The Indiana Pacers and Oklahoma City Thunder will meet in the NBA Finals
Oklahoma City Thunder fans have waited for an NBA title since their team arrived in town in 2008. For fans of the Indiana Pacers, who joined the NBA way back in 1976, the wait for a championship has lasted nearly 50 years.
Now, for one team, that drought is about to end. The Thunder and the Pacers will meet in this year’s NBA Finals for the chance to finally bring a trophy home.
Before moving to Oklahoma City and rebranding as the Thunder, the team won a title in 1979 as the Seattle SuperSonics. Soon after the team relocated in 2008, the Thunder were contenders and reached the Finals in 2012. But that generation of the team was unable to capitalize on an ultra-talented roster (with Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and James Harden), and the Thunder had been unable to return to the Finals — until now, after dispatching the Minnesota Timberwolves 4 games to 1.
The Pacers have reached the NBA Finals only once in franchise history, in 2000, when they fell to the back-to-back-to-back Los Angeles Lakers championship squad. Indiana clinched its spot Saturday night after winning a thrilling Eastern Conference Finals against the New York Knicks in six games.
The opening game in the best-of-seven Finals will tip off Thursday, June 5.
The Thunder have had one of the most dominant seasons in NBA history. At 68-14, Oklahoma City had the best record in the regular season, during which they outscored opponents by 12.9 points per game — an NBA record.
Their success this year has come on the strength of their young core trio of superstar Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, wing Jalen Williams and seven-footer Chet Holmgren. Holmgren is 23, Williams is 24 and Gilgeous-Alexander, who was named league MVP after leading the NBA in scoring this season, is only 26.
That dominance continued in the Western Conference Finals, in which the Thunder sent the Minneapolis Timberwolves packing with margins of victory of 26, 15, 2 and 30 points.
The No. 4 seed Pacers, on the other hand, upset the New York Knicks in a tight series in which several games were winnable by either team in the final minutes. In the series-clinching Game 6, the Pacers won 125-108.
“Some of the shot-making in this series has been really beyond belief,” head coach Rick Carlisle said after Indiana’s win in Game 4. “When you can get a stop and a rebound, it almost feels like an anomaly sometimes.”
For Indiana point guard Tyrese Haliburton, these playoffs have been a coming-out party. Just a month ago, an anonymous player poll conducted by The Athletic named Haliburton the league’s “most overrated player.” During the Eastern Conference Finals, he shined, with a flawless triple-double performance in Game 4 and another 21 points Saturday in Game 6. Forward Pascal Siakam won the Eastern Conference Finals MVP.
Indiana and Oklahoma City are two of the smallest media markets in the NBA. The Indianapolis metro area is home to about 2.1 million people. Oklahoma City is smaller, with around 1.5 million people in the metro.
But the success of the teams has invigorated both cities — especially in Oklahoma, where the Thunder are the only major professional sports team in the entire state.
No matter which team wins, this Finals will see the seventh different champion over the past seven years, a remarkable display of parity in the modern NBA.
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