AT THE TOP
BRYAN TERRY/THE OKLAHOMAN
Oklahoma City Thunder guard Alex Caruso kisses the Larry O'Brien Trophy on June 22
after the Thunder beat the Indiana Pacers in Game 7 of the NBA Finals at Paycom Center.
Thunder finally reach summit
24 giu 2025 -
Jenni Carlson Columnist
The Oklahoman USA TODAY NETWORK
With Paycom Center rattling and shaking — and the Indiana Pacers finally seeming to do the same — Jalen Williams joined the celebration by closing his eyes, pumping his fists and adding his voice to the roar.
NATHAN J. FISH/THE OKLAHOMAN
OKC Thunder celebrates during the trophy presentation after Game 7 of the NBA Finals
between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Indiana Pacers at Paycom Center on June 22.
“C’mon!” he bellowed.
Thunder fans did.
“Let’s go!” he thundered.
The fans did — and the Thunder did.
Oklahoma City is the NBA champion.
On a night the Thunder outlasted the Pacers 103-91 in Game 7 of the NBA Finals, Oklahoma City had plenty of reasons to celebrate. The title. The triumph. But as much as anything, this was a chance to reach a mountaintop only ever seen before.
Oh, the Thunder had climbed the mountain before, but it never reached the summit.
Now, it stands at the top.
“It’s a group of guys that have an uncommon mentality, an uncommon connection and competitiveness together,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said before these playoffs began. “That’s where our confidence comes from.
“If you have a lot of experience, that gives you confidence. But there’s other sources of confidence. We’re a confident team because of who we are, how we’ve operated and mainly what we have in our locker room.”
We never knew if we’d see the Thunder return to this point. After all, we saw firsthand how difficult that first ascent was.
“When I think back to where we started in 2008, we were looking up a pretty steep mountain,” Thunder general manager Sam Presti said in September 2022. “We didn’t have a team name. We had no uniforms. Some would argue we didn’t have much of a team at the time.
“But we climbed the mountain.” Did they ever.
A year after relocating to Oklahoma City and winning only 23 games, the Thunder made the playoffs. Pushed the Lakers to six games. Made Kobe and Co. sweat repeatedly. Left the Black Mamba passing Kevin Durant in the back hall and proclaiming, “I’m glad we’re done with you.”
But the NBA was just getting started dealing with that Thunder bunch.
It made the Western Conference Finals five of the next six seasons, the lone exception coming in 2015 when injuries hit like an EF5 tornado and wiped out stars and reserves alike. But even counting that season, the Thunder averaged 53.5 wins a season during that sixyear stretch.
There were big games and great nights and fun that we thought would never end.
But of course, it did.
Durant bolted Bricktown for The Bay in 2016, and even though the Thunder stayed competitive for another four seasons — Sam Presti facilitated it, but Russell Westbrook practically willed it into being — it was clearly starting its descent. It didn’t have a title-contending roster. It was coming down the mountain.
“We fought it as long as we could,” Presti said in 2022. “We stayed up there for a long time. We had a pretty good run of sustained success, and now we’re facing another climb.”
And the first couple of seasons, the Thunder didn’t seem to be getting very far.
Twenty-two wins in 2020-21. Twenty-four in 2021-22.
But the next season, the Thunder started gaining altitude. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was an All-Star and a firstteam All-NBA selection. Williams made a run at Rookie of the Year. And best of all, the Thunder won 40 games and made the Play-In Tournament. Didn’t survive to make the playoffs, but the climb had begun.
Presti referenced the second mountain in his end-of-season news conference.
“We’re staring that sucker down,” he said.
The thing is, the Thunder hasn’t merely looked at the mountain. It has attacked it with the ferocity of a Tasmanian devil.
The Thunder won 57 games a year ago and earned the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference, becoming the youngest team to ever claim a top seed. It was such a breakthrough season that it seemed entirely possible that the Thunder could be better this season but win less games and not win the West. Well, it was better in every way. More wins.
More dominance.
More accolades, too. Gilgeous-Alexander won the MVP and tacked on another first-team All-NBA while Lu Dort was finally named first-team All-Defense. Jalen Williams, a first-time All-Star, was also thirdteam All-NBA and second-team All-Defense.
But for all the regular-season grandeur — the Thunder was only the seventh team in NBA history to win at least 68 games in the regular season, and it had the highest margin of victory in the history of the association, 12.84 points — none of that was the goal.
The title was.
And now, the Thunder has it.
It was a battle to get it. Not only the seven games that Indiana pushed Oklahoma City to in the Finals, but also the final game. Even after Pacers standout Tyrese Halliburton went down with an injury in the first half — it was later determined to be an Achilles tear — Indiana pushed. It turned a first-quarter deficit into a halftime lead. It kept the Thunder within arm’s length for much of the third quarter.
But then late in the frame, the Thunder paired defensive stops with a flurry of baskets. Two from Cason Wallace. Two from Williams. One from Isaiah Hartenstein. And it built a double-digit lead.
The lead ballooned to 20-plus in the fourth quarter, and even though the Pacers kept coming, because of course they did, the Thunder had done enough to secure the win, the title and the trophy.
The mountain had been scaled. Again.
But the first time, the summit was reached. The view had never been quite like this.
