The young Oklahoma City Thunder have absorbed lessons all season – in success and in failure through 82 regular-season games and 22 playoff games.
The lessons for the Thunder after six NBA Finals games against the Indiana Pacers are clear.
Clearer than ever.
Winning closeout games in the conference final round is one thing; winning closeout games in the NBA Finals is another, much more demanding thing.
The Thunder need to take the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy because the Pacers aren’t going to give it up easily. They’re going after it just as hard.
The 2025 NBA Finals get a Game 7 because Tyrese Haliburton (and his one good leg) and the Pacers destroyed the Thunder 108-91 in Game 6 Thursday, June 19.
“From our standpoint, it was uncharacteristic,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “It was disappointing. It was collective. It wasn’t one guy. Just we were not where we needed to be on either end of the floor for much of the game. We have to be a lot better before Game 7.”
It was one of those games where the margin was not indicative of the beating the Pacers delivered. The Thunder were miserable across the board, but don’t be fooled either. The feisty, admirable Pacers had a significant role in Oklahoma City’s inability to score or defend.
“Obviously it was a very poor performance by us,” Daigneault said. “But there’s two teams out there. I want to give Indiana credit for the way they defended, the way they competed in the game, the way they played all the way around. They had a lot to do with it.’
If the Thunder want to win the franchise’s first championship since moving to Oklahoma City from Seattle in 2008, they know they can’t have a similar performance.
Twenty-one turnovers leading to 19 Pacers points won’t get it done. Shooting 26.7% on 3-pointers and allowing 15 made 3s won’t get it done. Falling behind by 22 at the half and 30 by the end of the third quarter, going scoreless for a nearly seven-minute stretch at the end of the second quarter and start of the third, and eight turnovers by 2024-25 NBA MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander won’t do the job.
Gilgeous-Alexander didn’t hide from the result. “We got exactly what we deserved, what we earned. We have to own that,’ he said.
As dominant as Oklahoma City has been this season, it’s also easy to forget it is the second-youngest team to play in the Finals in the past 70 seasons. This group is playing in their first Finals together, and Daigneault just coached his 32nd career playoff game.
Sunday is the 20th Game 7 in Finals history, and the first since Cleveland came back from a 3-1 deficit to beat Golden State in 2016.
For the Thunder, there are encouraging internal and external signs. The home team is 15-4 in Finals Game 7s, including 4-1 in the past 30 seasons, and the Thunder defeated Denver in Game 7 at home in this season’s Western Conference semifinals.
They lost two consecutive games just twice during the regular season and have not lost two consecutive playoff games this season. They respond to losses.
“It’s a privilege to play in Game 7s. It’s a privilege to play in the Finals,” Daigneault said. “As disappointing as tonight was, we’re grateful for the opportunity. We put in a lot of work this season to be able to play that game at home, which is exciting to be able to do it in front of our fans.
“Obviously disappointed tonight. But we’ll regroup, get back to zero, learn from it with clear eyes, like we always do. Get ourselves as ready as we can be to play Game 7 on Sunday.”
The biggest test is Sunday in a winner-take-all game.
“The way I see it is, we sucked tonight,’ Gilgeous-Alexander said. ‘We can learn our lessons. We have one game for everything, for everything we’ve worked for, and so do they. The better team Sunday will win. …
‘One game for everything you ever dreamed of. If you win it, you get everything. If you lose it, you get nothing. It’s that simple.’