INDIANAPOLIS — The last time they played in a game this big, they were playing together, for one another.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Lu Dort and Andrew Nembhard had a bond before they put on the Canadian jersey in France last summer.
Gilgeous-Alexander and Nembhard were fierce youth league basketball rivals. Dort first played with his national team teammates when he was the eighth-grade equivalent of the Incredible Hulk, nearly as imposing then as he is now as a chiselled, six-foot-four all-NBA defender.
In the years since they each left home at a young age and ventured to the United States to pursue their basketball goals, their identity as Canadians trying to make their way in a game dominated by Americans has been part of their collective armour.
“Sometimes we can be seen as underdogs when Canadians show up,” says Dort. “And they get shocked or whatever, when they see our game and how we play.”
The plan last summer was to take that experience to the global stage, to show the world what being a Canadian basketball player has come to mean by winning a medal — preferably gold — at the Olympics.
They came up short of their ultimate goal, falling in a disappointing quarterfinal showing to host France in front of a raucous, wildly partisan crowd in Paris.
But the experience has served them well. Each of them has reached new highs in the season following their Olympic test.
And the moments spent going through that crucible have translated as the intensity of the NBA playoffs has ramped up round by round, game by game, culminating in their current position: on the cusp of an NBA championship.
Unfortunately, they all can’t fit through the eye of the needle.
For Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Lu Dort to deliver the Oklahoma City Thunder their first NBA championship, it will mean that fellow Olympian Andrew Nembhard of the Indiana Pacers, along with Montrealer Bennedict Mathurin, who missed the Olympics last summer with a shoulder injury, will miss out on the chance to win their first NBA championship.
But as they try to outdo each other, they are drawing in part on the experiences they shared playing in win-or-go-home games at the highest level of international basketball.
“Yeah, for sure those types of games, do or die games, you only get one chance,” said Gilgeous-Alexander on Wednesday as the Thunder and Pacers held practice in advance of Game 6. “A lot of the time, we start a certain way. In the France game (where Canada fell behind by 13 in the first quarter of what ended up being an 82-73 tournament-ending loss), just from recent memory, they started a certain way. Although we tried to climb back in it, they had control of the whole game. Those experiences definitely helped me in my experiences going forward.”
The pressure, too, feels familiar. Although Game 6 isn’t win or go home for the Thunder — it’s actually lose and head back to Oklahoma City for Game 7 — they know what it means to miss out on an opportunity to win a championship, having lost in the second-round last season despite having the first-overall seed in the west, and losing in the quarterfinals of the Olympics.
“Our main focus is to go out there and win,” says Dort, who has been the primary defender on Pacers guard Tyrese Haliburton and has chipped in offensively by connecting on 58.4 per cent of his threes. “That’s it. Block out the distractions, block out anything else. We’ve got to stay together. It’s going to be a hard place to play.”
Sort of like trying to beat France in Paris?
“I always say that the way that FIBA is set up for the Olympics and all that kind of prepares you for the (NBA) playoffs. It’s win or go home, and you have to give your best shot, or you might not be in that position again — in the Olympics, it’s for four years. It helps for sure.”
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For Nembhard and the Pacers it’s win or stay home: if they can‘t find a way to slow down Gilgeous-Alexander and the Pacers, they won’t get a chance to travel to OKC for Game 7 and their magical and largely unexpected playoff run — this was a team that started the season at 10-15 — will be over.
Nembhard may only be in his third season, but he’s got enough mileage on him to know what’s up, and part of that came from hard-earned experience this past summer.
“The Olympics come down to a one-game thing. The intensity is so high, everything is so detail oriented and has to be precise, and I think that carries over very well,” says Nembhard, who — in addition to having to guard Gilgeous-Alexander — could end up having additional playmaking and scoring responsibilities if Haliburton (calf strain) is compromised on Thursday night.
Each of Gilgeous-Alexander, Dort and Nembhard will carry their experiences playing together for Canada with them when they play the biggest NBA game of their young careers on Thursday. The difference is that this time around, the outcome can’t be shared.
Grange for Three
Haliburton’s status undetermined: The Pacers point guard went through the walk-through portion of Indiana’s practice on Wednesday and did some standstill shooting, but the status of his calf strain and his availability for Game 6 won’t be determined until late Thursday afternoon, said Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle. Haliburton wants to play, even if the wiser path might be to sit out, which is what he would be doing for a week or two, he acknowledged, if this were a regular-season game. “I think I have to be as smart as I want to be,” he said Wednesday. “Have to understand the risks, ask the right questions. I’m a competitor; I want to play. I’m going to do everything in my power to play. That’s just what it is. I think the answer to that (is it smart or not) is depending on who you ask.”
No mercy from Dort: If Haliburton does play in Game 6, he won’t be getting any relief from the ‘Dorture Chamber.’ The Thunder guard will continue giving him the kind of focus that has resulted in the All-NBA Pacers guard being held to 15 points and 7.2 assists with an effective field goal percentage of 53.1 while committing four turnovers per game in the series, compared to his regular season marks of 18.6 points, 9.2 assists, only 1.6 turnovers per game and an eFG of 58.2 per cent. “Any player that’s out there should be good to go, so our approach as a team is the same thing: still follow our game plan, go out there and make it tough for all the guys out there on the floor,” Dort told me.
Dynamic duo: Thunder wing Jalen Williams is having a breakout series, highlighted by his 40-point outing in Game 5, the first game of the Finals that someone other than Gilgeous-Alexander has led Oklahoma City in scoring. There is no competition between them, however. “I think what helps is that we both want to win. So for me and him, it doesn’t really matter who is the leading scorer or who is not,” Williams said. “I think it also helps pecking order-wise, he’s the MVP. If he wants to shoot a lot of shots, I’m going to tell him ‘good shot’ every time. That’s kind of how that works. A lot of it, too, is a result of our offence and how other guys play around us, how it’s structured. We don’t really go into games and, ‘All right, I’m going to shoot 20 times; Dub, you shoot 12’. It’s kind of taking whatever the game gives us. I think that’s what makes us a good team.”
