The Thunder will be Minnesota’s rival in the fight for the last playoff spot in the Western Conference. The Oklahoma City team earned the right to fight for that place after defeating the Pelicans 118-123 at the Smoothie King Center, eliminating the Louisiana team from the play-in and giving one of the surprises of these first rounds. Daigneault’s men did not seem to have finished the regular season in the best possible shape, but they recovered their best version to assault New Orleans and make it clear that this project wants to live its first real postseason experience.
That was, of course, what his main trio conveyed, led by Shai Gilgeous-Alexander who led the game in scoring with 32 points and was also the author of the basket that put his team ahead with 28 seconds left (114-115 ). However, the Canadian was closely followed by a fantastic Josh Giddey, who made a display of resources on the most important night of the year and came close to a triple-double by reaching 31 points, 10 assists and 9 rebounds, and by Luguentz Dort, who in addition to his usual defensive energy contributed 27 points.
Between the three of them they scored a total of 90 of their team’s 123 goals, cementing a victory that they closed with a little help from their teammates. Jalen and Jaylin Williams weren’t exactly great offensively throughout the night, but their ability to find and convert a couple of free shots in the fourth quarter was vital for their team, who needed every one of their baskets to finish off the game. prevail in a final of the most even.
“We have already proven ourselves in these types of battles,” Shai stated. “We have played a lot of close finals this year, generally in the last two years. Even when the season wasn’t finishing going well for us, we managed to reach the end with a tight score, and that has allowed us to build good habits and know how to deal with these situations”.
The Pelicans, for their part, were led by Brandon Ingram’s 30 points, which was well accompanied by the 21 and 20 added respectively by Trey Murphy and Herb Jones. On the contrary, CJ McCollum was not so fine, who chose a bad night to stay at 5/15 in his shots and could not go beyond 14 points. The guard did assume a little more responsibility in the fourth period, in which both Murphy and Jones paid for their youth and barely appeared offensively, but their determination and scoring ability were somewhat lacking throughout the night.
The season therefore concludes in a strange way for New Orleans, which was seen a few months ago fighting for the first position in the conference but, after Zion’s injury, has not even been able to repeat its presence in the playoffs. The team will remain one of the greats what if of the year, and we will see if during the 23-24 academic year they can answer the questions that have arisen about how far they would have gone without physical problems.
(Cover photo: Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images)
