Shai Gilgeous-Alexander had 30 points and 12 assists and the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder extended their season-opening winning streak to eight games with a 126-107 victory over the Clippers at Intuit Dome on Tuesday night.
Isaiah Joe added 22 points and Cason Wallace and Aaron Wiggins each had 12 to help the Thunder overcome an early surge by the Clippers to set a franchise record for consecutive victories to start a season.
Gilgeous-Alexander, who played for the Clippers in his rookie season before he was traded to the Thunder, was nine of 14 from the floor and four of five from three-point range.
James Harden scored 25 points and John Collins added 17 for the Clippers. They were without Kawhi Leonard (ankle) and Bradley Beal (knee) on the second night of a home back-to-back.
Derrick Jones Jr. scored 16 points as the Clippers lost consecutive home games after winning the first three in their own building.
After trailing by as many as 13 points in the first half, the Thunder took the lead for good at 81-78 on a three-pointer from Aaron Wiggins with 3:34 remaining in the third quarter. Oklahoma City closed the quarter on an 8-2 run to take a 94-86 lead.
The Thunder put the game away with a 11-0 run to open the fourth quarter for a 105-86 advantage. It was an extended 17-0 run going back to consecutive three-pointers from Isaiah Joe and Gilgeous-Alexander to end the third.
The defending NBA champions aren’t thinking of themselves in that way.
The 80th season of the NBA starts Tuesday night in Oklahoma City, where the Thunder — the “defending” champions, even though they don’t seem to like the term — will get their rings and enjoy one final moment of celebrating last season’s seven-game triumph over the Indiana Pacers in the NBA Finals.
“Everybody is saying ‘defending,’” guard Jalen Williams said, “but we’re trying to be on the offensive as well.”
Translation: One title isn’t enough for the Thunder. They want more.
They are fully aware that this is the NBA’s parity era — seven different franchises have won titles in the last seven years, a run unprecedented in league history. Commissioner Adam Silver has seen nine different franchises win in his 12 seasons leading the NBA; his predecessor, David Stern, saw eight different franchises win in his 30-year run as commissioner. The Thunder would like to be the ones to put at least a temporary halt to parity, and with basically everyone back from a 68-win team that won the crown last season, it’s easy to see why BetMGM Sportsbook lists the Thunder as favorites to win the 2026 title.
“It’s what you strive for,” said Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, coming off a year in which he was the scoring champion, an NBA champion, the MVP and the NBA Finals MVP. “We’ve all achieved something that we’ve dreamed about since we were kids. We’ve had plenty of time to relish and think about it and have fun, and I guess you can kind of say just soak in it. I know I have.
“But … it would suck to lose the NBA championship in 2026. So that’s the new focus. That’s the new goal.”
It won’t be easy, of course. The Western Conference is positively loaded.
Lakers guard Luka Doncic drives past Oklahoma City Thunder guard Cason Wallace during a road loss last season.
(Kyle Phillips / Associated Press)
Houston added Kevin Durant to a 52-win team. Victor Wembanyama is healthy again in San Antonio. Golden State still has Stephen Curry. The Lakers have Luka Doncic and (soon, they hope) LeBron James. Nikola Jokic remains unstoppable in Denver. Anthony Edwards hasn’t even reached his prime yet in Minnesota. The Clippers have the most experienced roster in the league. Dallas has the No. 1 pick in Cooper Flagg and tons of talent around him.
Those eight teams — among others — all have legitimate hopes. Consider this: Assuming the Thunder make the playoffs, at least one of those eight teams won’t even make Round 1 of the postseason.
“I think the Western Conference is the best conference I’ve ever seen. This is my 29th year in the NBA,” said Tim Connelly, Minnesota’s president of basketball operations. “I’ve never seen such a talent-rich conference. … We’re not going to duck anybody. We can’t wait to see where we stand up in this kind of historically stacked Western Conference.”
The Eastern Conference has a slew of intrigue.
Defending East champion Indiana lost Tyrese Haliburton to a torn Achilles tendon in Game 7 of the finals and knows he won’t play this season, then lost Myles Turner in free agency to Milwaukee. Boston — the big preseason favorite to win last season’s title after being champions in 2024 — is waiting to see if, or when, Jayson Tatum’s torn Achilles tendon will allow him to return. Philadelphia had a wasted season last year because of injuries and now gets another chance at seeing if Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey and Paul George can make a run. Cleveland and New York are established and expected to be near or at the top, with upstarts like Orlando, Detroit and Atlanta poised to give themselves contending opportunities as well.
“I think the team that wins the East will feel like they can win it, just like the team that wins in the West,” Milwaukee coach Doc Rivers said. “Last year I made the case that I thought the East was every bit as good as the West at the top. Now two teams have taken a hit. That may have changed.”
The Thunder are trying not to change.
They are no longer chasing. They are the ones being chased. That, Thunder coach Mark Daigneault hopes, is the only real difference between this season and last. This season will bring unplanned challenges, he said, and how the Thunder react in those moments may wind up telling the tale of this season.
