The Thunder show they've also got some of that alligator blood

Less than six minutes into Game 4 of the NBA Finals, the Oklahoma City Thunder trailed by nine and their vaunted defense had already surrendered 24 points.

They'd gone back to their double-big starting lineup with both Chet Holmgren and Isaiah Hartenstein on the floor, and the Indiana Pacers had run circles around them. Things didn't improve much when Holmgren went to the bench. The Pacers were simply playing too quickly, too crisply, too confidently. They couldn't miss from long range. Meanwhile, OKC couldn't buy a three, and a weary Shai Gilgeous-Alexander couldn't get a toehold in the game. Gainbridge Fieldhouse was going berserk.

On the road, facing the prospect of going down 3-1, the Thunder were getting as stiff a test of their championship mettle as they were going to get. They were getting a chance to reinforce on the biggest stage what they'd already shown in their nip-and-tuck second-round series against Denver - that they didn't win 68 regular-season games by being mere frontrunners, that their youth and relative inexperience aren't damning, and that on top of being exceptionally talented, they're also resilient as hell.

Led by a determined Jalen Williams, who resolutely power-stepped to the basket for free throws and one-hand-gather scoop layups as part of the most important performance of his young career, the Thunder rode out Indiana's hot shooting and chipped away at the lead. They continued to do so even after Gilgeous-Alexander went to the bench for an unusually early rest at the seven-minute mark - one of a handful of tweaks OKC made in its attempt to find anything that would work against this relentless Pacers team. By the end of the first quarter, the deficit had been whittled down to one.

What ensued was a heavyweight bout in which the two combatants traded body blow after body blow for three more rounds. The Thunder took the lead in the second quarter and built a six-point cushion midway through the frame, but Indiana dialed up the pressure and regained the advantage before the break after holding OKC to just six points over the final five-and-a-half minutes.

The Pacers would not relinquish that lead until late in the fourth quarter. They stretched it to as many as 10 points with under a minute remaining in the third. And it was more than just the scoreboard that made it feel like the home team had complete control of the game at that point in time. The Thunder looked frazzled, overwhelmed, and tired. They kept cycling through different lineup combinations and defensive looks - searching, searching, and searching while their opponents seemed to know exactly what they wanted to do. Indiana's pace and full-court pickups seemed to be getting to them.

It felt like the Thunder were chasing their own tails. Their offense was completely stagnant. (They threw a playoff-low 203 passes in the game and finished with a season-low 11 assists on 37 made field goals). Pascal Siakam blew up almost everything they ran on his side of the floor. They had to move Gilgeous-Alexander off the ball to alleviate the 94-foot pressure he was facing from Andrew Nembhard (Williams spent more time on-ball than him for the first time this postseason), and they suffered from shaky handling when anyone but SGA tried to initiate. Gilgeous-Alexander was also targeted at the other end, in ball-screen action and with off-ball cuts or crashes, and had his worst defensive game of the playoffs.

The Thunder struggled to keep the ball in front of them, and when they helped off the strong side (as they're wont to do), Indiana burned them with corner threes. At the other end, they couldn't generate catch-and-shoot threes of their own and continued to clank the rare outside looks they got. (They finished 3-for-17 from downtown). When Williams committed an eight-second violation immediately after Obi Toppin crushed a dunk off a baseline cut, they looked outright defeated.

Improbably, they weren't.

Williams' driving and shot-making kept the game from getting out of hand in the first half, but it was the doggedness of Alex Caruso that kept OKC within spitting distance in the second. He was absolutely everywhere, plugging gaps and blowing up actions on defense, fearlessly barreling to the cup and nailing jumpers on offense, skying for rebounds in traffic on both ends. As the one Thunder player with championship experience, he was their least rattled player throughout the game, and his sturdiness prevented a rocking boat from capsizing. He finished with 20 points on 7-for-9 shooting with five steals and a block.

Holmgren was also instrumental at both ends down the stretch. He had six points and four offensive rebounds (which was four more than the Pacers had as a team) in the fourth quarter, and he helped completely kill Indiana's offensive flow when he started switching onto Tyrese Haliburton rather than dropping back against him in pick-and-roll. It's a tactic Mark Daigneault probably should've uncorked earlier in the game, but when he finally did, Holmgen demonstrated his immense defensive value by hanging with the Pacers' wriggly point guard on multiple possessions. (Haliburton also played into the Thunder's hands by repeatedly trying to attack that switch instead of zipping the ball elsewhere after pulling their best rim-protector away from the basket).

All of that set the stage for Gilgeous-Alexander's heroic closing kick, which saw him score 15 points in the final four-odd minutes to seal a 111-104 victory and level the series. Turns out all the tactics OKC used in order to preserve the MVP for later in the game - from the early rest to the scaled-down creation load - paid off handsomely in crunch time. That run was facilitated by another tactical wrinkle from the Thunder:

It was also aided by some overexuberance from Indiana's defense, including a couple of reckless before-the-inbounds fouls by Game 3 hero Bennedict Mathurin. The Pacers generally closed the game poorly after playing three fantastic quarters. They missed all eight of their 3-point attempts in the fourth and basically forgot Siakam existed down the stretch.

There will surely also be a ton of carping about the officiating and Scott Foster-related conspiracy theorizing from the Indiana faithful. But however you slice it, this was an incredible show of mental and physical fortitude from OKC, which became the first team in 15 years to win a Finals game with fewer than four made 3-pointers. It was the type of larceny that even these unkillable Pacers should be able to recognize and respect. It wasn't as dramatic at the end, but this win felt every bit as improbable as Indiana's Game 1 robbery. It was ugly, it was gritty, and it proved that the Thunder can withstand punches as strong as the ones they dole out.

It's also a huge credit to the Pacers that a 68-win team had to pull out such a gritty win (and yes, get a fairly favorable whistle) to avoid being pushed to the brink. Each team has now stolen a game it had no business winning in this series. Through four games, there hasn't been much to separate them. We could try to guess what will happen next, but in one of the most fun and unpredictable Finals in years, that would feel like a fool's errand.