2025 NBA Finals! New World Order: Shai vs. Hali

https://www.oklahoman.com/gcdn/presto/2021/12/19/NOKL/5b429437-1adc-4fcb-ab67-bbc51a0697b8-_LX10162.jpg?crop=4545,2557,x0,y0&width=660&height=371&format=pjpg&auto=webp

https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2025/05/hali-choke-sign-1.jpg

https://a.espncdn.com/photo/2025/0524/r1497448_600x400_3-2.jpg

https://imageio.forbes.com/specials-images/imageserve/65e1284ad63c5dbc5f6caa6f/Houston-Rockets-v-Oklahoma-City-Thunder/960x0.jpg?format=jpg&width=960

thunder in 6

LFG PACERS

maybe it's crazy but I think this will be a really fun series

new blood!

i’m going to be optimistic and take thunder in 6…hoping indy can keep it close and interesting

I voted Thunder in 5, hoping for 6. I predict Indy will be able to split at home, so it's gonna rest on whether they can steal one of the first 2, bc I don't see them winning game 5 coming back to OKC.

Also this is my first time making a poll, didn't know how the timing would work out - if mods want to extend the voting a day until wednesday night that would be great

I vacillated between OKC in 5 or 6, but finally voted six bcz the Pacers vibes have been off the charts through most of their run to the Finals. those vibes could even take them all the way, if OKC has a couple turns of bad luck. always hard to vote against the vibe.

yea despite being a regular season behemoth OKC seem pretty beatable. Pacers are gonna give them a hell of a hard time. still think OKC in 5 probably the most likely scenario

I voted Thunder in 5. The teams are similar but Thunder have more star power, and are unlikely to lose barring injury. Chet's amazing and rounding back into form - he can shoot threes, play on the perimeter, and still offer top-notch rim protection.

It'll be interesting to see the Thunder defend the Pacers. In the other series, they've played against heliocentric players and have packed the paint, daring role players to shoot in the corners. But Pacers don't have anyone quite as individually threatening as Morant, Jokic, or Edwards, so they might use a more conventional defensive scheme.

They had mental hurdles to overcome against the Nuggets and gave up on one game after the Timberwolves shot hot from 3, but otherwise they've been rolling.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

The last time the Thunder lost at home to an Eastern Conference team was to the Pacers on 12 March 2024.

I voted Thunder in 6 but my heart's with Pacers in 7

voted okc in 5 but i think the actual games will be closer than that suggests

bise you are a mod yes? can you extend the voting deadline 48 hrs to 8pm thurs?

i don't think that's possible to do

i dont think i have that level of privilege tbh bc i am being silenced for my political views by ilx insiders

i'll have to get the latecomers' takes on the dark web i guess

stop the count

i voted entirely for what i hope will happen (Pacers in 7) not what i think will happen (Thunder in 5)

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

hoops are back tonight.

indy has to steal game 1

i regret to inform you that hoops are in fact back tomorrow night

espn scoreboard takes another victim

hey salute to rick carlisle feel like his rep took a hit in the luka era but with this indy team its clear hes still one of the best out there still at the cutting edge despite being around forever, hes built the perfect system for his roster and the buy in from the team and him is as high as youll see in the league its really not easy to keep playing fast keep the ball popping in crunch time of playoff games its not easy to keep playing yr bench big minutes so everyone can stay fresh enough to play that style but theyre doing it and its played off two years in a row

totally agree i’ve always liked rick and this run should solidify him as one of the best coaches of his era, he’s done it a bunch of different ways with a bunch of different teams and while he doesn’t suffer fools he also seems pretty good at not making himself the main character

espn scoreboard takes another victim

― lag∞n, Wednesday, June 4, 2025 3:44 PM (thirty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

FINE... stanley cup here we come

even more Canadians than the NBA finals

hoops are back tonight.

indy has to steal game 1

― lil $CHUB (Spottie), Wednesday, June 4, 2025 5:24 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

rick carlisle is a great coach and probably the best coach at looking just like jim carrey

"somebody stop me" - rick carlisle

hoops are back tonight.

indy has to steal game 1

― lil $CHUB (Spottie), Wednesday, June 4, 2025 5:24 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

