NBA Finals Notes: Pacers enjoy spiritual advantage over Thunder
The analytics, the matchups and X's and O's may favor the Thunder in the NBA Finals, but if the basketball gods get involved the Pacers are in good shape.
The NBA Finals on paper don’t favor the Pacers in any way. The Thunder have posted a season that would be historic should they win four games over the Pacers. Their pace can keep pace with the Pacers and their defense fuels it with elite waves of physical on ball and help defenders to throw at their opponents.
After consuming an incredible amount of content on this matchup, the consensus expectation is the Thunder will win the series in five games and almost to a person making that prediction, they admit if they had any guts they’d predict a sweep.
Both teams are ahead of the usual Championship schedule with a lead dog hitting their prime at 27 years of age, although Shai Gilgeous-Alexanders is about a year ahead of Tyrese Haliburton on that schedule. But both teams rely on young talent in heavy support roles along with a few seasoned vets to make things work.
Regardless, the Pacers have coaching staff with championship experience to game plan and find ways to force the pace to their liking and prime the corner three pump. Maybe the best thing for the Pacers is that they have to sit in it and listened to the ‘no chance’ narrative over their four off days which will only get louder as they wake up in OKC on Wednesday for Media Day.
But unless there are some unspoken promises to be fulfilled by Adam Silver and the NBA after these Finals, the Pacers WILL have an overwhelming advantage via the basketball gods.
This is personal for me. Every year since Clay Bennett, Aubrey McClendon and David Stern conspired to take the Seattle SuperSonics, with Kevin Durant and Sam Presti, and relocate them in OKC, I have raised a glass when the Thunder’s season ended to toast another year without a title.
Starbucks CEO sold his stake in the Sonics to these thieves with Stern’s approving nod done with proclamations they would stay in Seattle, only to work feverishly to move to OKC after the inked dried on the deal. Of course, McClendon was also a thief in his day job as a energy baron which lead to his demise the day after he was indicted, just as the Thunder were title contenders.
With prime Durant and Russell Westbrook the Thunder have made runs to the Western Conference Finals looking like champs in waiting. In 2016, the Thunder famously blew a 3-1 lead in the WCF and a fourth quarter lead in Game 6 as the basketball gods tapped Klay Thompson on the shoulder to go on a 3-ball heater, flipping the game and pushing the series back to the Bay where the Warriors won before losing to LeBron, Kyrie and the Cavs. That wild set of circumstances lead to Durant’s departure from OKC to begin the mercenary part of his career with the Dubs.
You think that just happens…basketball gods.
Now we await the NBA Finals in 2025 with a Thunder team that appears destined to win a title and remain set up for what may be a rare multi-year run at titles in the double-apron era. Adam Silver has been painfully teasing Seattle for the past few years about bringing the Sonics back with another team via expansion. Of course, Silver keeps kicking the can down the road trying to pump up the money it will cost for a new team.
So, here we are with the Pacers and all of the magic they have enjoyed this season, a team with the basketball gods seemingly riding shotgun throughout the postseason, waiting to take a their shot against the Thunder. Aaron Nesmith and Tyrese Haliburton alone have delivered inexplicable, otherworldly moments in BOTH the Cleveland and New York series, seemingly rewarded for the effort to never give in.
As Haliburton demonstrated in Game 1 against the Knicks, you never know how the ball is going to bounce and sometimes it goes six feet in the air before dropping through the net to alter the course of a series and two franchises (Tom Thibodau would agree, no?) in an instant.
Keep the faith. Go Supes.
Other notes:
The Pacers practiced one more time a the St. V’s Center before heading to OKC where they will be thrust into the Finals atmosphere on Wednesday. The Pacers Media Day duties begin at 1:30 p.m. CT followed by practice a 2:15 p.m. CT.
Jarace Walker is expected to miss at least the first two games, still on crutches at practice after suffering a bad ankle sprain in the Pacers Game 6 win over the Knicks.
The Pacers have left more damage in their way with the Knicks firing Tom Thibodau after losing to the Pacers in the Eastern Conference Finals. None of those wins by the Pacers were easy and it seemed like this would be a annual matchup between the two teams. It still very well may be, but the Knicks will have to hire the right coach who can get more out of the heavy investment they made in Mikal Bridges while also letting Jalen Brunson run the show.
The Pacers organization is flying out a couple of charters with full-time employees for the first two games in OKC. At least the Pacers will have a solid group of fans cheering for them among the madness of the Thunder fans.