Shai Gilgeous-Alexander admits it’s hard not to look forward.
But the Oklahoma City Thunder star says the lessons of Game 3 will help the Thunder when they try to put the Minnesota Timberwolves away at home Wednesday night in Game 5 of the Western Conference finals.
“It’s tough,” Gilgeous-Alexander said of trying not to look at what could lie ahead if Oklahoma City can win. “I would be lying if I said it wasn’t. You know how close you are, but yet it’s still so far away. To beat a team like this, it takes a lot of hard minutes doing the right thing a lot of the time.”
Up 3-1 in the series, the Thunder are a win away from their first NBA Finals berth since 2012.
Oklahoma City coach Mark Daigneault said he’s confident in his team’s ability to focus on the task at hand.
“It’s hard to stay present,” Daigneault said. “It’s easy to slip into the past or slip into the future, but we’ve tried to do a good job of grounding into the moment and just handling the next challenge in front of us, the next game in front of us.”
After a 42-point road defeat Saturday, the Thunder came back to win Game 4 128-126 in Minneapolis to put the Timberwolves on the brink of elimination.
Oklahoma City’s big three — Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren — combined for 95 points in that victory.
Gilgeous-Alexander said the trio hasn’t come close to reaching its ceiling.
“We still have so much room to grow, which is the scary part,” Gilgeous-Alexander said.
The Timberwolves are facing elimination for the first time this postseason after winning each of their first two playoff series in five games.
If Minnesota is to stay alive, it figures to need more production out of Anthony Edwards and Julius Randle.
The duo was a combined 6 of 20 for 21 points in the Game 4 loss after going 21-for-32 for 54 points in Game 3.
“We’ve faced this and gone through these periods before,” Timberwolves coach Chris Finch said of the duo needing to do more. “We know we’ve got to stretch the floor, create more depth in transition, get those guys to the bottom of the floor for a variety of reasons. Should be a pretty easy adjustment, you’ve just got to put the effort in. …
“They did a good job of getting their three guys to get a big game for them. We need to do a better job of getting more out of our first unit.”
Finch was happy with Edward’s aggressiveness, especially in Monday’s second half.
“We got downhill, he got to the paint, he created a lot of good shots for his teammates,” Finch said. “I think there’s some things that maybe he can have in transition that we didn’t necessarily find for him. … Moving him off ball, some more off-ball stuff, things that we’ve done earlier in the series that last night we didn’t really get to.”