Jenni Carlson: Jenni can be reached at jcarlson@oklahoman.com.
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***
Ryan Aber, Staff writer
NBA FINALS GAME 7
BY THE NUMBERS
The Oklahoma City Thunder made history Sunday, winning the city’s first NBA championship with a 103-91 victory over the Indiana Pacers in Game 7 of the NBA Finals at Paycom Center. The Thunder did it largely the way it did plenty of its other wins this season — with a smothering defense, big moments from Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren and a dominant third quarter. There were plenty of numbers to dissect after OKC’s latest victory, both with Sunday’s game itself and the Thunder’s overall run. Here’s a look at quite a few of those numbers:
OKC Big Three shows out
5: Blocks for Chet Holmgren, setting a record for Game 7 of the NBA Finals. Holmgren finished with 11 blocks in the Finals and 43 in the playoffs.
53: Plus/minus rating swing from Game 6 to Game 7 for Jalen Williams. After posting a minus-40 rating in Thursday’s game, Williams was a game-best plus-13 in the decisive Game 7.
12: Assists for Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, a playoff career high. SGA had 10 assists twice in these playoffs, including in Game 5 of the Finals.
377: Combined points in the NBA Finals for SGA and Williams, the second-most for a duo in the last 50 years. The only tandem who scored more was LeBron James and Kyrie Irving, who scored 398 in 2016.
Thunder’s defensive pressure wins out ….
32: Points for OKC off 23 Pacers’ turnovers. Lu Dort, Alex Caruso and Cason Wallace each had three steals.
22.7: The Thunder’s average points off turnovers in the playoffs, five more than the second-best team in the category in the postseason, the Cleveland Cavaliers. Indiana averaged 17.3 points off turnovers in the postseason.
… Especially in the third quarter
18: Points off eight Indiana turnovers in the third quarter for the Thunder. Six of those came on the second and third OKC possessions during a critical 9-0 run early in the third that put the Thunder ahead for good.
12: Points for Indiana’s T.J. McConnell in the third.
3: Turnovers for McConnell in the quarter. The first came on a Williams steal that led to a Holmgren 3-pointer for the second bucket during that 9- 0 run, then the second came on Lu Dort’s steal that led to a corner 3-pointer from Williams resulting from a spinning pass from SGA with 7:16 remaining in the quarter.
20: Shooting percentage for Pacers other than McConnell in the third. While McConnell was 6 of 7 from the floor, the rest of the team was 2 of 10 and attempted just four shots inside the arc.
0: Turnovers for the Thunder in the third quarter.
Thunder makes history
1: Team in NBA history to win a title after dropping a playoff game by 40 or more points. The Thunder lost Game 3 of the Western Conference finals to Minnesota, 143-101, before bouncing back to win the last two games of the series to advance to the NBA Finals.
16: Wins for home teams in 20 NBA Finals Game 7s.
5: Consecutive NBA Finals Game 7s where the winner scored 100 or fewer points before Sunday’s victory.
84: Wins for the Thunder, 68 in the regular season and 16 in the playoffs.
4: Teams in NBA history to reach that mark.
***
Ryan Aber, Staff writer
Indiana Pacers coach Rick Carlisle began his postgame press conference following Sunday’s 103-91 loss in Game 7 by congratulating the Oklahoma City Thunder.
After that, his attention turned to star Tyrese Haliburton.
“What happened with Tyrese is,” Carlisle said, halting. “All of our hearts dropped. He will be back. I don’t have any medical information about what may or may not have happened. But he’ll be back in time.”
In time for what?
In time for the start of next season? In time for next season’s playoffs? That’s anybody’s guess, as Carlisle didn’t elaborate.
Haliburton’s injury cast a pall over the first quarter of the game, as he crumpled to the floor about seven minutes into the game with a noncontact injury.
ESPN reported during the broadcast that Haliburton had suffered a torn Achilles.
The Pacers’ star point guard hit big shot after big shot throughout the NBA playoffs, including hitting a gamewinner in Game 1 of the series at Paycom Center.
He suffered a right calf injury in Game 5, but fought through for a big Game 6 to send the series back to Oklahoma City tied.
Haliburton started hot Sunday, hitting three quick 3-pointers, including one from well beyond the line.
But a couple minutes after that deep shot, as Haliburton began to drive to the basket with Shai GilgeousAlexander guarding him, the Pacers’ star fell to the floor and let out a yell.
The ball bounded to Alex Caruso, who flipped it to Gilgeous-Alexander, who soon found Jalen Williams for a dunk as Haliburton remained on the hardwood on the other end, beating the floor with his hand in pain and disappointment.
“It was a tough feeling to see your franchise guy go down like that but to have to move on and kind of compartmentalize it is tough,” Indiana’s T.J. McConnell said. “Obviously, we missed him. We all are devastated for him and obviously support him.”
Carlisle reflected on Haliburton’s playoff run, which included either a game-winner or shot to send the game to overtime in each round.
“He authored one of the great individual playoff runs in the history of the NBA with dramatic play after dramatic play,” Carlisle said. “It was just something that no one’s ever seen. … Our hearts go out to him, but so proud of everyone.”
Ryan Aber covers OU athletics for The Oklahoman.
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