6 big questions for the 2025 NBA Finals and why Thunder will beat Pacers

New York Times

3 days ago

So … are we really in a new era of NBA playoff outcomes? These next two weeks may tell us emphatically.
For the last couple of postseason cycles, I've noted that postseason results have diverged from those of the regular season to a much greater degree. Chalky postseasons of yore have given way to teams seeded eighth, fifth and fourth making the last three NBA Finals. A team seeded sixth or lower has made it to the conference finals in each of the last three years (Minnesota Timberwolves, Los Angeles Lakers, Miami Heat); a team seeded fifth or lower has done it six times in five years.
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Overall, this postseason is tracking to be another outlier in terms of lower seeds advancing. The team without home-court advantage has already won five series this year (Indiana Pacers twice, Timberwolves, Golden State Warriors, New York Knicks), and the Pacers upsetting the Oklahoma City Thunder in the NBA Finals would make it six.
Historically, that number of upsets has been between three and four per year, but not lately. In the six post-pandemic postseasons, we've had five, five, three, seven, six and now five again with a potential for six — an average of over six a year, or nearly double the historic upset rate. Remember, there are only 15 playoff series a year; underdogs are winning more than 40 percent of them! What is this, the NHL?
However, even with all those upsets, one piece of the equation has held: The champions were a regular-season monster, at least to some extent. Every champion but one since 1980 — including the last 29 in a row — has been a top-three seed that won at least 52 games (prorated to an 82-game season).
Lately, though, we've had several close calls. Four straight finalists and five of the last six have violated that condition, but so far, none have prevailed in the finals: Miami in 2020 (a 49-prorated-wins fifth seed), Boston in 2022 (51 wins), Miami in 2023 (a 44-win eighth seed), Dallas in 2024 (a 50-win fifth seed) and now Indiana (a 50-win fourth seed).
Thus, an Indiana win over Oklahoma City would be icing on the cake for the idea that regular-season records just don't matter as much as they used to in predicting playoff performance. The Thunder had one of the greatest regular seasons of all time, winning 68 games with a historic scoring margin. Indiana … did not. The Pacers were 9-14 at one point.
Of course, we could be headed for the opposite narrative: a third straight season in which upsets in other series allow a favorite to steamroll through a broken bracket of crooked-number seeds. Following Denver in 2023 and Boston in 2024, the Thunder could make it a three-peat for No. 1 seeds coasting to a title against remarkably soft opposition — not facing a single team that was either seeded in the top three or won more than 50 games.
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It's not just a disparity in wins and scoring margin in these finals, though. There's also the element of the JV conference playing the varsity. Oklahoma City went 29-1 against the Eastern Conference this year (the Thunder's loss to Milwaukee in the NBA Cup final didn't count in the standings), dropping a January game in Cleveland. The Pacers, meanwhile, were the only one of the East's playoff or Play-In teams to fare better against the West (21-10) than their own conference.
So, as we head into our small-market fever-dream NBA Finals of pesky 10-deep squads that swarm and scrap and run and press and are generally the league's two most annoying teams to play against, that's my biggest question: Will an Indiana upset be the final, definitive proof that the regular season's predictive value for the postseason has diminished? Or will a Thunder romp to the title prove that the rule of 52 wins and a top-three seed still holds?
That's the overarching storyline, but I've got five others that are a bit more micro as we look at this series.
The biggest hurdle for this series being remotely competitive is whether Indiana can avoid turning the ball over against the Thunder's voracious, swarming defense that appears to have six players and about 14 arms.
The good news is that the Pacers were largely successful in this one regard in the regular season. In their two meetings against the Thunder, they turned it over on only 10.9 percent of possessions, which would be a near league-leading figure and is far below the league-best 14.9 percent the Thunder forced from their frazzled opponents in the regular season.
That shouldn't be a huge surprise; Indiana had the league's third-lowest turnover rate in the regular season, and its two All-Stars, Tyrese Haliburton and Pascal Siakam, both had individual turnover rates below 10 percent in the regular season. Haliburton averaged more than five assists for every turnover in both the regular season and the playoffs.
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The importance of avoiding those miscues is two-fold: First, it gives the Pacers more chances to score but also takes away the Thunder's ability to run on the Pacers. Oklahoma City's speed and skill in transition are deadly, but the Thunder are a much more manageable foe playing station-to-station in the half court. Second, if the Pacers can keep the ball from prying hands long enough, they can unlock more of the open corner 3s that are the Achilles heel of the Thunder's defensive scheme.
