Thunder vs. Pacers preview, injury news, what to know

Target Haliburton’s player prop for Game 7

Brad Thomas and Vaughn Dalzell weigh in on the player props for Game 7 between the Indiana Pacers and Oklahoma City Thunder, focusing on the over for Tyrese Haliburton’s point total and the under for Isaiah Hartenstein.

Refs assignments announced

James Capers, Josh Tiven and Sean Wright joined a very small club tonight.

Capers, Tiven and Wright were announced by the NBA as the officiating crew for Game 7 of the NBA Finals between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Indiana Pacers. It’s the first Game 7 of a finals for all three, who are now the 22nd, 23rd and 24th referees in NBA history to land such an assignment.

NBA champions are usually built the same way. The Pacers had to be different.

Unlike the league’s four most recent champions, Boston, Denver, Golden State and Milwaukee, who drafted and developed their franchise cornerstones, or the 2020 Los Angeles Lakers, who signed LeBron James as a free agent and whose glamour status made them the preferred trade destination for its other star, Anthony Davis, Indiana’s front office has struck gold by trading its way up.

Of the 10 players Indiana has typically leaned on during this postseason, half were acquired via trades, including three of the top four scorers in Pascal Siakam, Tyrese Haliburton and Aaron Nesmith. Since the Miami Heat built a superteam through free agent signings and won consecutive championships in 2012 and 2013, the only NBA champion to have relied that much on trades were the 2019 Toronto Raptors, who traded for four of their top five leading scorers.

“There’s no one right way to do it,” Pacers general manager Chad Buchanan told NBC News.

Read the full story here.

Pacers ‘dominated’ Thunder in Game 6 win

Dan Patrick reacts to Game 6 of the NBA Finals between the Thunder and Pacers, where T.J. McConnell and Obi Toppin excelled for the Pacers, while Tyrese Haliburton played through his injury.

Handicapping Game 7 between Pacers and Thunder

Drew Dinsick breaks down the Thunder vs. Pacers matchup in Game 7 of the NBA Finals, looking at the trends for both teams and how bettors can find profitable live betting angles.

The ‘margin’ stat that was the biggest key to the Pacers’ saving their season

Reporting from Indianapolis

There was one margin in particular that propelled Indiana to a stunning, 108-91 win over the Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 6 of the NBA Finals on Thursday night, the same one that coach Rick Carlisle said cost them Game 5: Turnovers.

In Game 5, the team coughed up the ball a whopping 22 times in an 11-point loss, including seven in the first quarter and eight in a tightly contested fourth. And they came in a variety of forms, from bad passes to aimlessly dribbling into traffic to picking up the ball too far away from the hoop.

In Game 6, Indiana had zero turnovers in the first quarter, only two by halftime, and seven by the end of third — building a 30-point lead before backups played the majority of the fourth quarter.

Read the full story here.