For better or worse, the Oklahoma City Thunder had an eerily familiar feeling when the final buzzer sounded Thursday night.
The Indiana Pacers had captured Game 1 of the NBA Finals, taking their first lead of the night on Tyrese Haliburton’s 21-foot pull-up jumper with 0.3 seconds remaining. The Thunder blew a 15-point lead in the fourth quarter of their 111-110 home loss.
It was only Oklahoma City’s second home loss of this postseason, and it unfolded in very similar fashion to the Thunder’s previous defeat at the Paycom Center.
“Well, it sucks,” Thunder forward Jalen Williams said, summarizing the sting of letting the Finals opener slip away. “But we have been here before.”
Oklahoma City, which has the second-youngest Finals roster in NBA history, can point to its collapse against the Nuggets as proof that this team can bounce back from an excruciating series-opening setback.
The Thunder responded by beating the Nuggets by 43 points in Game 2 and won the series in seven games.
“How you lose doesn’t really matter,” said Thunder superstar Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, whose 38 points were the third most in a Finals debut, according to ESPN Research. “Obviously it sucks — last-second shot, the energy in the arena and stuff like that. But we lost at the end of the day. We lost Game 1.
“We’ve lost Game 1 before. On the other side of that, we came out a better team. That’s our goal.”