“It’s pretty unpredictable as to where that will go,” Daigneault said. “What is predictable is the solution to it and the things that we’ll rely on. We’ve always relied on being very present. We’ve always relied on stacking the days. We’ve always relied on continuous improvement and an emphasis on the things that kind of transcend circumstances. And that’s really where our focus has been, and is, and will continue to be.”
Oklahoma City Thunder and centre Chet Holmgren agree to contract extension worth up to a quarter of a billion dollars.
Chet Holmgren and the NBA champion Oklahoma City Thunder agreed to a five-year rookie-maximum contract extension worth up to $250m, ESPN reported on Wednesday.
The contract is fully guaranteed and comes on the heels of Oklahoma City’s landmark contract with NBA MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who agreed to a four-year, $285.4m super maximum contract extension through 2031 to become the league’s highest-paid player at more than $71m per season.
The 7-foot-1-inch (2.16m) Holmgren, 23, has been impactful when he’s on the court. Injuries limited him to 32 regular-season games after a hip injury last season. He also missed his rookie season with a foot injury.
With career averages of 16.1 points and 7.9 rebounds per game, Holmgren proved to be a critical piece for the team’s run to a title in 2025. He had eight double-double performances in 23 postseason games in 2025.
The second overall selection in the 2022 draft, Holmgren entered the NBA alongside Jalen Williams, the number 12 pick that year. Williams is also eligible for the rookie supermax extension. He’s entering the final season of a four-year rookie deal with a $6.6m base salary in 2025-26.
He’s also just the third player in history to make 150 three-pointers and 250 blocks through the first two NBA seasons.
Chet Holmgren (#7 ) was fourth in blocks in the NBA 2024-25 season with 1.9 per game [File: Joshua Gateley/Getty Images]
The first thing you notice in Jerry Bruckheimer’s Santa Monica office isn’t the full-size suit of armor from 2004’s “King Arthur” or the shelves lined with awards and celebrity photos. It’s the pens: dozens of ornate Montblancs, carefully arranged in display cases.
His wife gives them to him, Bruckheimer explains dryly. After nearly half a century of hits, what do you give the guy who has everything? “I sometimes write thank-you notes with them,” he says. Alongside neatly stacked copies of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times — which he says he still reads daily, in print — the pens reflect something ingrained in the legendary producer, a fondness for ritual, precision and old-school order.
Now 81, at an age when most of his peers are content to reflect on past glories in between tee times and early-bird specials, Bruckheimer still starts each day with a rigorous workout. (“I pick hotels based on the gym,” he says.) Then it’s back to doing what he’s always done: assembling the next blockbuster. Across more than 50 films — including culture-shaping hits like “Beverly Hills Cop,” “Top Gun,” “Bad Boys,” “The Rock,” “Armageddon” and “Pirates of the Caribbean” — his work has earned over $16 billion worldwide, cementing his name as shorthand for sleek, pulse-pounding entertainment. His elegant, brick-walled office, larger than the Detroit home where his working-class German immigrant parents raised him, stands as a monument to what that discipline helped build. “Our tiny little house was about as big as this room here,” he says, glancing around.
For Bruckheimer, success has never been about flash or chance. “The harder you work,” he says, in what amounts to a personal mantra, “the luckier you get.”
That philosophy is on full display in his latest production, “F1,” an adrenaline-fueled racing drama starring Brad Pitt as a retired Formula One driver lured back to the track to mentor a young phenom (Damson Idris) on a struggling team. Shot during actual Formula One races across Europe and the Middle East, and with a budget north of $200 million, “F1” speeds into theaters Friday with the kind of high-stakes ambition only someone with Bruckheimer’s track record could pull off.
Damson Idris, left, and Brad Pitt in the movie “F1.”
(Warner Bros. Pictures)
From the outset, the project, which reunites Bruckheimer with “Top Gun: Maverick” director Joseph Kosinski and screenwriter Ehren Kruger, sparked a bidding war among virtually every studio and streamer, ultimately landing as a co-production between Apple and Warner Bros.
“One of the reasons I went to Jerry,” says Kosinski by phone from his car, “is because I knew I was asking two massive corporations — Apple and Formula One — to work together. They’re both incredibly specific about their brands and how they do things. It took someone with Jerry’s CEO style of producing to be the diplomat in the middle and actually make it happen. He’s seen it all.”
Bruckheimer attributes the early frenzy around the project to the package’s pedigree: an appealing story, an A-list star and the global popularity of Formula One. But for Bruckheimer, it’s not just about star power or scale. “It’s emotional, it’s exciting, it’s got romance, it’s got humor,” he says. “It’s the reason I got into this business — to make movies that thrill you on that big screen, that you walk out feeling you’ve been on a real journey and got lost for a couple of hours. That’s the goal every time.”
