OKC Thunder Growing in Real Time

In Game 1 and Game 3, the Oklahoma City Thunder's resiliency in clutch situations was left to be desired.

The team hadn't proved themselves in late-game scenarios against talented teams in the postseason, and it was a question mark for many.

Following Sunday afternoon, and now after Tuesday night, that question mark has been answered—Oklahoma City has matured in real time throughout this 3-2 series lead over the Denver Nuggets, coming back from a 2-1 deficit against a championship caliber squad. With the cards stacked against them, they've answered.

On Tuesday night especially, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Lu Dort answered in specific. Gilgeous-Alexander, the presumed MVP, has had a silencer placed on him thus far in this series, as Denver's defense has locked him down and prevented him from having break-out performances to uplift Oklahoma City. But Tuesday was his game along with Dort, as Gilgeous-Alexander posted a personal series-high 31 points on 12-of-23 shooting to side with his seven assists and six rebounds.

Dort, coming off an outing where he hoisted up 10 shots from beyond the arc and only cashing in on two of them, also had a massive game to take the series lead. The criticism was high for Dort following Sunday's outing, namely how 10 threes was ludicrous. He took eight on Tuesday night and capitalized on four of them, making that 50% from three to tally 12 points alongside his wildly impressive defense on Jamal Murray.

OKC's defense as a whole was integral of course, holding Murray to an inefficient 10-of-27 shooting, though he still tallied 28 points. Nikola Jokic got his own as well, tallying 44 points in the game on 25 shots. The six other Nuggets who stepped on the floor were locked down however, not helping out their prime duo enough to curb the ultimate seven-point victory forged by the Thunder.

Oklahoma City has visibly matured in this series, competing against prime talent and coming up big when the odds may not be in the team's favor. Crawling back from a 2-1 deficit is no easy feat versus this Denver team, but the job is not quite done.

The Thunder will head back to Denver for Game 6 at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday to try and close out the Nuggets to advance to the Western Conference Finals.