The bad news for the Pacers: Even with the turnover management, they still lost both games. The Thunder blew them out 132-111 in Oklahoma City on March 29. They also rallied for a 120-114 win in Indiana in a game that was played on Dec. 26 because the NBA needed to show us four lottery teams on Christmas Day. (I jest, but not having the Thunder on Christmas in particular was an own goal by the league that was readily apparent at the time.)
If the Pacers can avoid turnovers and still can't beat the Thunder, what hope do they have? We'll get into that in a bit, but let's pivot to their opponent first.
The Thunder start two bigs in Chet Holmgren and Isaiah Hartenstein, but coach Mark Daigneault abandoned that lineup early and often in the postseason, particularly in the conference finals. It's notable in this case because the Pacers like to play fast, and because the Thunder don't seem to have a readily available foil for Siakam at power forward in particular.
We don't know the answers here because Holmgren didn't play in either regular-season game, but in the second one, Daigneault leaned heavily on small ball. Hartenstein played 14 minutes, and Kenrich Williams played 26; forget two bigs, OKC wasn't even playing with one.
This is a sometimes-wrinkle that Daigneault loves and could use heavily against a Pacers team lacking post threats. While he's been highly flexible with his sub patterns, one consistent pattern has to been to end first and third quarters with Kenrich Williams as the only 'big' in a small lineup captained by Shai Gilgeous-Alexander while Jalen Williams and Holmgren rest, then start second and fourth quarters with Gilgeous-Alexander resting, Jalen Williams and Holmgren in the game and Aaron Wiggins replacing Kenrich Williams for more offensive support.
There's an opposite point here for Indiana, which might not have much incentive to continue using a 10-man rotation whose last two players (Ben Sheppard and Thomas Bryant) have mostly been ineffective in the playoffs (yes, I saw Game 6 against New York). Playing Bryant, in particular, might be a non-sequitur if the Thunder are playing small anyway, which would theoretically make Obi Toppin as a backup center much more appealing.
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I kind of buried the lede here. In the two regular-season meetings, Indiana had nothing for the league MVP.
Gilgeous-Alexander had two brilliant games against the Pacers, finishing with 45 points and eight assists on 15-of-22 shooting in a tight win in Indiana in December. He then posted 33 points and eight dimes in just 31 minutes in a blowout win in March. He had one turnover combined in the two games.
Aaron Nesmith missed the first game and played only 23 minutes in the second, but he's likely to get first crack at Gilgeous-Alexander because of his superior screen navigation, and Andrew Nembhard is so good off the ball that it sometimes feels like a waste to put him on the ball.
However, the Pacers likely will have a similar plan to the one they threw at Jalen Brunson in the conference finals, attempting to wear him down by rotating multiple defenders who pick him up 94 feet throughout the game. Sheppard, Bennedict Mathurin and perhaps even T.J. McConnell will all get turns. The Pacers even tried Toppin on Gilgeous-Alexander in the regular season.
Indy likely will sprinkle in dollops of zone, too, after Denver used it successfully against the Thunder in the second round. (Minnesota's inability to muster an effective zone defense despite its individual defensive talent was one reason the Western Conference finals weren't closer.)
One other micro-thing to watch is something I call the 'Shai shoulder.' The Thunder guard is very good at getting just enough contact with a defender to knock him off balance without hitting hard enough for it to be an offensive foul, opening space for his stepback middies. Watch here, for instance, as Sheppard gets both shoulders before the MVP rises from his office at the free-throw line:
Indiana seemed primed for this in the Cleveland series against the Cavs' Ty Jerome, who had a similar ploy to get into his floaters. Nembhard, in particular, is a master of sidestepping opponents' attempts to put a shoulder into him. It didn't help at all in the first two meetings, but with more time to prepare for one specific opponent, it's possible the Pacers could use this trick in their favor.
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The battle of the point guards is the main attraction, but the All-Star forwards in this series could have just as much to say about the outcome.
Siakam was the MVP of the Eastern Conference finals, an indefatigable force who tormented the Knicks with his 94-foot sprints to the cup. Jalen Williams, meanwhile, has been a worthy second star in the Thunder's run through this postseason after falling short in the same role a year earlier in Oklahoma City's upset loss to Dallas.
On paper, the matchups would seem to favor Siakam, but he wasn't good in either game in the regular season. The Thunder have no natural matchup for him in terms of size — the one thing they lack in their Noah's Ark of a roster is a true power forward — and may end up leaning on a combination of Holmgren, Williams and Alex Caruso to check him.
