History won’t be kind to a play that seemed destined to be immortalized, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander smirked at the thought of that.
The memory of it came and went. In Game 6, juggling between elimination in Dallas and a possible Game 7 in Oklahoma City, Gilgeous-Alexander sized up a pesky Derrick Jones Jr. with less than 30 seconds to play. When the switch came, SGA probed for a moment before slamming the gas. He’d been a man possessed. The answer to unsolvable questions, the key that jimmied Dallas’ defensive hold. The Mavericks treated him as such. Four bodies collapsed as he drove. None stayed near or even floated toward the baseline, where Chet Holmgren was about to bring meaning to the word poster.
Gilgeous-Alexander floated the Thunder’s hopes to the top left corner of the backboard. Holmgren, with latter-like limbs, found the ball at its apex and willed it through the hoop — unchallenged, with surrounding eyes wide and mouths agape, though none of that made the connection feel less improbable or significant.
Air was sucked from the building. Deafening chants stopped abruptly. Holmgren and Gilgeous-Alexander’s connection paused the moment because it was the moment.
“I thought we were going to win,” Thunder wing Jalen Williams said in the aftermath.
