After a painful, here-we-go-again start saw the Nuggets up 21-10 halfway through the first quarter, the Thunder players flipped Loud City's switch from jittery to electrified in a raucous, overwhelming victory to advance to the Western Conference Finals for the first time since 2016.
OKC stormed from that early deficit to a 14-point halftime lead, as Mark Daigneault's smaller-ball, shortened rotation produced a 50-25 run through the rest of the first half. In a throwback to the first 49 games of the Thunder's 2024-25 season, when one or both of Chet Holmgren and Isaiah Hartenstein were sidelined, the guards in OKC's mighty, micro frontcourt terrorized Nikola Jokic (20 pts, 9 rbs, 7 ast, 5 TOs, 200 flops) and the Denver bigs (including Aaron Gordon, playing on a hamstring.