Williams ineffective, Gilgeous-Alexander off as Thunder drop Game 6

SAN ANTONIO — After making a dramatic return for Thursday’s Game 6, Oklahoma City Thunder star wing Jalen Williams was able to make only minimal contributions and opted not to make any postgame comments.

Williams scored only one point while the Thunder were outscored by 18 in his 10 minutes during the 118-91 loss to the San Antonio Spurs that evened the Western Conference finals.

Williams, who missed the previous three games because of a left hamstring strain he aggravated in Game 2 of the series, was upgraded from questionable to available minutes before tipoff. He didn’t join his teammates in the layup lines until 5:00 remained on the pregame clock.

Oklahoma City started with the same starting lineup as Game 5, with Jared McCain in Williams’ usual spot. Williams came off the bench for the first time since Dec. 10, 2022, when he was a rookie, and served as the ninth man in the Thunder’s rotation.

Williams looked rusty, dribbling the ball out of bounds for one of his two turnovers, and lacked burst. He exited the Frost Bank Center without speaking to the media.

“He’s obviously not 100%,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “He didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know what to expect. So it was a matter of getting him out there in kind of an insulated role and see what he can bring to the team. He’s an All-Star player, he’s an All-NBA player. He hasn’t done a full return to play [protocol] like he would if this was the regular season, and yet he just wants to do whatever he can to try to contribute whatever he can to the team.

“I give him a lot of credit to get himself out there. He did the best he could. He’s certainly not the reason we lost.”

Oklahoma City never held a lead and felt fortunate to be down only seven points going into halftime after the Spurs made 11 3s in the first half. But San Antonio went on a 20-0 run in the third quarter to turn the game into a blowout and set up Game 7 on Saturday at the Paycom Center.

Back-to-back MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander struggled again to find any sort of rhythm against the Spurs’ defense, anchored by Victor Wembanyama. Gilgeous-Alexander finished with only 15 points — less than half his regular-season average — on 6-of-18 shooting before sitting out the entire fourth quarter because of the lopsided score. He was 1-of-7 with Spurs guard Stephon Castle as his primary defender.

According to ESPN Research, Gilgeous-Alexander’s minus-28 matched the worst plus-minus by the NBA’s MVP in a series-clinching opportunity, tying Joel Embiid in 2023.

This was the fourth consecutive game that Gilgeous-Alexander shot worse than 40% from the floor. That hadn’t happened in the regular season or playoffs since 2021-22, which was the year before Gilgeous-Alexander made his first All-Star appearance. He has averaged more than 30 points while shooting better than 50% from the floor in each of the past four seasons.

“A lot of the shots that I’m shooting, I’ve shot plenty of times before and they feel good,” said Gilgeous-Alexander, who is averaging 24.3 points on 37.9% shooting in the series. “They’re just not going in. But it’s too late to abandon my work and abandon my game and who I am. This late in the season, I’ve got to trust it and live or die by it.”

Daigneault was noncommittal when asked whether Williams would have a significant role in Game 7.

Williams, a third-team All-NBA selection last season who played a critical role in the Thunder’s title run despite playing through a right wrist injury that required surgery, has had his season marred by injuries. He was limited to only 33 games during the regular season because of his recovery from the wrist surgery and a right hamstring strain that he aggravated. He strained his left hamstring in the second game of the playoffs, sidelining him for six games before he returned for the May 18 series opener against the Spurs.

“There’s a lot of conversations to be had,” Daigneault said. “I don’t have any information about how he came out of the game. Relative to the situation, I thought he looked pretty good, but we’ll see how he feels. We’ll huddle back up and do everything we can to get him ready and then take it from there.”