The NBA Finals Deserved a Better Ending Than That

The lasting image of the 2025 NBA Finals—a thrilling series that pitted one of basketball’s all-time great teams against the most inspiring underdogs in years—will not be one of triumph, sadly. Forevermore, when we hear “Thunder vs. Pacers,” rather than conjuring an image of OKC’s players lifting the trophy, we’ll instead flash back to the gutting image of Tyrese Haliburton pounding the floor in agony, having just suffered a gruesome Achilles injury in what was shaping up to be the game of his life.

That’s the thing about sports—they reflect the world we live in. And more often than not, this world is terribly unfair. I’m not saying that the Thunder winning a championship is some sort of travesty of justice. They charged through the first six months of the NBA calendar virtually unblemished and finished the year with 84 combined regular and postseason wins, putting them in the rare air of Michael Jordan’s dynastic Bulls. By literally every single measure, they were the best team in the sport. But several times during their seven-game torture ritual against the Pacers, none of that mattered.

The Pacers stole Game 1 with a blitzing comeback and Haliburton’s game winner, dominated Game 3 to go ahead in the series, and began Game 7 with Haliburton splashing three straight from behind the arc. Each time, hope sprang eternal. The scrappy but flawed team—who, on paper, had no business hanging with the Thunder death machine—looked like they could actually pull this off. Even after the whole world watched their best player’s leg collapse on multiple slow motion replays, the Pacers improbably held a halftime lead in Game 7. Things were trending toward sappy, feel-good, sports-movie territory, until the universe reminded us that things like that don’t actually happen in real life.

The minute Indiana hit the floor to start the second half, they looked like a team playing without its All-Star point guard. The Pacers turned the ball over seven times in the third quarter alone (the Thunder had zero) and only got two made baskets from people not named T.J. McConnell, who briefly became a tornado again. OKC’s signature defense shone in the biggest moment of the year, passing its final test and all but locking up the organization’s first title. The Thunder outscored the Pacers by 14 in that decisive quarter, and the dream of the little guy taking down the giant died with a whimper.

This is the part where I, a deeply bitter Seattle SuperSonics fan, will say nice things about the Thunder. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is everything a generational basketball player should be. While his even-keeled demeanor could probably have more fire, it clearly works for him and his teammates, and Gilgeous-Alexander did the thing every white-haired coach praises: he still found ways to impact winning despite not shooting well. SGA’s final line from Game 7 will show 29 points, and because his team won, people will forget that he shot a putrid 29% from the field. But it was the 12 assists (and one measly turnover) that secured the championship, along with the usual timeshare he purchased at the free throw line. Willing the team to victory when his jumper abandoned him—in a Game 7!—was no small feat, and Gilgeous-Alexander can spend the next couple days partying with the comfort of knowing he just authored one of the greatest seasons in NBA history.