Pitt’s character, Sonny, is in some ways a reflection of Bruckheimer: a seasoned pro forever chasing one more victory out of a sheer love of the chase. “Jerry could easily be on an island somewhere relaxing,” says Kosinski. “But he’d much rather be on set every day, meeting actors, hassling the marketing team, dealing with the studio. He just loves the job. His passion for it seems kind of endless.”
“F1” arrives at a moment when the Bruckheimer-style movie — star-driven, high-concept, engineered for maximum emotional impact — has surged back into fashion. In truth, it never entirely disappeared. But in an age of franchise fatigue, ironic tentpoles and streaming saturation, the earnest, four-quadrant spectacle had started to feel like a relic — until “Maverick” reminded Hollywood how potent that formula could still be.
The 2022 sequel didn’t just help bring moviegoing back to life after the pandemic; it earned Bruckheimer his first best picture Oscar nomination and raked in a staggering $1.5 billion worldwide. Even he didn’t see that coming.
“The early tracking said that you’re not going to get young people — nobody under 35 or 40 cares about this movie,” he remembers. “It ended up surpassing every possible metric. Anybody who tells you they know what’s going to be a hit, they don’t have a clue. You just don’t know.”
Tom Cruise in a scene from “Top Gun: Maverick”
(Paramount Pictures)
“F1” is not Bruckheimer’s first time around the racing track. Thirty-five years ago, at the height of his era-defining run with his late producing partner Don Simpson, he made “Days of Thunder,” a testosterone-fueled NASCAR drama that reunited the “Top Gun” team of Tom Cruise and director Tony Scott. The film epitomized the Bruckheimer-Simpson formula: glossy visuals, radio-ready soundtracks and MTV-style swagger. Tales of ballooning costs, nonstop rewrites, off-screen indulgence and on-set clashes swirled around the production, becoming the stuff of Hollywood lore.
Asked about the chaos surrounding “Days of Thunder,” Bruckheimer answers with his trademark restraint, the measured calm of someone who has spent decades managing egos, headlines and costly productions.
“There were definitely rewrites — that’s true,” he says. “As far as the budget going up, Paramount had a strict regime, and it’s not like you could go over budget easily. We wrecked a lot of cars, I’ll tell you that. I don’t think there was one standing at the end.”
Bruckheimer remembers the shoot as tough but exhilarating, a product of Scott’s notoriously seat-of-the-pants directing style. “Tony was just balls to the wall,” he says. “Joe [Kosinski] is balls to the wall too, but calculated. Joe’s got everything planned out. Tony would get on the set and see something over there and say, ‘We’re changing it, we’re going over there.’ It was a little more of a helter-skelter approach, but we somehow got through it. We held it together.”
By the time “Days of Thunder” was released in 1990, Bruckheimer and Simpson had spent nearly a decade together — a combustible but wildly productive run that had already delivered “Flashdance,” “Beverly Hills Cop” and “Top Gun.” Simpson, with his insatiable appetite for drugs and Hollywood excess, could be volatile and self-destructive. But Bruckheimer credits him with sharpening his eye for story and deepening his understanding of how the business really worked.
“I started in commercials — little 60-second stories — and Don was trained as a story executive,” says Bruckheimer, who began his career in advertising in Detroit and New York. “He was developing 120 projects every year so he knew every writer, every director. He had this great wealth of knowledge about the business: who’s good, who’s not good, who can talk a good game but can’t deliver. He was great with story and humor. He just was a genius at all this kind of stuff.”
The partnership was a crash course for them both: an informal academy with a class roster of two. “I went to school during those years — and so did he,” Bruckheimer says. “He didn’t know how to make a movie. He was an executive, so when he walked on set, all he really knew was not to stand in front of the camera. I picked up a lot of what he knew — and vice versa.”
“I’m sure I’ll be remembered somewhere along there — maybe not, maybe yes,” Bruckheimer says, reticent to dwell on legacy. “I’m still working picture to picture.”
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
If Simpson was the explosive, sometimes erratic half of the duo, Bruckheimer was always the steady one: disciplined, controlled, methodical. He’s known for rarely raising his voice. But he admits even he has limits. “I try not to,” he says. “I usually don’t. But when people lie to you, when they say something’s going to be there and it’s not and they keep giving you a bunch of bulls—, yeah, you can raise your voice a little.”
Following “Days of Thunder,” Simpson and Bruckheimer would go on to make several more hits, including “Dangerous Minds,” “Crimson Tide” and “The Rock” before Simpson’s death in 1996 at age 52 from heart failure related to drug use. “It’s unfortunate that we lost him,” Bruckheimer says softly.
After decades in the business, Bruckheimer says he has learned to choose collaborators carefully. “Life’s too short,” he offers. “We’re such a small business, your reputation follows you everywhere you go.”