If the Thunder stay big (see above), Siakam could exploit the Holmgren matchup at the start of halves, similar to the way Minnesota's Jaden McDaniels did during the Wolves' best moments in the conference finals. On the flip side, Siakam is much less prone to backing down and turning his back to the defense than some other fours, which could make siccing Caruso on him slightly more problematic than doing the same against, say, Julius Randle.
On the flip side, Williams is a problem that doesn't lend itself to great answers from Indiana's end, particularly if Nesmith is on Gilgeous-Alexander. Nembhard gives up size, and using him on Williams diminishes his strength as a help defender, while Haliburton is too vulnerable as a one-on-one defender. Putting Siakam on Williams and Nembhard or Haliburton on Holmgren is another possibility; in theory, the Thunder could post up Holmgren on one of those two guards, but in practice, he couldn't even post up Mike Conley last round.
Williams also gets a lot of run with the second unit to begin the second and fourth quarters, and the Pacers need to think carefully about how the bench rotation looks against him. Mathurin has the physical tools to check him, but he can be erratic in practice; Sheppard is dogged but undersized. This is where the injury to Jarace Walker in Game 6 against the Knicks stings; he'd be perfect for the bench minutes against Williams but will be out for at least the first two games after a gruesome ankle sprain.
The Pacers and Thunder both play fast and use more players than most teams. In Indiana's case, it's part of a programmatic strategy to wear down opponents throughout a game and a series.
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The Pacers run after opponent made baskets, pressure the ball full-court following their own and get into their offense as quickly as any team in the league. The flip side of that is that they use a 10-man rotation, even if the back end of that rotation isn't particularly good. They're gambling that the bad minutes from their ninth and 10th men will be more than offset by the diminishment of the opponents' best players over 48 exhausting minutes.
Indiana didn't lead the league in pace, but both the Pacers and Thunder were in the top seven. In the Thunder's case, it's more of a pure track meet effect from the speed of their transitions after turnovers and missed shots. Oklahoma City also spams subs throughout the evening, with Daigneault often using 10 or even 11 players in a single half, even in the playoffs.
What's remarkable and less discussed, however, is each team's strength going back the other way. Oklahoma City and Indiana were first and second in opponent fast-break points this season and had been even stingier in the playoffs: The Thunder have allowed just 9.3 per game and the Pacers 9.4 in a league where the median team gave up 15.3 in the regular season.
One way for the Pacers to pull off the upset is to extend the series enough that they wear out the Thunder. But it's much harder to play this game against the youth and depth of the Thunder than it is against, say, New York, and the schedule of the finals is much more spread out, with two days off between every game except Games 3 and 4. Contrast that with the every-other-day schedule of the second round and conference finals that helped them exhaust the Knicks the past two seasons.
It's also possible the Thunder turn the tables a bit. It's easy to see a scenario where Pacers' back-end-rotation players like Sheppard and Bryant prove unplayable in this series and Indiana's top eight ends up overextended, or one where the Thunder dial up the heat on Haliburton so much that it empties his tank.
I want this to be a great series as much as anyone. The Pacers are a remarkable story of a finals team built with no tanking and a series of shrewd moves in a flyover market, and they have adopted as unique a style of play as any team in the league. The Thunder may be building an all-time juggernaut, and it may or may not be even better when they remove all their tall people and just let five perimeter players run around like crazy. For however long this series goes, it should be fun.
I'm just not sure that it's going to go that long. There are hints of places where the Pacers could find an advantage, be it via avoiding turnovers, finding corner 3s or utilizing Siakam's matchup. Rick Carlisle is a certified warlock who will max out whatever edges he can find and throw out wild Plans E and F if the first few ideas don't work.
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Unfortunately, Indiana didn't seem to have great answers for Oklahoma City's attack in the regular season, and that was with Holmgren missing both games. This Thunder squad might be embarking on the first chapter of the NBA's next dynasty. They had arguably the third-most dominant regular season in NBA history (only the 1996 Bulls and 2016 Warriors have an ironclad case that theirs was better) and have followed it up with a playoff run that has included wins by 51, 43, 32, 26 and 30.
I think we're looking at a first championship for the Thunder franchise (say 'Seattle,' and you lose a finger) and a third straight five-game finals. Emotion alone likely gets the Pacers a win in one of their two home games, but this series shapes up as a coronation. If so, we can hold off on declaring a new era of playoff outcomes … and instead introduce the Thunder Era. Oklahoma City in 5
(Illustration: Demetrius Robinson / The Athletic; Photos: Joe Murphy, Nathaniel S. Butler / NBAE; Gregory Shamus / Getty Images; Alonzo Adams / Imagn Images)