If the underdog Indiana Pacers want any hope of pulling off an upset in the 2025 NBA Finals, they’ll need to find a way to slow down Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. But given his status as the reigning MVP and regular season scoring champion, that task is easier said than done.
Fortunately, a realistic template does exist. The Pacers just need to know where to look.
How The Clippers Did It
On a Sunday night at the end of March, the Oklahoma City Thunder squared off against the Los Angeles Clippers. The Thunder narrowly escaped with a two-point victory, but not before being pushed to the brink while Gilgeous-Alexander was held to his worst true shooting percentage of the season (38.4).
The Thunder scored just 103 points, despite hitting 50 percent of their wide open threes (per NBA.com), so this defensive masterpiece wasn’t aided by shooting variance. Yes, they played this game without Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren, but it still provides a blueprint the Pacers would do well to follow.
Mixing Up Defenses
The first key to the Clippers’ defense is a must for slowing any modern day superstar. Today’s players are too smart and adept at reading coverages for there to be one specific method to stopping them. You need to constantly keep them on their toes by showing different looks and forcing them to problem solve on the fly.
Gilgeous-Alexander is no different. In their clash, the Clippers made sure to toggle through different pick-and-roll defenses. In the mix below, you’ll see examples of drop (first clip in the montage below), at the level/soft hedging (second clip) and trapping coverages (third).
At the very least, these changeups force Gilgeous-Alexander to take a beat, read the defense and figure out his best course of action. Meanwhile, in the best outcomes, the defense could catch Gilgeous-Alexander slipping and cause him to commit a turnover.
Anyone But You
Not to be confused with the underwhelming Sydney Sweeney-Glenn Powell film, but the second part of this game-plan is keeping the ball out of Gilgeous-Alexander’s hands and forcing literally anyone else on the team to win instead.
This isn’t because the Thunder’s ing cast doesn’t have good offensive players. Rather, it’s because Gilgeous-Alexander is one of the two best offensive players on the planet and defenses are better off taking their chances with good offensive players rather than an all-time great.
To do this, the Clippers face-guarded Gilgeous-Alexander in the half-court whenever the ball was not in his hands. Even when the Thunder set off-ball screens to try and get him open, Los Angeles countered by switching and having the new defender continue the ball denial.
NBA players are too good to completely deny for 24 seconds. That’s not the point. The point is to bleed precious seconds off the shot clock, so when Gilgeous-Alexander does eventually get the ball, he has far less time with which to work.
Look how preoccupied the Clippers are with Gilgeous-Alexander, despite Aaron Wiggins driving to the rim.
Even when Gilgeous-Alexander did touch the ball, the Clippers loaded up on his side and sent help late during his drives to try to force the ball out of his hands. They tried anything to ensure he wasn’t the one taking the shot.
A wrinkle the Pacers can add is to start face-guarding Gilgeous-Alexander in the backcourt (like they’ve done all postseason) to make it even harder for the midrange master to get the ball and go to work.
Personnel Differences
No matter how hard a team tries, Gilgeous-Alexander is going to get his isolation touches. That’s why, along with a denial-centric defense that keeps Gilgeous-Alexander’s head spinning, a team also needs sound wing defenders who can guard the ball and navigate screens.
The Clippers are well-equipped in this area, touting a bevy of athletic wings who can give Gilgeous-Alexander a hard time (Kris Dunn, Derrick Jones Jr., Kawhi Leonard, Amir Coffey, etc.). In this game, Gilgeous-Alexander was guarded by seven different players for at least three different possessions. This acts as another form of throwing different looks at a player, with every defender having nuances and tendencies to which the ball-handler must adjust.
In particular, Jones has become one of the premier Gilgeous-Alexander “stoppers” over the last couple of years. According to NBA.com’s matchup data, Gilgeous-Alexander shot just 7-of-22 (31.8 percent) when defended by Jones. That’s the lowest percentage he’s shot against any defender he’s attempted at least 20 field goals against.
Jones is a great antidote to Gilgeous-Alexander. He has the quickness to stay with him laterally, is springy enough to absorb his patented bump and is long enough to still offer a meaningful contest after that bump.
This is where the Pacers could run into some trouble. In theory, they have their own thicket of rangy wings with Andrew Nembhard, Aaron Nesmith, Bennedict Mathurin, Ben Sheppard and Jarace Walker.
However, Nembhard is likely too short to bother Gilgeous-Alexander. Mathurin has the physical tools to shadow Gilgeous-Alexander, but his playing time this postseason has been up and down because of lapses elsewhere. Sheppard and Walker are too young and undisciplined to deal with the Grifter God’s fakes and tricks.
As I wrote earlier this week, the ideal person to guard Gilgeous-Alexander is Nesmith. But the question remains just how healthy he is after spraining his ankle in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference (he says he’s ready to go). On top of that, Nesmith is different than Jones in that he’s more of a strength-based defender than a speed-based one, which could cause problems against the slithery Gilgeous-Alexander.
Do The Pacers Have Enough?
Even if the Pacers execute the proposed game-plan perfectly, it still may not be enough to slow Gilgeous-Alexander and the league’s third-best regular season offense. Just last round, we saw the Minnesota Timberwolves (a better defensive team than the Pacers) implement a lot of these same principles, yet Gilgeous-Alexander still averaged 31.4 points and 8.2 assists on 56.7 percent true shooting.
No matter what the Pacers do, they are in an unfavorable situation here. That’s why they’re considerable underdogs entering this series. But they need to at least give Operation: Slowing Down Gilgeous-Alexander their best shot because, as they certainly know, anything can happen in the NBA Playoffs.
