They had been beat up, battered and embarrassed on their home floor, and as the Oklahoma City Thunder prepared for a rematch with the Los Angeles Lakers on Tuesday, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander delivered to the team a blunt message: Never again. The Thunder had been humiliated on Sunday, carved up by Luka Doncic, buried under an avalanche of threes from Dorian Finney-Smith, Gabe Vincent and Austin Reaves. LA earned that win but, said Gilgeous-Alexander, “you get beat up in the hood and you spin back the next day, you can’t get beat up again. It’s not an option.” “Tonight was going to be a fight,” Gilgeous-Alexander said on his walk out of Paycom Center. “We had to, I guess you could say, get our lick back.” -via Sports Illustrated / April 9, 2025