When his team hires a director or an actor, he says, they always do their research. “How were they on their last movie? Brad has a phenomenal reputation. Will Smith has a phenomenal reputation — minus that,” he adds, discreetly alluding to the 2022 Oscars slap. “Tom Cruise too. I’ve worked with actors who just want to know when they can leave. I try to avoid that.”
The landscape of Hollywood, of course, looks nothing like it did during the ’90s Simpson-Bruckheimer heyday. Studios that once ran on instinct and big personalities now operate more like data-driven conglomerates, reshuffling execs and hedging bets in a fractured, streaming-dominated market.
“It’s changed a lot,” Bruckheimer says. “Streaming hit a lot of places hard. They spent too much money and now they’ve got problems with that. Some of the studios aren’t healthy. But the business, if you do it right, is healthy.”
For all the hand-wringing about collapse, Bruckheimer has heard it before.
“There always was doom,” he says. “When TV came in, people said nobody would go to the theaters again. When I started, it was video cassettes. Everyone said that’s the end. Then DVDs — that’s the end. I’ve been doing this over 50 years and that doom has been there every time a new technology shows up. And yet, look at what’s happened. Look at ‘Minecraft.’ Look at ‘Sinners.’ Look at ‘Lilo & Stitch.’ If you do it right, people show up.”
He reaches for one of his favorite analogies: “You’ve got a kitchen at home, right? But you still like to go out to eat. You want to taste something different. That’s what we are. We’re the night out,” he says. “And if we give you a good meal, you’ll come back for more.”
By any measure, Bruckheimer has already accomplished more than almost anyone in the business, with a far-reaching empire that spans television (“CSI,” “The Amazing Race”), video games and sports. In addition to big-budget tentpoles, he has occasionally championed more grounded, character-driven fare, from “Dangerous Minds” and “Black Hawk Down” to the recent Disney+ biopic “Young Woman and the Sea.” But for all his success, he has never stopped looking for the next story. A new “Top Gun” script is underway. “Days of Thunder” may get another lap. Even “Pirates of the Caribbean” is back in motion.
Bruckheimer ultimately credits the directors and actors — and the tight-knit team at his company — with keeping him in the game. “I’m just the guy who says, ‘You’re really talented. I want to work with you.’ ”
Even as a kid, he says, that was his gift. “I can’t focus the way a director or writer focuses — I’m too ADD. But I always put things together. I put together a baseball team and a hockey team when I was very young. I always had the ability to gather people around a common cause.”
As for thoughts of his legacy, he demurs. “I’m sure I’ll be remembered somewhere along there — maybe not, maybe yes,” he says. “I’m still working picture to picture. You’re only as good as your last movie. So you better be on your toes.”
The Pacers lost key player Tyrese Haliburton to a leg injury just seven minutes into the contest when he slipped and fell while driving towards the basket, but still held a narrow 48-47 lead at half-time.
However, the Thunder, who with an average age of 25.6 are the youngest side to win an NBA Finals title since the Portland Trail Blazers in 1977, out-scored them 34-20 in the third quarter and pushed the lead out to as many as 22 points (90-68) in the fourth.
“It doesn’t feel real, so many hours, so many moments, so many emotions, so many nights of disbelief,” said Gilgeous-Alexander.
“It’s crazy to know that we’re all here. But this group worked for it, this group put in the hours and we deserved this.”
“Our togetherness on and off the court, like how much fun we have, it made it so much easier. It made it feel like we were just kids playing basketball. It was so fun.
“We have a lot to grow, individually and as a group. I’m excited for the future of this team. This is a great start. I’m really excited for this team.”
The Oklahoma City Thunder have capped an extraordinary season by defeating the Indiana Pacers 103-91 in Game 7 of the NBA Finals to win the franchise’s first title since relocating from Seattle in 2008.
The league’s Most Valuable Player (MVP), Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, led the scoring in front of a raucous home crowd at Oklahoma City’s Paycom Center, with 29 points and 12 assists in the deciding game on Sunday.
He was also crowned the best player of the Finals, marking the first time since Shaquille O’Neal in 2002 that the same player had won the scoring title, regular season and Finals MVP honours.
The Pacers suffered a huge blow early on when they lost their star point guard, Tyrese Haliburton, midway through the first quarter with an Achilles injury and saw their title hopes dashed by a stifling Oklahoma City defence in the second half.
“It doesn’t feel real,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “So many hours, so many moments, so many emotions, so many nights of disbelief, so many nights of belief.
“This group works hard. This group put in the hours, and we deserve this,” he added.
The championship capped an extraordinary run for the Thunder, who ended the regular season with a 68-14 record, good for the fifth-most wins in a single NBA season.
The Finals between two small-market teams were light on star power but delivered on thrills, as the surprise Eastern Conference champions Pacers pushed the best team in the league to the winner-take-all finale.
The Pacers got off on the right track as Haliburton drained his third three-pointer five minutes into the game, but the night took a terrible turn for Indiana when he slipped and fell two minutes later.
The two-time All Star was in tears as his team’s medical staff rushed to his side, and a hush fell over the building packed with Oklahoma City fans.
