There were two important occurrences in the NBA world on Sunday, June 22. First, around midday, 15-time all-star forward Kevin Durant was traded from the Phoenix Suns to the Houston Rockets — the reigning No. 2 seed in the West. Then, at around 11 p.m., the reigning No. 1 seed in the West, the Oklahoma City Thunder, won the NBA Finals over the Indiana Pacers, taking Game 7 at home. Star Thunder guardShai Gilgeous-Alexander won NBA Finals MVP after averaging 30 points in the series, capping off his stellar season and making him only the 11th person to ever win both Finals MVP and regular season MVP in the same year.
While Game 7 started with excitement (a common phrase says those are “the two best words in sports”), about seven minutes into the first quarter, many Pacers fans’ hearts were broken to see their star point guard Tyrese Haliburton fall to the floor in pain. About a week earlier, Haliburton had suffered a right calf sprain in the Pacers’ Game 5 loss. However, he played 23 minutes in the Pacers’ Game 6 108-91 rout of the Thunder, giving fans hope.
Haliburton started Game 7 hot, shooting three for four from the three point line, but, when dribbling against Gilgeous-Alexander, his lower right leg visibly popped, and he fell to the ground. Gilgeous-Alexander took the ball and charged down the floor, leading to a layup by Oklahoma City’s Jalen Williams. Meanwhile, Haliburton was still on the ground, banging the floor with his fist in agony — both physical and emotional.
The Pacers did a surprisingly good job hanging in the game as they managed to enter halftime up one point: 48-47. At this point, Haliburton’s father had announced that his son hurt his Achilles tendon. The scrappy team that had been mounting massive comebacks all postseason looked to have one more upset in them.
However, Oklahoma City dominated the third quarter, putting up 34 points to Indiana’s 20. The only Pacer to score in the last eight and a half minutes of the third quarter was backup point guard T.J. McConnell, who was seeing more minutes without Haliburton, and Indiana’s head coach Rick Carlisle kept Haliburton’s co-star Pascal Siakam on the bench during crucial minutes of the Thunder’s third quarter run.
While Haliburton’s injury and poor play from the Pacers certainly affected Sunday’s outcome, the Oklahoma City Thunder were a dominant team all season, so running away from Indiana in the second half was in character. They were the NBA’s best team all season — they’ve now won the third most combined regular-season and playoff games of all time. Their defense suffocated the Pacers in the second half, and Gilgeous-Alexander, Williams and Chet Holmgren all played well offensively.
The three stars on the Thunder have an average age below 25. Oklahoma City’s general manager Sam Presti managed to take a young roster to the mountaintop. They have up to 10 first-round draft picks across the next five years, which sets the team up for a potential dynasty. Given how good the team has played in the past few seasons and how many draft assets they have, Presti faced some criticism for not trading for a star. Instead, he let his team grow, making few free agent signings each offseason, and now the team has their cake and can eat it too; they are the best team in the league right now and have the best future on paper.
It can be very easy to get excited and believe that the Thunder are the second coming of the Golden State Warriors dynasty from a decade ago, poised to go on a years-long run, but history would suggest otherwise.
Look at last year’s champions, the Boston Celtics. Like the Thunder, they had one of the most dominant seasons in NBA history; this year’s Thunder had the second highest net rating (point differential per 100 possessions) in NBA history, and last year’s Celtics ranked fifth (even this year’s Celtics made the top 25, placing 21st).
People thought Boston would go on a run, but in this year’s playoffs, their star player Jayson Tatum hurt his Achilles tendon (much like Haliburton). Now, in the span of 48 hours, the team traded away two players who were instrumental to their title (Jrue Holiday is now a Portland Trailblazer, and Kristaps Porzingis is now an Atlanta Hawk) to save money and avoid the NBA’s strict payroll-based restrictions.
Even the dynastic Warriors struggled after Klay Thompson and Durant got hurt in the 2019 NBA Finals. It took them years to lift the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy once more.
The Oklahoma City Thunder’s season will go down as one of the best ever, and the Indiana Pacers’ playoff run will be equally legendary, but in the modern NBA, the environment changes quickly. The league is experiencing never-before-seen levels of parity — no team has won multiple championships in the past seven years. The Thunder — young, dominant,full of energy and coming off of their first ever championship — will try to buck that trend going into next season.
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