Grading Thunder-Pacers matchups for 2025 NBA Finals. Plus, should Seattle feel left out?

New York Times

2 days ago

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On this date in 1992, Michael Jordan lit up the Blazers in Game 1 of the NBA Finals. The Bulls won 122-89 behind 39 points from Jordan. He scored 35 of them in the first half, thanks to six 3-pointers. He made only five 3s in the 16 playoff games leading up to that night. He hit six more 3-pointers the rest of the finals. We all remember the iconic shrug.
Grading Pacers-Thunder matchups
With Game 1 of the NBA Finals tipping off Thursday night and a lull between playoff action, we've got plenty of Bounce days to preview this series. We gave some aspects of the game to consider yesterday, and today we're going to grade out the matchups for each team. We've got star matchups, secondary guys, key role players, entire benches and even the coaching matchup to consider!
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Let's slap a few grades down for each team in each category, determine a winner and see where it all shakes out:
Stars: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander vs. Tyrese Haliburton
Haliburton has become a big-time playoff performer, and we know how well he can control a game. Put him in a clutch situation, and you'll see him push the opponent to the brink of losing their sanity and past losing their lead. On the flip side of that, SGA is the MVP of the league and has been brilliant in the playoffs.
Grade: A+ for OKC, A for IND | Winner: Thunder
Secondary Stars: Jalen Williams vs. Pascal Siakam
Williams has been excellent defensively during this entire run. His offense was abysmal against Denver until Game 7, and he rebounded with his scoring perfectly against Minnesota. He's also just in his third season. Siakam has been a big addition to the Pacers over the last year and a half, and he has the experience of already contributing to a championship.
Grade: A- for OKC, A- for IND | Winner: Tie
Third Guys: Chet Holmgren vs. Myles Turner
I'm not sure you can rely on Turner to be a consistent defensive presence anymore, which is a far cry from what he used to be. Meanwhile, Holmgren struggles with consistency, but he's pretty great for a 23-year-old with only two years on NBA courts. The latter will likely have a bigger impact, but Turner needs to win this battle.
Grade: A- for OKC, B for IND | Winner: Thunder
Key 3-and-D Wings: Lu Dort vs. Aaron Nesmith
Nesmith did a good job on Brunson, and he had the big Reggie Miller moment in Game 1 against New York. Dort will eat your soul on defense and is a pretty reliable 3-point shooter.
Grade: B+ for OKC, B for IND | Winner: Thunder
Fifth Guys: Isaiah Hartenstein vs. Andrew Nembhard
We've seen Nembhard step up big-time in these past two postseason runs, but Hartenstein is a big man the Pacers may not have an answer for. He might require them to play a lot more Tony Bradley, which isn't a good idea.
Grade: A- for OKC, B for IND | Winner: Thunder
Bench battle: Thunder bench vs. Pacers bench
Let's boil it down to Cason Wallace, Alex Caruso, Aaron Wiggins and Isaiah Joe against Bennedict Mathurin, Obi Toppin, T.J. McConnell and Ben Sheppard. We've seen the Pacers have some great moments in the postseason so far. Wallace and Caruso alone for OKC probably win this matchup for the Thunder.
Grade: A for OKC, B+ for IND | Winner: Thunder
Coaching: Mark Daigneault vs. Rick Carlisle
Daigneault has already won Coach of the Year, had a 68-win season and coached the most dominant team (at least, by net rating) in league history. He's one of the top coaches in the NBA. However, Rick Carlisle is a championship coach and has decades of experience battling out in the playoffs. I have to give the veteran coach the slight edge here.
Grade: A- for OKC, A for IND | Winner: Pacers
That's a pretty heavy swing to the Thunder with a 5-1-1 tally here. Even if you convince me that Siakam is winning that matchup over Williams (which I'm not mad at), we're still looking at 5-2 OKC. That doesn't mean things can't change once we're on the court, though.
You, too , can learn to train like an MVP!
🏀 Training tips. There are five things you learn by training with SGA. Have to create an alter ego.
🏀 Power Rankings. WNBA rankings are here, but can anybody challenge the historically dominant Liberty? Here come the Aces!
🏀 Take care. The Pacers and Thunder both take care of the ball at an elite level. Possessions matter.
✈️ Travel buddies. What was a key part of Indiana's path to the NBA Finals? A trip to Paris!🎶 Jazz hiring. The Jazz are hiring Austin Ainge from the Celtics to be the president of basketball ops. Yes, that's Danny Ainge's son.
🎧 Tuning in. Today's 'NBA Daily' discusses whether SGA is having one of the best seasons in league history.
The story of the greatest players in NBA history. In 100 riveting profiles, top basketball writers justify their selections and uncover the history of the NBA in the process.
The story of the greatest players in NBA history.
Is Seattle owed an honor in this year's finals?
Back in 2012, when that young Thunder squad made the NBA Finals to take on Miami, it made sense to not bring up where it had come from. Oklahoma City had done a great job to help house the New Orleans Hornets in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, so executive Clay Bennett and company decided to pounce on the opportunity to move a team there permanently. They bought the Seattle SuperSonics, as they hit a bit of a stalemate in procuring a new arena in the Emerald City, and then ripped them from the city for the prairie. (The Hornets had spent the 2005-06 and 2006-07 seasons there before the Thunder relocated in 2008.)