― ヽ（´ー｀）┌ (CompuPost), Thursday, June 5, 2025 4:30 AM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

we back baby

its hoops

beating the Heatles in the Finals as a massive underdog was genuinely one of the most impressive coaching feats I've ever seen

that dallas team was so locked in jj barea and what not

Even more impressive in retrospect given what the next decade looked like for LeBron

Honestly outside of my own team winning that was probably the most satisfying chip I can think of. 04 pistons right there too

otm

Carlisle has been wildly successful at each stop. Fired by Pistons so Brown could coach that chip-winning Detroit team, then fired by Larry Bird after a potentially chip-caliber team got derailed by Malice in the Palace, and Indy wallowed in the JOB years. TBH it does sound like he was grinding everyone's gears in Dallas (and was just never going to work with Luka).

Extremely excited to finally see how these teams match up. Thunder probably the only defense that can stop the Pacers, and Pacers haven't really faced a team in 2nd half of season who looked like they could keep up, wonder which team's quickness will surprise the other. If Thunder can significantly cut the fastbreak points and disrupt the passing lanes, Pacers are absolutely toast.

Hali will be hounded worse than any other matchup, although he's handled that much better on this run compared to last year. Really up to everyone else on the court moving enough to keep the Thunder off-balance and not jumping passing lanes. Hard thing to do!

if the pacers can just not turn the ball over theyve got a shot, of course thats a really hard thing to do vs the thunder, but on the other hand the pacers are good at not turning the ball over

If Pacers are swinging the ball around and not getting shots/angles, they usually try to force it into Myles/Siakam at the end of the clock for a quick midrange shot, and Thunder were very effective at guarding that in the last matchup. Another interesting contrast is the Pacers "random" offense v Thunder mystery switching defense, worried I'm going to have to watch the Thunder just pick-6 Pacers into the ground.

def a sad possibility

100 tons of hardshai beyond zings, Thunder also told Pacers their age and height and birthday when they met *:?

fwiw Vegas seems to think OKC is a huge favorite but I'm not so sure. the Pacers are as locked in as any playoff team I can remember and OKC has not exactly demonstrated a steely resolve when things go bad. that said they are a much better team so I still expect them to win but hopefully it gets interesting

Cason Wallace starting, had trouble stopping Siakam.

OKC are playing more normally, protecting the corners and not packing the paint - seems the right idea against Indiana.

Obi :(

pacers have to just bomb threes as of like 4 minutes ago

congrats to OKC, best team all year

yup they did the job end to end, can't argue with it

sga mvp, finals mvp, 68 win team, just an insane run

funny how bad their offense was trying to close out a game 7 with a 12 point lead. really goes to show how badly these games freak these guys out

haliburton on crutches waiting for all of his teammates is some emotional shit

it makes sense that OKC won the title however they very well could have lost that game, we got no indication that indiana was going to shrink from the moment. so i’m not sure what to do with that. this feels different a lot different than the KD injury to me

I feel bad for Hali, but not for the result. Pacers played hard against a truly dominant team.

it's fair to point out, indy had it within 6 in the third but i tend to think they were on borrowed time once hali got hurt....every time okc turned up the defense they had enough to win

isaiah hartenstein needs to give his son to another grownup, sorry but he's too tired to participate

Hali's halftime speech must've fuckin sucked

given how bad OKC looked trying to close it out vs the B team — between their own bad offense, missing FTs, repeatedly getting scored on by mathurin — i have a hard time believing it wouldn’t have gone down to the wire with haliburton in there. there are injuries in every playoffs etc etc but i don’t know it unfortunately sorta feels like this one fell into OKC’s lap

After Hali left the game I thought the refs tilted a bit to favor Indy and called some touch fouls on OKC that they didn't call on Indy, but in the third they started letting both defenses play pretty rough, reaching, grabbing, banging. That worked in OKC's favor. The turnovers piled up on Indy and they couldn't get a rhythm. McConnell's high usage bought them some high degree of difficulty baskets, but their ball movement dropped off. Hali would have kept the ball cooking. All in all, an excellent Finals and a pretty good game 7 that didn't get as ugly as they often get. Good hoops, good season, good offs, good finals.

xp its weird to concede that okc had the best team all year and were deserving but also yeah that totally tracks

It felt like it was falling into place for OKC after they got through Denver, and the Cavs and Celtics were knocked out.