Haliburton was helped to the locker room but did not return, and while there was no official update from the team, a TV broadcast reported he had suffered an Achilles injury.
The resilient Pacers kept the game tight through a physical second quarter, putting up a terrific defensive effort to end the half up by one.
However, the Thunder soon took control with Gilgeous-Alexander, who went 0-5 behind the arc in the first half, lighting the fuse with a 25-foot three-point jump shot four minutes into the third quarter.
The Pacers were masters of the late comeback in the postseason, but without Haliburton, they were unable to claw back the deficit, with the Thunder opening the fourth quarter with a 9-0 run.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander the Oklahoma City Thunder is all smiles after winning the 2025 NBA Finals [Joe Murphy/Getty Images via AFP]
Youthful champions’ struggle
The Thunder’s youth was evident in their postgame celebration.
“No one knew how to open them,” Thunder centre Isaiah Hartenstein said of the post-game celebratory champagne bottles.
They learned soon enough, thanks to 31-year-old Alex Caruso, both the oldest player on the roster and the only player on the team who had previously won an NBA title.
“AC [Caruso] did a great job of giving us a tutorial,” Hartenstein said.
The Thunder youth came through with inconsistency at times.
“The whole run, I’ve tried to help the guys just be who we are, and that’s all we needed is to be who we are,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said.
The Pacers remain without an NBA title.
It could’ve been worse for the Pacers if not for point guard TJ McConnell, who scored 12 points in the third, hitting six of Indiana’s eight field goals in the frame.
Bennedict Mathurin led the Pacers for the game with 24 points off the bench. Pascal Siakam and McConnell added 16 each.
The Thunder became the first team to score 100 or more points in an NBA Finals Game 7 since 1988, when the Los Angeles Lakers beat the Detroit Pistons 108-105.
Caruso, who played on the Los Angeles Lakers’ 2020 title team, said he hoped his postgame tutorial would pay off again down the road.
“We’ll get some rest, rest, try to do it again next year,” Caruso said. “We’ll be better [at it] next year.”
OKLAHOMA CITY — Shai Gilgeous-Alexander walked off the court for the final time this season, collapsed into the arms of coach Mark Daigneault and finally smiled.
It was over.
The climb is complete. The rebuild is done. The Oklahoma City Thunder are champions.
The best team all season was the best team at the end, bringing the NBA title to Oklahoma City for the first time. Gilgeous-Alexander finished off his MVP season with 29 points and 12 assists, and the Thunder beat the Indiana Pacers — who lost Tyrese Haliburton to a serious leg injury in the opening minutes — 103-91 in Game 7 of the NBA Finals on Sunday night.
“It doesn’t feel real,” said Gilgeous-Alexander, the Finals MVP. “So many hours. So many moments. So many emotions. So many nights of disbelief. So many nights of belief. It’s crazy to know that we’re all here, but this group worked for it. This group put in the hours and we deserve this.”
Jalen Williams scored 20 points and Chet Holmgren had 18 for the Thunder, who finished off a season for the ages. Oklahoma City won 84 games between the regular season and the playoffs, tying the 1996-97 Chicago Bulls for third most in any season.
Only Golden State (88 in 2016-17) and the Bulls (87 in 2015-16) won more.
It’s the second championship for the franchise. The Seattle SuperSonics won the NBA title in 1979; the team was moved to Oklahoma City in 2008. There’s nothing in the rafters in Oklahoma City to commemorate that title.
In October, a championship banner is finally coming. A Thunder banner.
The Pacers led 48-47 at the half even after losing Haliburton to what his father said was an Achilles tendon injury about seven minutes into the game. But they were outscored 34-20 in the third quarter as the Thunder built a 13-point lead and began to run away.
Indiana Pacers guard Tyrese Haliburton falls to the court in pain after sustaining an apparent Achilles tendon injury in the first half against the Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 7 of the NBA Finals.
(Nate Billings / Associated Press)
Bennedict Mathurin had 24 points and 13 rebounds for Indiana, which still is waiting for its first NBA title. The Pacers — who were 10-15 after 25 games and were bidding to be the first team in NBA history to turn that bad of a start into a championship — had leads of 1-0 and 2-1 in the series, but they simply didn’t have enough in the end.
Home teams improved to 16-4 in NBA Finals Game 7s. And the Thunder became the seventh champion in the last seven seasons, a run of parity like none other in NBA history.
Pacers forward Pascal Siakam was part of the Toronto team that won in 2019, Thunder guard Alex Caruso was part of the Lakers team that won in the pandemic “bubble” in 2020, Milwaukee won in 2021, Golden State in 2022, Pacers forward Thomas Bryant and Denver prevailed in 2023, and Boston won last year’s title.
And now, the Thunder get their turn. The youngest team to win a title in nearly a half-century has reached the NBA mountaintop.
