After a massive Game 7 victory over the Denver Nuggets, the Oklahoma City Thunder charge forward. This time, the young Thunder is dealing with another hungry team – the Minnesota Timberwolves. With Game 1 in the books, OKC seeks to stay in the driver’s seat in the Western Conference Finals. After all, the last time OKC won a Game 1 this postseason, it swept the Memphis Grizzlies in Round 1.
Four OKC Adjustments to Make After Game 1 vs Timberwolves
OKC was feeling its rust and fatigue from the Denver series and struggled to start strong. Minnesota, on the other hand, was fresh off a week’s rest and was able to come off with a high energy. The game was a rollercoaster at first. With nine lead changes and six ties, it was setting up to be a finish down to the wire. But like many other Oklahoma City game in the 2024-25 season, OKC took advantage of the third quarter and kept stacking to the finish.
This win for OKC is a great start. This is, after all, their first WCF win since May 24, 2016, and a lot has changed for the team ever since. Despite winning Game 1 handily, a few OKC adjustments should do the trick for the Thunder for the rest of the WCF vs the Timberwolves.
Dominate the Paint
To start this series, OKC is outscoring the Wolves 54-20 in the paint. That is a whopping difference considering that Minnesota has three paint-dominant bigs in Julius Randle, Rudy Gobert, and Naz Reid. The Thunder were cutting well and finding opportunities, even after a sluggish first half. It cannot be denied that the presence of alternating bigs in Chet Holmgren and Isaiah Hartenstein by playing them less minutes together has helped a lot.
However, dominating the paint isn’t all about scoring. It’s all about defense too, and the Thunder lived up to its reputation of having the best defense in the league both in the regular season and the playoffs. Clogging the paint is a great tactic, but now that it has shown its worthiness in Game 1, expect Minnesota to make key adjustments to it.
Minnesota by the numbers:
36 misses threes
0 fast break points
19 turnovers
0 Ant Edwards 4th quarter points
20 points in the paint (54 for OKC)— Caysen Brownwolf (@CaysenBrownwolf) May 21, 2025
Fans at the Paycom Center were raucous every moment the Thunder had a stop in the paint. This was one of the most essential factors of OKC’s defense. In fact, the Thunder forced a total of 17 turnovers, despite having 12 of their own. Dominating the paint is as good as it gets for Oklahoma City, and it could well be a factor to their success.
Small Ball Rules
All season long, OKC continues to bank in on its ability to play anyone regardless of position. This versatility advantage has played well on OKC’s cards with the small ball lineup. The Thunder had more runs where it didn’t have two centers on the floor. This worked well to frustrate Minnesota as seemingly nothing could work for them, especially in the fourth quarter. Most notably, Anthony Edwards had no points on one field goal attempt in the final stanza.
At its smallest, OKC fielded Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Luguentz Dort, Alex Caruso, Cason Wallace, and Jalen Williams. SGA had no problems scoring after a rough first half, while Caruso and Wallace hounded Minnesota with defense and speed. Jalen Williams kept the same level of play he had from Game 7 against Denver.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander on OKC's adaptability and going with more single big and small ball:
"Something that coach has done all year is just mix up lineups throughout the season. I think it's already prepared for moments like like tonight where the matchups are different."
— Nick Gallo (@NickAGallo) May 21, 2025
Everything worked well for the Thunder. They had Holmgren at the five at one point to counter both Randle and Reid, which was enough to slow Minnesota’s pace. The small ball allows OKC to have elite floor balance and spacing. On top of that, this benefits the pace that Oklahoma City loves to play in, which led to a total of 70 points in the second half on 61.9% shooting.
This was also a major factor in shutting down Gobert. In the first round, the four-time DPOY scored 27 points on 12-15 shooting, helping to beat the Los Angeles Lakers in Game 5. He also had 24 rebounds in that series clincher. Against OKC, however, just two points and three rebounds on 1-3 shooting in 21 minutes.
Exploit Passing Lanes
One of the big OKC adjustments to watch is the small-ball lineup. The Thunder comes with elite defense, and it allows them to be disruptive as they can be. With the defense, Oklahoma City scored 31 points off turnovers – a huge difference to the Wolves’ 10 points. This clearly shows how the defense can be the Thunder’s best offense in times of need.
That was witnessed well in the second half – where the Wolves just scored a total of 40 points and shot 35% from the field. They had eight turnovers in that stretch and shot 21.7% from three on 23 attempts. This is a result of the passing lanes being clogged by the Thunder defense, most coming from Alex Caruso’s on-court brilliance. Minnesota was forced to take a lot of threes – a total of 51 for the whole game.
Should this continue for OKC, forced turnovers may be the key for them to close out this series.
More Kenrich Williams Minutes
Shelved for the first two series, fans were definitely surprised to see Kenrich Williams get inserted into the lineup. He was a crucial piece for OKC in the second half rally and went 3-for-3 from the field with a +19 rating. A vocal locker room leader, having Williams on the floor to start this series is a good look.
Kenny Hustle appreciation post 🫡 pic.twitter.com/4yNJU3jwo2
— OKC THUNDER (@okcthunder) May 21, 2025
Williams was also instrumental in defending Julius Randle for most of the second half. The Minnesota big man scored a total of 28 points and was hot for the first half – but only had eight points in the closing half. It seems that this series against the Wolves will see more key bench players get impressive minutes as well.
Will These OKC Adjustments Make a Difference?
At this rate, it does seem that OKC being in the lead means that they can put up impressive key performances up and running. This is, after all, the Thunder’s first trip to the WCF in the new era. Their mentality always resets to zero-zero after every game, and all OKC adjustments will come in handy.
As we have seen in the previous playoff series, the Western Conference Finals can be a game of adjustments. It seems that it will all depend on which team has more cards to play on the table. With OKC being just three games away from a return to the NBA Finals, they should have the last word on this showdown too.
Photo credit: © Alonzo Adams-Imagn Images
