NBA FINALS: THUNDER VS. PACERS

June 13, 2025

Jalen Williams

Oklahoma City Thunder

Game 4: Postgame

Oklahoma City Thunder 111, Indiana Pacers 104

Q. Dub, you just seemed to be a massive offensive engine tonight for the team. How much have you learned over the course of the last few years about the mode and the tempo that you need to have there when you have your opportunities like that?

JALEN WILLIAMS: Just trying to match their physicality and force throughout the game. Just being aggressive. I just try and find my spots and get better each and every game. Tonight was just one of those things. I saw some stuff where I could be a little more aggressive early, that's what I just tried to do.

Again, it's just reading what my team does and just trying to play off them a little bit, too.

Q. A lot of guys had to play well tonight. Alex’s offense early, defense late. With such a young team, what did you feel like the biggest role he had tonight was?

JALEN WILLIAMS: What makes Alex very good is that he's able to figure out what we need and be that. Makes big shots. Obviously, defense speaks for itself. He's just really smart. He's kind of like our fill-in. He does a really good job of seeing what the game needs and then doing it at 100%, which is hard to do since he's like a hundred [smiling].

He's just our glue on that end of the floor. Defensively he's been special. He'll continue to be that, for sure.

Q. At 3:52 in the timeout, you were down. Seize the game or...

JALEN WILLIAMS: Lose it.

Q. What do you remember from that timeout and what unfolded?

JALEN WILLIAMS: Did we have the ball?

Q. Lu fouled Nesmith.

JALEN WILLIAMS: What went into that timeout?

Honestly, in the timeout, obviously we had a play we were going to run. Outside of that, it was just more about trying to stack stops. Three minutes is a lot of time. I think it was like 3:52 on the clock at that point in time. A lot of possessions left. Like you said, our season is kind of on the line. Get easy looks and make them work for everything at the end. Everything up until that point didn't matter. It's just about trying to score, then it was really good getting stops.

Q. You guys now are 22-12 in games that you trail by at least 10 points a season, which is the best a team has done in 30 years, they can look that stat up. Why have you been able to have so much success when things go haywire for you?

JALEN WILLIAMS: Well, I don't know how fun of a stat that is, to be down 10 all the time.

Just resolve. The games are, like, 10 points, and this applies to them, as well, you see Game 1 when they go on that big run towards the end. Ten is not a ton of points in the grand scheme of a game. That's kind of how we try and look at it.

Yeah, it's not as many possessions as it may seem. I think if you start to panic, and credit to them, they do a good job of not doing it, too, but when you start to panic, that's when you start to lose part of the game. We try to double down on our foundation of defense and offense, focus on one possession at a time. Wherever the cards fall after that is where they fall.

You don't ever want to give them easy stuff or falling apart at the seams. You try to lock in defensively as a team, just kind of stack stops together.

Q. All-Star, great year, all that stuff. Do you feel particularly in these Finals you've elevated your game? Looks like you're taking more responsibility and producing.

JALEN WILLIAMS: Yeah, I mean, it forces you to play at a higher pace, a higher performance. I think my biggest thing is just stepping into the moment, success or fail, just kind of living with the results. I put a lot of work into my game, so I just go out there and play. I just don't want to ever play a game and look back where I wasn't aggressive, afraid to do a move, whatever the case may be.

That's how I look at it.

The earlier part of your question, all the stuff I did in the beginning of the season doesn’t matter to me. We're treating this really like a new season. That's how I look at it.

Q. You mentioned your season was on the line tonight. When you're in the fourth quarter and the momentum hasn't been going your way, you've been fighting through it, what does that say about your team's collective maturity to grind this win out?

JALEN WILLIAMS: Just didn't quit. We haven't really had to show it a lot this year, with the success we had in the regular season. We've had a lot of ups and downs during the Playoffs. We've just learned from those experiences. That is something Mark is really big on us, every game you should be able to learn, then the next game you should be able to apply something and get better at it. That's what we're trying to do every time.

Q. Chet has talked about feeling like he's gotten sped up at times in this series. He had 15 rebounds tonight, holding up on the switches late. What did you see from him?

JALEN WILLIAMS: Special player. Special players do special things. He's really good. Especially me and him have always talked about, like, coming into the NBA together. It's just always been find something that you can do to impact the game. That makes you more of a special player.

We try not to be one-dimensional. Shots fluctuate. Everybody is going to shoot bad, from Steph Curry to me, you name it, you're going to have bad shooting nights. There's so many things you can do in a basketball game to affect the game. He understands that.

Like I said, the more we're able to learn from each game and each experience, it makes you a better player whether you know it or not.