But the Pacers put up a great fight in the final, McConnell, Haliburton, and Siakam were all amazing.

Thunder were pretty jittery at times. Young coach was sometimes outfoxed by Carlisle. And three of their seven core players are still in their first three seasons - Cason Wallace, JDub, and Holmgren are all still on rookie contracts and it showed sometimes, especially on offense.

Also, Thunder had a great run with injuries in the post season. JDub's wrist seemed to trouble him sometimes, but noone significant missed time.

A contrast with that period near the start of the season when Chet, Hartenstein, and JWill were all injured, and JDub was the centre.

congrats to thunder (celtics wouldve won)

i think that’s probably true

game 7 ended with haliburton having the most made threes on either team

i didn’t think that was a very impressive finals from the thunder, great season etc but as i said recently i don’t buy any notion of them being a historically good team

the best team they beat on this run was a nuggets team that was demonstrably worse in several ways than the title team from a few years back, and also had 2 of it’s only 5 good players injured to the point of non effectiveness

defensively I think they're historically great, but their offense was unimpressive at best for most of this series, and entirely incongruous with calling them an all-time great team overall

kind of wild that they have the second-best net rating of all-time behind just the 96 bulls. they do not seem like the second best team of the modern era.

i am impressed by how they managed to win a title after going balls-to-the-wall all regular season and winning 68 games though. more an impressive feat of endurance to me, than evidence that this is a historically great team

sga's individual season looks damn impressive: 32-6-5, scoring title, reg season mvp, finals mvp, 63.7% true shooting

it all looks great on paper, statistically etc i'd still say i can't name a champion of the last 20 years that i would definitively say OKC would beat in a 7 game series

yeah but if you look at champs from the past 6-7 years, they're not so out of place. the only champ since the '19 raptors i would say could definitively beat these thunder in a 7-game series is last year's celtics

i wouldn't say they're out of place, but that doesn't align w/ narratives about their historical greatness. i also think the 23 nuggets would have wiped the floor w/ this OKC team given that a severely decayed version of that nuggets team very nearly beat okc this year

'25 OKC vs '04 Pistons

i think i’d take OKC but it would be a battle and i could see it going either way

it's hard to reconcile the idea of OKC being a historically weak champion with how favoured they are to win next year. obviously the Tatum and other injuries play a factor, but it's hard to name a team that will definitively have a good shot at dethroning them.

their lack of secondary offensive firepower reared its head at times, but they were still a respectable 16-7 in the playoffs and had a +8.4 net rating in those 4 series. I agree it’s hard to say they’re one of the more dominant champions, but they’re by far the youngest championship team in recent memory, maybe ever — average age by weighted minutes of just over 24. I think there are some 2015 warriors parallels though they aren’t as well-rounded offensively as that team (though again, as young as that team was, this thunder team is significantly younger)

there are just no stacked teams anymore--talent is super diffuse

i can def buy the argument that at some point in the next 2-3 years OKC will have a team win the finals where you could put them up w/ the truly great champions of the last few decades. i just don't think this year was that year

the game 1 losses in the finals and especially against Denver were pretty goofy, OKC would look a lot more dominant if a couple shots had gone differently there. but I can see the point that their weaknesses (giving up corner 3s, dry offensive spells) are a lot more apparent than the last few champions

Pacers with a healthy Hali definitely could have done it! that injury will be so hard to get over

there are just no stacked teams anymore

otm. the advent of multiple aprons in the CBA has moved the league away from the era of max and supermax players being the key to success and back to team depth and meshing together talent all through the roster. And that's all to the good. what's bad now is the league-wide problem of too many injuries.

okc winning when they're just beginning their journey up the bell curve is pretty tough. and its why i didnt think theyd win the whole thing this year. but things fell their way and they snatched it. and the whole team should be better next year. from a narrative perspective i cant remember a single highlight or run or play from them in these playoffs. not that thats a horrible thing but theyre a bit like the early defensive stalwart spurs teams. just a bunch of mild mannered say/do everything right guys that play hard.

barring injuries or weird drama (2nd apron, the disease of more, etc), they should be one of the contending teams for the next ~7 years

Kinda like the Warriors in 15 - they had a lot of luck down the stretch with their/opponent injuries. And honestly "war of attrition" is so much a thing every year in the post season now it's less who is going to win it's more who is going to stay healthy. It was pretty visible this year, but it's been going on for ages - I mean that first LA Detroit Finals in 89 where Scott and Magic got hurt is a pretty significant example.

