ll know to chase that acceptance away.
Because what Oklahoma City made abundantly clear in Game 6 was catastrophic embarrassments do not come down to the details, to shots falling or not falling, to failing to block out, even to turnovers committed and forced.
Instead, all of those things come into play simultaneously only when teams suffer roster-wide breakdowns … of effort, of leadership, of urgency, of mental toughness, which even in a time of heightened mental health awareness remains a real thing requiring mastery to excel.
Thunder coach Mark Daigneault did a pretty good job explaining it before exiting the arena.
“From our standpoint, it was uncharacteristic,” he said. “It was disappointing. It was collective. It wasn’t one guy.”
The Thunder were 1 of 11 from beyond the 3-point arc after a half and 3 of 20 after three quarters, rendering the fact they were 5 of 10 in the fourth quarter, led by Jaylin Williams’ — “J-Will” — 2-of-3 effort, meaninglessly irrelevant.
Did they forget how to shoot?
Were they made to feel horribly uncomfortable by the Pacers.
No, and not really.
They were not engaged.
Ditto for how on earth Lu Dort finished with one rebound and a plus-minus of -20 by the half; or how Shai Gilgeous-Alexander finished the first half with five turnovers and eight total without playing a second of the fourth quarter; or how Chet Holmgren preposterously flubbed an unchallenged alley-oop dunk when Oklahoma City needed a basket trailing 42-33 in the second quarter, while also finishing with zero assists, zero steals and zero blocks over his 24 minutes on the floor.
It tells us a few things.
Gilgeous-Alexander has not licked this leadership thing.
The leadership of others, like Jalen Williams — “J-Dub” — or Alex Caruso, is limited when the original leader can’t fight his way out of his own game.
Though the best team in the league through the regular season and through most of the playoffs, too, the Thunder still don’t know how to bring it every game, in every condition.
Prior to Thursday night, the word was Oklahoma City had two chances to win one game, only that was untrue even before the first of those chances, because the truth was it had no chance to win Game 6 because it was already destined to enter it unprepared to compete.
Jalen Williams had a fantastic quote following his 40-point Game 5 outburst.
“Honestly, it feels so much different than a regular-season game,” he said. “I didn't even really notice that I had it going. I was just playing so hard that everything else in the game seems like second to what’s going on.
“That’s how it feels, so I wouldn’t even say I was in a flow state. I was kind of like absorbed in the game so much that I’m not really thinking about how many points I have or how many times I’ve scored. I’m just into the game.”
He said it like he’d just experienced it for the first time.
Imagine.
So into the game, he did not know the size of the game he was having.
The zenith.
Yet, one game later, nothing remotely close to that could be summoned by anybody in a Thunder uniform.
It really is a comment on their youth, being two playoff rounds further than they’ve ever been before, not to mention how hard it can be for any athlete to live in peak effort, peak engagement, peak lost-in-the-game-ness.
The Thunder have been where they must go in Game 7.
They have to find their way back.
Also, when it all goes wrong, and a college football coach, or any coach, says they must look at the film to see how it went wrong, or their team simply didn’t execute and sometimes teams just don’t execute, don’t listen to them, because the problem was the wholeness of engagement, not the particularity of technique,
The Thunder proved it.
Now they must prove it’s not them.