Oklahoma City Wins NBA Championship

It all came down to Game 7 of the NBA Finals on June 22nd, the first Game 7 in the Finals since 2016. The Oklahoma City Thunder and Indiana Pacers played an entertaining series that showed a couple of small market franchises can put together teams that play excellent basketball.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 29 points and had 12 assists to lead the Thunder past the Pacers 103-91 to win Oklahoma City’s first NBA title in its 17th season in that city (its predecessor, the Seattle Supersonics, won the crown in 1979). The Pacers suffered a blow to their chances when Tyrese Haliburton went down with an Achilles injury in the first quarter. He had already scored nine points in just seven minutes. The Pacers hung in there, and led by one at halftime.

But the Thunder defense held the Pacers to 20 points in the third quarter, while OKC scored 34. The teams played almost even in the fourth, but that explosive third carried the Thunder to victory. Bennedict Mathurin came off the bench to lead Indiana with 24 points and 13 rebounds.

Oklahoma City had a total of 84 wins (regular season and playoffs combined), tied with the 1996-7 Chicago Bulls for third best ever. Only the ’95-’96 Bulls (87 wins) and 2015-16 Golden State Warriors (88) had more. That’s pretty good company.

Gilgeous-Alexander, the regular season NBA MVP, was also named the Finals MVP. Haliburton’s Achilles injury is the third NBA star player to suffer such an injury in this season’s playoffs, joining Boston’s Jayson Tatum and Milwaukee’s Damian Lillard. Recovery takes a long time, often a year or more.