“It’s do or die,” Shai Gilgeous-Alexander said after OKC’s loss at Denver in Game 6. “It’s what you live for, what you work your whole life for. Either your dream continues or your dream ends, so you leave it all out there on the floor and live with the results.”

Denver led for much of the game, but none of that mattered in the fourth quarter, when the Thunder tied it up in the final five minutes and outscored the Nuggets, led by Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s 31 points,