NBA Cup: Thunder advance to semifinals as Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scores 39, Luka Dončić sputters

It’s not a complete revenge for their elimination from last year’s NBA playoffs elimination, but the Oklahoma City Thunder got the better of the Dallas Mavericks on Tuesday.

The Thunder advanced to the semifinals of the NBA Cup by stifling the Dallas Mavericks in a 118-104 home win. They will face the winner of the Wednesday’s quarterfinal between the Golden State Warriors and Houston Rockets.

The win started and ended as a mostly miserable day at the gym for Mavericks star Luka Dončić, which has become a recurring story for the Thunder, owners of the league’s top defensive rating.

The five-time All-Star finished the game with 16 points on 5-of-15 shooting. At halftime, he had only two points on 1-of-7 shooting with four turnovers. He made his numbers more respectable in the fourth quarter, but Dallas never got closer than eight points to OKC.

With their primary offensive engine sputtering, the Mavericks yielded far too much ground to the Thunder. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander had one of his best games of the season with 39 points on 15-of-23 shooting with eight rebounds, five assists and three steals, completely outplaying his superstar counterpart.

“Just overall, [Gilgeous-Alexander] is a great scorer, he gets his teammates involved and a lot of times it’s hard to stop him,” Dončić said after the game. “Think at some point you have to send two, three players. It’s amazing to play against a guy like this, the battles, it’s fun.”

The Thunder entered the quarterfinal as the West’s top seed by virtue of their performance in four group-play games and looked the part as the conference’s top dog. Despite still missing Chet Holmgren, they thoroughly outplayed the team that eliminated them in the Western Conference semifinals last year.

They are now two wins from more than $500,000 for each player in NBA Cup prize money, but Tuesday was also another encouraging step for their bigger goal.