Those were both hamstring injuries though - these achilles tears are so crushing because dudes are out an entire year now and who knows if they'll ever return to their peak form.

yea sucks especially for Dame who probably only had 2-3 more decent years in him at best, who knows if he's even gonna play again

the direction it's going seems more and more like smart coaches will concentrate during the regular season on limiting starters' minutes while developing team chemistry as deep into down the roster as they dare, winning just enough to stay out of the play-in, if possible. once you have all your main guys and can make the offs then team stability year to year will become more important, too.

they're definitely spurs-like yeah. this would be their 2003 spurs year or whatever. though that team still had some vets from the previous iteration.

maybe the stats don't actually back this up, i haven't seen them -- but the other thing w/ this OKC team, in a historical context, is that i don't think that SGA was really that dude at the end of games in the way his game says that he should be. he will probably have a playoff run soon where he's singlehandedly icing games down the stretch but that didn't happen this time around, i think we saw that their achilles heel (so to speak...) was the final few minutes of games, and if they theoretically played some other great teams that could consistently get them into that box i don't think it would play out positively for the thunder, w/ this specific team

and given how indiana played in those moments it feels like that was the thing we were really robbed of last night. the final 5 mins of that game w/ haliburton in there would have been fascinating

03 spurs was just peak duncan and a ragtag assortment of future and former stars. 25 okc feels like 81 celtics or something.

xps

sure that works too. anyway the point is i expect them to be around for a while and grab some more titles here and there even if they're not warriors level dominant

maybe the stats don't actually back this up, i haven't seen them -- but the other thing w/ this OKC team, in a historical context, is that i don't think that SGA was really that dude at the end of games in the way his game says that he should be. he will probably have a playoff run soon where he's singlehandedly icing games down the stretch but that didn't happen this time around, i think we saw that their achilles heel (so to speak...) was the final few minutes of games, and if they theoretically played some other great teams that could consistently get them into that box i don't think it would play out positively for the thunder, w/ this specific team

― slob wizard (J0rdan S.), Monday, June 23, 2025 10:48 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah kinda goes to my point of not having any memorable moments.

actually he did it once to basically save their season in game 4 so i will tip my hat on that but there were many other games in which they were fallible at the end

Oh yes game 4 good call. Hit some big 3s too

maybe the stats don't actually back this up, i haven't seen them -- but the other thing w/ this OKC team, in a historical context, is that i don't think that SGA was really that dude at the end of games in the way his game says that he should be. he will probably have a playoff run soon where he's singlehandedly icing games down the stretch but that didn't happen this time around, i think we saw that their achilles heel (so to speak...) was the final few minutes of games, and if they theoretically played some other great teams that could consistently get them into that box i don't think it would play out positively for the thunder, w/ this specific team

― slob wizard (J0rdan S.), Monday, June 23, 2025 10:48 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

https://www.nba.com/stats/players/clutch-advanced?TeamID=1610612760&GameSegment=Second+Half&Period=4

for agenda purposes I was hoping you were going to be right, but he was actually really good at least by the numbers in the clutch during the offs. only a total of 33 minutes which itself speaks to OKC’s quiet team dominance

The Thunder's dominance in the regular season was impressive - going 68-14 while having Chet miss 40 games was impressive. Hartenstein, Caruso, and Ajay Mitchell also missed significant chunks of time.

They struggled with offence non-SGA minutes at times early in the regular season, but they improved over the year. I assume their postseason non-SGA offence will also improve as JDub and Chet grow. Nikola Topic (drafted at #12 but already out for the season) should help, and rookie Ajay Mitchell showed some promising flashes as a point guard off the bench before missing most of the season with injury.

i have no argument to make against their regular season

Nikola Topic just became the first player in NBA history to win a ring without ever actually playing in an NBA game