The Thunder are the ninth franchise to win a title in NBA Commissioner Adam Silver’s 12 seasons. His predecessor, David Stern, saw eight franchises win titles in his 30 seasons as commissioner.
“They behave like champions. They compete like champions,” Daigneault said. “They root for each other’s success, which is rare in professional sports. I’ve said it many times and now I’m going to say it one more time. They are an uncommon team and now they’re champions.”
The Indiana Pacers, rallying around injured star Tyrese Haliburton, crushed the Oklahoma City Thunder 108-91 to force a deciding Game 7 in the NBA Finals.
Haliburton, cleared to play with a right calf injury only a couple of hours before tipoff, scored 14 points with five assists and two steals in a solid contribution to a comprehensive team effort.
“We just wanted to protect home court,” Haliburton said on Thursday. “We didn’t want to see these guys celebrate a championship on our home floor.
“Backs against the wall, we just responded,” he added. “So many different guys chipped in, total team effort. I’m really proud of this group.”
Obi Toppin led the Pacers scoring with 20 points off the bench as Indiana’s reserves out-scored Oklahoma City’s bench 48-37.
Andrew Nembhard added 17 points and Pascal Siakam had 16 points and 13 rebounds as the Pacers, who had lost the last two games to stand on the brink of elimination, leveled the best-of-seven championship series at three games apiece.
Haliburton, who said he’d do everything he could to play after limping through most of Game 5, showed virtually no sign of his injury as the Pacers grabbed the game by the throat in the second quarter and never let go.
Indiana led by 22 points at halftime and by as many as 31 early in the fourth quarter.
“Well, we were going home if we didn’t come out and give everything we have and leave it all out on the floor,” said T.J. McConnell, who had 12 points, nine rebounds and six assists off the bench for Indiana.
“Obviously very happy, very proud, but we’ve got to flush it because we have another one on Sunday.”
NBA MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, right, scored a game-high 22 points for Oklahoma City Thunder [Abbie Parr – Pool/ Getty Images via AFP]
Thunder searching for answers ahead of Game 7
NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP) Shai Gilgeous-Alexander led Oklahoma City with 21 points but had eight of the Thunder’s 21 turnovers.
Gilgeous-Alexander missed his lone three-point attempt while Jalen Williams – coming off a 40-point performance in game five – missed all four of his three-point attempts on the way to 16 points.
The Thunder, winners of a league-best 68 regular-season games – pulled their starters after falling behind by 30 going into the fourth quarter.
They’ll be searching for answers as the series heads back to Oklahoma City for the championship finale on Sunday – the first Game 7 in the NBA finals since 2016.
“The way I see it, we sucked tonight,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “We can learn the lessons and we have one game for everything, for everything we’ve worked for.”
The Thunder are seeking their first title since the franchise relocated to Oklahoma City in 2008, having won it all in 1979 as the Seattle SuperSonics.
The Pacers, meanwhile, are in search of a first NBA title. They won American Basketball Association (ABA) titles in 1970, 1972 and 1973 before joining the NBA as part of the ABA-NBA merger in 1976.
Obi Toppin, left, was one of six Indiana Pacers players to score in double figures in Game 6 of the NBA finals [Dylan Buell/Getty Images via AFP]
Pacers ride wave of momentum
“You know, we’ve got one game,” Haliburton said. “All cards on the table. It’s going to be a lot of fun.”
For a few minutes, it looked like the Thunder might roll to the title.
The Pacers missed their first eight shots and fell into a quick eight-point hole. But they settled in to connect on six straight attempts and took the lead on a three-pointer from Nembhard midway through the first quarter.
Indiana piled on the pressure with a pair of three-pointers and a trey from Haliburton – his first basket of the night – pushing their lead to as many as nine points.
Up by three at the end of the first, the Pacers exploded in the second quarter, stepping up the aggression on both ends of the floor on the way to a 64-42 halftime lead.
With less than a minute to go in the first half Haliburton came up with a steal then found Siakam with a no-look pass for an emphatic dunk.
Siakam followed up with a turnaround jump shot at the halftime buzzer.
Toppin praised Haliburton as “a soldier,” but Haliburton said the victory was down to the team effort.
“It’s the Finals,” Haliburton said. “All of us got to give everything we have.”
OKLAHOMA CITY — Game 5 was starting to look like Game 1 all over again. Oklahoma City, at home, takes a huge lead. Indiana comes roaring back in the fourth quarter.
Indiana won that one.
This time, the Thunder crafted a different ending — and a 3-2 lead in the NBA Finals was their reward.
Jalen Williams scored a career playoff-high 40 points, MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander added 31 and the Thunder moved one win from a title by beating the Pacers 120-109 on Monday night.
“We’re learning,” said Williams, whose previous playoff best was 34.
It was the 10th — and by far, the biggest — time the Thunder stars combined for more than 70 points in a game. Williams was 14 of 24 from the field, and Gilgeous-Alexander added 10 assists.
