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The Oklahoma City Thunder often made things look easy in the regular season.

They finished with one of the top records in league history and set an NBA mark for largest scoring differential by outscoring teams by an average of 12.9 points per game.

But the Thunder’s second-round series against the Denver Nuggets was never going to be easy, especially given Nuggets superstar Nikola Jokic and Denver’s overall experience.

With the series tied at 2 heading into Tuesday’s Game 5 of their Western Conference series in Oklahoma City, the Thunder are embracing the struggle of the series.

“We’re a better team than we were at the beginning of the series,” Oklahoma City coach Mark Daigneault said. “We are continuing to learn and we’re continuing to grow through all these experiences we’re getting. It’s only been a week since the series started, but these games are rich with lessons and rich with experiences. Every time you take a punch and you stand back up, you build more confidence, you build more mental toughness, you build more mettle.”

Over the last three games, Jokic is just 21-of-63 (33.3 percent) from the field, 4-of-22 (18.2 percent) from beyond the arc and averaging just 5.0 assists per contest. He shot less than 40 percent just once during the regular season, but hasn’t reached that threshold since Game 1 of the series.

Two of his four worst shooting performances of his 91 career playoff games have come in the last two games in Denver.

“It’s a little bit of everything,” Jokic said of the reasons behind his struggles. “They’re playing really good defense on me. They’re really getting into my body, handsy, physical. … They’re shrinking the floor for me. I need to do a better job, of course, but it’s part of the game.”

But even with Jokic’s struggles, the Nuggets have made it a three-game series.

“We need to give ourselves a chance,” Jokic said. “We need to be more physical, aggressive.”

Oklahoma City’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who like Jokic is a finalist for the NBA Most Valuable Player award, is averaging 27.5 points and shooting 47.5 percent from the floor in the series, getting to the free-throw line more than nine times per game.

He scored at least 33 points in the first two games of the series in Oklahoma City.

“This series has thrown so many random things at us, so many things that are unexpected or out of the norm,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “I think we’ve done a really good job of just accepting where we are and not straying from who we are and who we’ve been all season.”

The series has also highlighted Oklahoma City’s depth.

The Thunder have 10 players who have played in every game of the series, with each averaging 10 or more minutes per contest.

Denver has used mostly a seven-man rotation in the series, with the only bench player playing more than nine minutes in Sunday’s 92-87 loss being Russell Westbrook.

“We just have to get more from more people,” Nuggets interim coach David Adelman said. “And I have to maybe play more than eight guys.”

–Field Level Media