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Four years after the move, the Thunder were in the finals because general manager Sam Presti is unbelievable at his job. And 13 years after the move, Presti's Thunder are back in the finals as a heavy favorite to win. They also look like they're capable of setting up a dynasty. All the while, we still can't get any kind of straight answer on a real plan as to when Seattle will get an expansion team back into the city.
To be fair, the timing of expansion is a complicated process, but the league hasn't committed yet. The NBA did almost let the Sacramento Kings get purchased to be moved to Seattle back in 2013. But Vivek Ranadivé swooped in to buy the team and keep it in Sacramento. The Thunder are looking like a premier team in this league and an eventual champion. But I still know plenty of NBA-loving and -covering people with a sour taste in their mouths about how this team was ripped away from Seattle under David Stern's watch.
There is a feeling that it's been swept under the proverbial rug as a storyline. Maybe the NBA is supposed to do that. At this point, it's been 15 years, and the franchise didn't take the history with it. It's been set aside for the eventual expansion team that will oddly come with its own championship before it even has a roster. I'm not even sure what I, or anyone else, would be asking of commissioner Adam Silver and the league to do here, especially considering the franchise divorced itself from the history tied to Seattle and the Sonics. And I'm not sure anybody is asking Thunder fans to apologize for this either.
Maybe the final closure, if OKC wins the title, is just an acknowledgment that the way they got there sucked and was wrong. Seattle did and still does deserve better. Because many of us still have fond memories of the franchise and want to see them again. Can the NBA truly ever fix this?
Five questions about the upcoming offseason
We're less than a month away from free agency starting and a little more than three weeks away from the NBA Draft on June 25. That means teams are geared all the way up for trying to take down both the Pacers in the East and the Thunder in the West. Because this is a league of jealousy, mimicry and pettiness. Just how we like it.
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A lot needs to be determined this offseason, but here are five questions I have about this summer right off the bat.
1. Do the Knicks have a Mikal Bridges dilemma? James Edwards III did a great job laying out the situation the Knicks will have with Bridges this offseason. He's eligible for a four-year, $156 million extension, and you might remember Jalen Brunson caused quite the stir in taking a below-market value extension to give the franchise flexibility. Many assumed it was to help them re-sign his friend and college teammate. But the Knicks gave up five first-round picks for Bridges, and their main lineup with him wasn't what it was all cracked up to be. If the Knicks feel like they have to swing for the fences, Bridges is probably the guy to move.
2. With who and how are the Celtics going to trim salary? The Celtics probably need to cut $23 million off the books this summer, if not more. That depends how much they're willing to spend in a season we can assume Jayson Tatum will mostly, if not entirely, miss. The Celtics' biggest challenge may be finding places that can easily absorb contracts. And, if they can't, that probably means attaching draft picks in deals. Seeing how far they go in this process will be a tone-setter for the East.
3. Are Julius Randle and Myles Turner the most intriguing names to get? Names like Giannis Antetokounmpo and Kevin Durant are going to be volleyed about in the rumor mill, but the free-agent class is going to be pretty weak. Turner is going to be an unrestricted free agent. Randle had a great finish to the season, outside of the series against the Thunder andhas a $29.2 million player option that might be worth declining to enter the market. However, there isn't a lot of cap space outside of Brooklyn, as teams are preparing for 2026. If Antetokounmpo and KD don't end up actually being available, maybe we have kind of a dud summer in terms of big names moving.
4. Will Kevin Durant find his way out of Phoenix? Speaking of KD, how salty is he going to be about the trade deadline? Lots of rumors happened around him being dangled to the Warriors in a potential multi-team deal that would have landed Jimmy Butler on the Suns. Of course, I'm not even sure what was possible with a Mat Ishbia-owned team. It's like watching a kid run a franchise mode in a video game. Antetokounmpo is the potential biggest target this summer, but Durant could make a lot of teams interested in a short-term star.
5. Who will look at the East landscape and be aggressive? Boston is likely cutting, rather than adding or adjusting. Cleveland and New York probably won't make sweeping changes. Milwaukee is painted into a corner. Indiana is in a great place right now, obviously. Miami and Philadelphia are stuck in trying to figure out if they're any kind of relevant. The potential for a big jump would be upstarts Orlando and Detroit. Do they have the aggressiveness to go make a big splash with the East landscape looking vulnerable?
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