Pacers coach Rick Carlisle name-drops Shai Gilgeous-Alexander after Thunder loss

Tuesday night, the OKC Thunder fell to the Indiana Pacers in what wound up ending their winning-streak at three games.

Outplayed right from the jump, Oklahoma City didn't even see a lead until the latter stages of the third period, though, by that time, their energy had been running on empty and could not manage to hold on for all that much longer, as they were ultimately downed by a final score of 121-111

On top of their fast-paced style of play that quite noticeably took Mark Daigneault's club out of their element, the defensive scheme drawn up by the Pacers coaching staff seemed to make Shai Gilgeous-Alexander mightily inefficient, as he shot just 44.4 percent from the floor, converted on just one of his seven long-range attempts, and coughed the ball up four times in his 37 minutes of play.

Of course, considering the superstar talent that he is, the 25-year-old still went on to drop a whopping 30-point performance, a feat that had him claim the record for most 30-or-more point performances in a single season for the Thunder.

Following the contest, Pacers headman Rick Carlisle heaped praise upon the likes of Gilgeous-Alexander, saying that, in the end, all a team can really do when playing against the guard is simply "try and make it hard."

Rick Carlisle praises Thunder superstar Shai Gilgeous-Alexander

"The guy's a great player. He's going to be First-Team All-NBA. He led the league in scoring last year, he's second or third this year. He's a major reason [the Thunder are] in first in the west and he just has crazy skills to get to the rim, to his mid-range, he's hitting more threes. We were able to keep him off the free throw line a bit, which helped, but it was a difficult game."

- Rick Carlisle

Gilgeous-Alexander currently finds himself on pace to finish with a statistical stat line not seen before the arrival and since the retirement of Michael Jordan, and is currently boasting sensational per-game averages of 31.1 points, 6.4 assists, 5.6 rebounds, 2.1 steals, and 1.0 blocks on 54.4 percent shooting from the floor and 37.8 percent shooting from distance.

On top of his 30-point scoring performance, the MVP candidate would wrap up his showing against Carlisle's Pacers with 10 rebounds, 5 assists, 2 steals, and a block.