A storm has arrived. The Oklahoma City Thunder is the class of basketball.
OKC completed one of the most sterling NBA seasons in history, winning the championship on Sunday night after overwhelming the Indiana Pacers, 103-91, in Game 7 of the NBA Finals. OKC won 68 regular season games—only six other teams have won as many, or more, in a season—before rattling off another 16 victories in the playoffs to finish the wire-to-wire job. The Thunder, who relocated from Seattle to Oklahoma City in 2008, won the franchise’s first title since moving south: the Seattle Supersonics won the 1979 NBA championship.
Oklahoma City blew a late lead in Game 1 of the Finals—allowing Indiana to steal a win on OKC’s home floor—making its championship quest that much more difficult. Indiana had pulled off improbable comebacks all playoffs long. But Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the NBA regular season and Finals MVP who finished with 29 points in the Thunder’s Game 7 victory, gave OKC a fourth quarter cushion through his passing. With about 9 minutes left in the game, he dropped a clever dish to Cason Wallace underneath the hoop: Wallace’s layup put the Thunder up 86-68. Thunder big man Chet Holmgren blocked a shot on Indiana’s next possession—Holgren finished with five blocked shots, a record for a Finals Game 7. Gilgeous-Alexander drew in the defense, then spotted Jalen Williams wide open on the wing. Gilgeous-Alexander hit Willams, whose three-pointer gave OKC a commanding 89-68 lead. Gilgeous-Alexender finished the game with a dozen assists, and just one turnover. Indiana fought back to cut the lead to 10 with under two minutes remaining. But the victory was never really in doubt.
Indiana tried its best to overcome heartbreak in Game 7: Tyrese Haliburton, the Pacers’ star point guard who was playing with a calf strain in his right leg, suffered an achilles injury in the first quarter. He lay on the court in agony, with his teammates surrounding him. Haliburton, who hit the winning shot in Indiana’s Game 1 victory, left the game, and did not return: he’s likely to miss time next season too. He was off to a fast start, having sunk a trio of first-quarter treys. On crutches, all Haliburton could do after the game was greet his despondent teammates in a Paycomm Center hallway.
Indiana led at halftime, 48-47: the Pacers, whose dominant 108-91 victory over OKC in Game 6 on Thursday forced just the seventh Game 7 of an NBA Finals in 38 years, wouldn’t fold. Oklahoma City pushed the lead to 65-56 about five minutes into the second half. T.J. McConnell of Indiana put on a third quarter show, making six baskets in the last seven minutes of the quarter. The problem: no other Pacer scored.
OKC finished the third quarter with an 81-68 advantage. It took Indiana nearly five minutes to score in the fourth quarter: the Thunder put on a stunning defensive clinic. Indiana tripled OKC’s turnover total (21-7). Without Halliburton on the floor as a playmaker, Indiana had no answers. At one point, Bennedict Mathurin of Indiana fought off the swarming OKC defense by just throwing the ball against the backcourt, retrieving his own miss and drawing a foul. It was a smart move, born of desperation.
Sam Presti, who has led the OKC franchise’s basketball operations since 2007, has assembled an enviable roster that’s built to last. It’s the youngest team to win a title in 48 seasons. Presti acquired Gilgeous-Alexander in a trade involving All-Star Paul George in 2019—the Thunder turned one of the draft picks in that deal into Williams, who averaged 23.6 points per game in the series, including a 40-point outburst in OKC’s key Game 5 win.
This series, involving a duel between small-market NBA teams, struggled to draw big ratings. Fans who tuned out, due to lack of city sizzle, missed out. And now the NBA’s new storyline is set, for the next five years or more.
How far can OKC go?
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