With just over eight minutes left in the fourth quarter of Game 5 of the NBA Finals, the Oklahoma City Thunder were in trouble. What had once been an 18-point advantage had narrowed to a mere two. The Indiana Pacers, who had built a reputation for mounting fierce comebacks throughout the playoffs, looked poised to do it again.

But Jalen Williams had other plans. As the Pacers trimmed the lead to 95-93, the Thunder countered with a commanding 16-4 run in under three minutes. That momentum shift pushed their lead back to 14 points, ultimately sealing a 120-109 win. Williams delivered eight of his team-high 11 fourth-quarter points during that stretch, anchoring the run that brought Oklahoma City within one victory of a title.

“Great force,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “That was an unbelievable performance by him, just throughout the whole game. He really was on the gas the entire night. Applied a ton of pressure.”

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the league’s regular-season MVP, echoed that sentiment: “He was, like, really gutsy tonight. He stepped into big plays. Felt like every time we needed a shot, he made it. He wasn’t afraid. He was fearless tonight.”

Williams finished with a playoff career-high 40 points, six rebounds, and four assists, going 14-of-25 from the field and hitting three of his five shots from beyond the arc. At just 24 years old, he became the fifth-youngest player to score 40 or more in an NBA Finals game—an effort that came at exactly the right time for his team.

“A lot of the things that [Williams] got in the game tonight are things we talked about earlier in the season,” Daigneault said. “He wasn’t having games like this in November, December. His focus on the improvement led him to being the player he is right now.”

Williams pointed to the process behind that growth: “In order to get better and being good in these moments — and by no means am I perfect in these moments — you’re able to generate good habits when you have the right way of going about it and you have a process. I’m extremely fortunate that I have a coach and a staff and teammates that allow me to have those ugly plays during the year and figure out my game.”

The Thunder needed that growth. Despite an overall strong postseason, Williams had faltered during key moments earlier in the playoffs. Against Denver in the second round, he scored just 16 points in Game 1 on 5-of-20 shooting and managed only six points in a Game 6 loss after hitting just three of 16 shots.

In the first two games of the Finals, Williams averaged only 18 points and shot just 33.3%. But things shifted in Game 3, when he broke out for 26 points. That marked a turning point. With the Pacers ramping up defensive pressure on Gilgeous-Alexander, Williams assumed more ball-handling duties—and responded by delivering his best back-to-back performances of the series: 27 points on Friday, and then his 40-point gem Monday night.

Reflecting on the moment, Williams admitted it all felt surreal. “To understand the opportunity that we have I just try to play as hard as I can,” he said. “Whatever happens after that is where the chips fall.

“But I’d be lying if I said I could imagine doing what I did tonight. I definitely could have seen myself here a long time ago, I just didn’t think it would happen this fast and I didn’t think it would be with a group of guys that I truly am grateful to be around.”

On Monday night, Oklahoma City was just as grateful for him.