“It wasn’t a perfect game at all and there’s a lot of room for growth,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “But our improvement from Game 4 to Game 5 was critical.”
Pascal Siakam had 28 points for Indiana, which will host Game 6 on Thursday night. TJ McConnell added 18 for the Pacers, who whittled an 18-point deficit down to two in the fourth — then watched the Thunder pull away again, and for good.
“It kind of went away from us,” Siakam said. “But the fight was there.”
It was, but now everything favors the Thunder.
Teams that win Game 5 of an NBA Finals that was tied at 2-2 have gone on to win the series 23 times in 31 previous opportunities, or 74%. And teams with a 3-2 lead in the finals have won 40 times in 49 previous opportunities, or 82%.
But Game 5 was not easy. Far from it.
Down by 18 late in the second quarter, the Pacers — the comeback kings of these playoffs, with as many wins in this postseason from 15 points down or more (five) than the rest of the league has combined, including in Game 1 of this series — did what they do, chipping away. And they did it with Tyrese Haliburton reduced to basically playing decoy on offense because of a leg issue that he aggravated in the first quarter.
“He’s not 100%,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. “It’s pretty clear.”
Led by McConnell, who scored 13 points in just under seven minutes of the third, the Pacers got within five late in that quarter.
Then, Siakam went to work — a pair of free throws with 9:19 left got Indiana within four, then a three-pointer about a minute later made it 95-93. In the play-by-play era of the NBA, starting with the 1997 playoffs, teams with leads of 15 points or more in the finals were 80-9.
Make that 81-9 now, and the Thunder are one win away from giving Oklahoma City its first NBA title.
“That was honestly the same exact game as Game 1,” Williams said. “Learning through these finals, that’s what makes a team good.”
One more win, and his team will be certified as great.
Jalen Williams scored 40 points for Oklahoma City Thunder as they held off an Indiana Pacers comeback to win 120-109 and take a 3-2 lead in the NBA Finals.
The Pacers reduced an 18-point deficit from the second quarter to two points in the fourth quarter before Williams, whose tally was a career best in a play-off game, and team-mate Shai Gilgeous-Alexander helped guide the Thunder to victory.
NBA Most Valuable Player Gilgeous-Alexander provided 31 points along with 10 assists as home side Oklahoma moved one win away from securing the NBA title in the best-of-seven series.
“My team-mates instil a lot of confidence in me to go out and be me,” Williams said. “And [coach] Mark [Daigneault] has done a good job of telling me to just be myself.
“I don’t got to be anything more and that’s given me a lot of confidence.”
The Pacers had overcome a 15-point deficit in game one to win but could not repeat the feat in game five.
“Tonight was the exact same game as game one, to be honest,” Williams said. “Learning through these finals is what makes this team good and we were able to do that.”
Game six will take place in Indianapolis on Thursday at 20:30 local time (Friday, 01:00 BST), with Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton insisting he will be ready for the contest.
Haliburton scored just four points in 34 minutes of action in game five, with Indiana coach Rick Carlisle saying the player was “not 100%”.
He added: “It’s pretty clear. But I don’t think he’s going to miss the next game.
“We were concerned at half-time. He insisted on playing.”
Haliburton said: “It’s the Finals, man. I’ve worked my whole life to be here and I want to be out there to compete, help my team-mates any way I can.
“I was not great tonight by any means, but it’s not really a thought of mine to not play here. If I can walk, then I want to play. It is what it is. Got to be ready to go for game six.”
INDIANAPOLIS — Game on the line, season quite possibly on the line, the Oklahoma City Thunder had only one place to turn.
They went to the MVP.
And Shai Gilgeous-Alexander delivered, scoring 15 of his 35 points in the final 4:38, capping Oklahoma City’s rally from a 10-point, second-half deficit and sealing a 111-104 win over the Indiana Pacers 111-104 on Friday night to tie the NBA Finals at two games apiece.
“He definitely showed who he is tonight,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said.
It was all SGA for OKC down the stretch. The Thunder closed the game on a 16-7 run; he had all but one of those points.
“We played with desperation to end the game,” Gilgeous-Alexander said, “and that’s why we won.”
Jalen Williams added 27, Alex Caruso had 20 and Chet Holmgren finished with 14 points and 15 rebounds for the Thunder. They did it the hard way — with a season-low three three-pointers, and no assists from Gilgeous-Alexander for the first time all season.
Pascal Siakam scored 20 for Indiana, which got 18 from Tyrese Haliburton and 17 from Obi Toppin.
Game 5 of the series — now essentially a best-of-three — is at Oklahoma City on Monday night.
“This kind of a challenge is going to have extreme highs and extreme lows,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. “This is a low right now and we’re going to have to bounce back from it.”
The Thunder basically saved their realistic chance at winning the title. Teams with a 3-1 series lead in the NBA Finals have gone on to win the championship 37 times in 38 past chances. The Pacers looked well on their way to being the 39th team with such an edge, before Gilgeous-Alexander saved the day.
