As Thunder look to rebound, Canada's Lu Dort continues to show up when needed

OKLAHOMA CITY — When they needed him most, he wasn’t there, and they lost the game.

It’s a highly reductive way to look at how and why the Oklahoma City Thunder are down 1-0 to the Indiana Pacers in the NBA Finals.

The list of things the Thunder need to do better is lengthy. The things the Pacers did well down the stretch in their improbable comeback from down 15 points with 9:42 to play.

But when Pacers wing Aaron Nesmith gathered the rebound on Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s miss with 11 seconds left in the fourth quarter and shovelled it to Tyrese Haliburton, the Pacers guard — consciously or unconsciously — began to snake his way up the floor and away from the Thunder’s Lu Dort, because why wouldn’t you?

When you’re trying to make a game-winning play against a scrambled defence, you do what you can to avoid the Thunder’s defensive ace like the way a smart quarterback throws to the opposite side of the field from the All-Pro cornerback.

Instead it was Cason Wallace who got matched up on Haliburton, and while Wallace is no slouch himself defensively, he wasn’t able to make the Pacers star guard uncomfortable enough as Haliburton raised up from 21 feet and nailed the winning jumper with 0.3 seconds left on the clock, silencing the otherwise deafening OKC crowd.

The irony of the moment is that Dort had built his NBA career on being there when and where his team needs him most.

“Well, there's a huge luxury to Lu because I think more so than anything I could say about him, I think the other players don't like playing against him. He's just an irritant. He's physical, relentless. He's well-studied at this point in his career. He's experienced,” said Thunder head coach Mark Daigneault. “Having the other guys, there's just a compounding effect to having that type of point-of-attack defence [through their lineup] but certainly having a guy that takes on those matchups like Lu is a great place to start.”

Dort played his role to perfection against the Pacers, who came into the Finals averaging 117.7 points per 100 possessions in the playoffs, the league’s best and even higher than Indiana managed since turning their season around in late December following a 10-15 start.

He spent most of his time guarding who you might expect: Haliburton and Pascal Siakam, Indiana’s primary offensive threats, and with the results you would expect: not only did neither of the Pacers stars score with Dort and the primary defender according the NBA.com matchup data, they only got off two shots between them.

Dort showed up. It’s what he does.

“That’s the greatest thing about him,” says Kemy Osse, who has known Dort since he was a rising prospect from Montreal Nord, the heavily Haitian influenced community where Dort was with four other siblings. Osse’s brother, Nelson, was one of Dort’s first coaches, and Osse himself was an early workout partner, helping shape the raw kid with the boulder-sized shoulders. He now coaches Dort’s AAU team on the Adidas Prep circuit.

“He’s always there for his family, for his community, for his team,” says Osse. “He supports his AAU club, he runs his camps in Montreal every summer, it just tells you what kind of guy he is.

It’s that mentality that has made Dort such a great defender, Osse believes.

The stories are true: when Dort turned his attention to basketball just prior to high school after starting off primarily in soccer, he was already a reasonable facsimile of the 6-foot-4, 220-pound block of granite he is now as a 26-year-old. It meant his early identity was as a scorer — there weren’t many kids his age that could stop him from getting where he needed to go on the floor.

But as he kept climbing the ranks his role changed. Going undrafted after averaging 16.1 points a game as a freshman at Arizona State was a blow — in a recent Players Tribune essay Dort described his reaction to not hearing his name called:

“Man, I’ll never forget just sitting there in the auditorium, hearing so many names being called in front of me. Mid–second round I was like, I still didn’t get my name called??,” he wrote. “Then it was over. Me and my family got up, and we started heading out. I was just so frustrated, sad.”

He quickly recognized his path to making his NBA dream come true was going to be different than he envisioned, but rather than chafe at it, Dort embraced it. It’s no surprise to Osse, who says that Dort was always coachable, and always willing to adapt, given his primary motivation was to leverage basketball to improve the economic situation his family faced as first-generation Haitian immigrants.

“He know that he comes from a tough neighbourhood — and it was similar for me growing up,” says Osse, who is now the head coach at Fort Erie International Academy Prep. “When you come from an environment like that, with Haitian parents and believe you have to respect your elders, that’s helps you be humble. And when you come from places like that, you’re just trying to get out, right? So you’ll do what you need to do achieve your dreams.

“And that’s where the humility comes from, knowing what you have to do to help win basketball games. I think a lot of times, kids — especially now days — they don’t want to do the dirty work. But a lot of people, that’s how you can get on the floor, and then you can add your skills.”

That aspect of Dort’s game was on display in Game 1 too. Perhaps the primary reason Dort went undrafted and had to make the NBA on a two-way contract and then a minimum deal before signing the five-year, $82-million-dollar contract that kicked in for the 2022-23 season was that he wasn’t a strong shooter. He connected on just 40.5 per cent of his field goal attempts in college and shot just 33.2 per cent from deep in his first four seasons in the NBA.

But he kept at it, working closely with highly respected shooting coach Chip Engelland, and shot a career-best 39.4 per cent from deep in a breakout season in 2023-24 and then 41.2 per cent on a career-high 5.8 attempts per game this past season.

Against the Pacers with the Thunder’s offence struggling to hit stride for much of the night, Dort hit five threes on seven attempts.

But it was his defence that made the highlights as he led both teams with four steals and added two blocked shots, including turning away Nesmith at the rim on a dunk attempt with 1:33 left and the Thunder trying to hang on to what was a five-point lead at that point.

All in a night’s work, says Dort.

“Honestly, just being in the game,” he said, when I asked him if he had seen anything on film that he could take advantage of against the Pacers, who turned it over a season-high 25 times against OKC, nearly double the season average for one of the NBA’s best teams at managing the ball. “At that end of the floor I move a lot, I pay a lot of attention to some of the stuff that they do. Anytime I can sneak one in there, a steal or block I'll go. That's just how I play. Whenever I get to do a play like that for my teammates, I'll do it..

For the most part Dort has done it without seeking or getting formal recognition for his efforts.

He likely should have been named an all-NBA defender last season but finally got the nod this year, fittingly, since he’s the top defender on what was — by far — the NBA’s best team-defence this past season and so far in the playoffs.

When the news of his all-defence nod came down Dort was mobbed by his teammates, the spontaneity and sincerity of their reaction all the proof needed for the regard he’s held in within the Thunder locker room.

For the minute, Dort even allowed himself to enjoy it.

“It was good,” Dort said when I asked about his teammates’ reaction. “Honestly, I feel like the work I've been doing on that end of the floor has been the same for the past years. It's good that I finally got recognized for it. I give a lot of credit to my teammates and this whole team for the success that we've had. But I'm happy I got recognized for it. “

Those moments are fleeting, and as Dort and the Thunder know all too well after Game 1, fortunes can flip in the blink of an eye, or as long as it takes for an opposing guard to rise up and hit a game winner.

The focus turns to Game 2 on Sunday, but the Thunder can count on one thing: wherever they need him, Dort will be there.