OKLAHOMA CITY — Reigning and likely repeat MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored fewer points and committed more turnovers than he had in any other game this season in Tuesday’s Game 1 of the Western Conference semifinals.
His Oklahoma City Thunder still cruised to a 108-90 win over the Los Angeles Lakers.
Gilgeous-Alexander, whose record streak of 140 consecutive 20-point performances in regular-season games remains active, finished with 18 points on 8-of-15 shooting. That is his lowest-scoring outing in any game since a lopsided Game 3 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves in last season’s West finals. The seven turnovers he committed were two more than Gilgeous-Alexander had in any game this season and the second-most in his playoff career, trailing only the eight turnovers he had in a Game 6 loss to the Indiana Pacers in last year’s NBA Finals.
“This ain’t Shai versus the Lakers, it’s Lakers versus the Thunder,” said Los Angeles star LeBron James, who led all scorers with 27 points on 12-of-17 shooting. “We’re down 1-0. That’s the main thing. Keep the main thing the main thing, and that’s who win or lose. That’s all it’s about.”
Asked to assess his individual performance, Gilgeous-Alexander said, “I was OK. It wasn’t my best. It wasn’t my worst.”
The Thunder didn’t need a peak performance from Gilgeous-Alexander on a night when power forward Chet Holmgren delivered 24 points, 12 rebounds and 3 blocks and Oklahoma City held Los Angeles to only 37 points in the second half while superstar Luka Doncic (strained hamstring) sat on the bench in street clothes.
“I thought collectively we could have been better,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “It obviously wasn’t clean. It was a little clunky. … You can’t be greedy with a playoff win that was not a perfect game. There’s a lot of playoff games that are not perfect. The other team’s trying their best to squeeze you and make you very uncomfortable. And so we won an imperfect game tonight, and that’s a good thing.”
Gilgeous-Alexander and Daigneault both referenced the eight-day layoff between Oklahoma City’s first-round sweep finale in Phoenix and the series opener against the Lakers as a potential factor in the Thunder’s sloppy offense.
Oklahoma City shot the ball well (49.4% from the floor, 43.3% from 3-point range). But the Thunder, who were tied for the fewest turnovers in the league with 11.8 per game in the regular season, committed 16 in the win over the Lakers.
“I was loose with the ball, had a lot of turnovers,” said Gilgeous-Alexander, who was 8-of-15 from the floor but attempted only three free throws, a third of his norm. “I think that comes to the rust and not playing for a little bit. They’re obviously very aggressive, but I feel like for most of the night we got great looks.”
Holmgren emphasized that some of Gilgeous-Alexander’s turnovers were the fault of his teammates.
“I think he made the right decision all night long,” Holmgren said. “I think there were a lot of opportunities where we weren’t where we needed to be and he was expecting us to be there. We had a couple turnovers in the pocket like that where he threw it right to where we should have been and we weren’t there. In the stat book, those are his turnovers, but they shouldn’t be. … We got to improve, be better, be where we need to be.”
ESPN’s Dave McMenamin contributed to this report.