Thunder's Gritty Win vs. Jazz Could be Exactly What OKC Needs

It wasn’t pretty, but it might’ve been exactly what Oklahoma City needed.

Trailing by eight midway through the fourth quarter, the Thunder looked destined for a third-straight loss. Unrecognizable from the team that started 24-1, the Thunder were on the ropes on their home floor yet again.

Defensive intensity had been lacking, offense was nearly nonexistent from behind the arc and rebounding seemed like a near-impossible challenge.

Then, things shifted.

The Thunder picked up their intensity and used a Shai Gilgeous-Alexander buzzer-beating jumper to send the game to overtime. As he has so many times, Gilgeous-Alexander also carried the team through overtime, finishing with 46 points.

While it was a hard-fought game against a likely lottery team at home that perhaps shouldn’t have been close on paper, the Thunder needed a win like this in the worst way. The Thunder have had tight wins and losses over the past few weeks, but none really featured Oklahoma City needing a fourth-quarter comeback of this magnitude.

Almost reminiscent of the Thunder’s season-opening win against the Houston Rockets that also featured a Gilgeous-Alexander shot to send the game into overtime, this game might have been a perfect way to get back to a metaphorical blank slate. Sure, Oklahoma City’s frontcourt issues are entirely at the mercy of the injury report, but the final minutes against the Jazz forced the Thunder to crank up the intensity to a much more recognizable place.

Oklahoma City has always preached process over results, but this could easily be a rare occasion where the result is almost directly correlated to the process. The Thunder need to get back to their identity, and they may have simply needed a jolt to their system like this on their home floor.

Shooting 7-of-38 from deep and getting outrebounded 65-51 in the worst overall stretch of the season, but still grinding out a win should lend the Thunder some momentum heading into Friday’s matchup in Memphis. The Thunder’s struggles from deep and on the injury report were a theme to begin the season as well, and even if it takes another overtime comeback effort on Friday, stringing together some more wins while playing their typical brand of basketball could be all the Thunder need for this to be looked back on as a turning point.

Wednesday’s game against the Jazz was far from the most encouraging or convincing win, but a championship team like the Thunder understands as well as anyone that it really doesn’t matter how ugly a game is, so long as it ends in a win.