“We knew it when we woke up this morning; 3-1 is a lot different than 2-2 going back home,” Gilgeous-Alexander said.
The Pacers came out flying, scoring 20 points in the first 4:59 — only the second time all season the Thunder gave up so many so quickly. They led by as many as nine early, but were unable to pull away.
And things got chippy for the first time in the series: Toppin was called for a Flagrant 1 on Caruso midway through the second quarter, then Toppin was the recipient of a Flagrant 1 from Lu Dort just before the half. The Pacers closed on a 15-6 run, taking a 60-57 lead into the break.
Toppin’s baseline dunk late in the third put Indiana up 86-76, its first double-digit lead of the series coming late in the 15th quarter of the series. Back came OKC: A 13-3 run tied the game early in the fourth at 89, the first of a handful of those down the stretch.
Tied at 91. Tied at 95. Tied at 97. And, finally, the lead: Gilgeous-Alexander’s step-back with 2:23 left put the Thunder up 104-103, their first lead of the second half.
They kept it the rest of the way.
“We wanted to win,” Siakam said. “I thought we played well enough for some stretches … but unfortunately, it didn’t happen.”
Thunder coach Mark Daigneaul gave Gilgeous-Alexander, this season’s Most Valuable Player, a break late in the third quarter rather than his usual rest early in the fourth.
The Pacers led 101-97 with less than four minutes remaining, but Gilgeous-Alexander scored 15 of the Thunder’s final 16 points and ended the game with 10 free-throws from 10 attempts.
Jalen Williams scored 27 points and made seven rebounds for the Thunder, while Alex Caruso added 20 points off the bench.
Pascal Siakam led the Pacers with 20 points and Tyrese Haliburton 18.
“We just didn’t execute at the end of the game,” said Siakam. “We didn’t get easy shots. The easy shots that we got, we missed them. And they made them.”
The Thunder host game five at Paycom Center in Oklahoma City at 19:30 local time on Monday (01:30 BST, Tuesday).
Reserve guards bag 49 points at home as the Pacers top the Oklahoma City Thunder 116-107 in Game 3.
Bennedict Mathurin has put on a game-changing performance in game three of the NBA Finals to help the Indiana Pacers out-duel the Oklahoma City Thunder 116-107 and take a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven NBA Finals.
Fuelled by a near triple-double from Tyrese Haliburton, who scored 22 points with nine rebounds and 11 assists, and a career playoff-high 27 points from reserve Mathurin, the Pacers showed a tremendous collective effort in Wednesday’s Game 3.
The Pacers bench outscored Oklahoma City’s reserves 49-18 and Indiana wore down NBA Most Valuable Player Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, whose 24 points included just three in the fourth quarter.
“So many different guys chipped in,” Haliburton told broadcaster ABC. “Ben Mathurin was amazing off the bench tonight. He just stuck with it. We just had guys make plays after plays.”
Pascal Siakam scored 21 points for Indiana, and TJ McConnell added 10 points and five steals off the bench to help the Pacers improve to 10-0 since March 11 in games immediately after a defeat.
Indiana Pacers guard Bennedict Mathurin shoots against the Oklahoma City Thunder during the second half of Game 3 of the NBA Finals series [Abbie Parr/AP]
Pacers coach Rick Carlisle lauded the contributions of Mathurin and McConnell.
“Those guys were tremendous,” Carlisle said. “TJ just brought a will, competitive will, to the game. Mathurin jumped in there and immediately was aggressive and got the ball in the basket.
“This is the kind of team that we are,” Carlisle added. “It’s not always going to be exactly the same guys that are stepping up with scoring and stuff like that. But this is how we’ve got to do it, and we got to do it as a team.”
In 22:24 minutes on court through the second and fourth quarters, Mathurin was brutally efficient, making two of his three three-point attempts and seven of eight free – throws, adding in four rebounds an assist and a blocked shot for good measure.
“Just staying ready,” Mathurin said after the game. “Whenever my number is called, go into the game and do the right things and try to help my team win — that’s the whole mindset.”
Mathurin is playing in the playoffs for the first time, after watching the Pacers’ run to the Eastern Conference finals from the bench in the wake of season-ending surgery in March of 2024.
Carlisle said , the 22-year-old Canadian was looking ahead.
“He was with the team. He just wasn’t playing,” Carlisle recalled. “He took a lot of notes, a lot of mental notes, and he may have written some things down.
“He’s putting a lot of work to be ready for these moments, and tonight he was an absolute major factor.”
Mathurin said he was “fortunate to learn a lot” in what was an unfortunate situation last year but he admitted that it wasn’t easy.
Playing in the finals, in front of the intense fans in Indianapolis, “is a dream” but one he doesn’t want to get caught up in.
“I’m not trying to live in my dream,” he said. “I’m trying to live in the present and make sure the dream ends well, which means winning the next game and winning a championship.”
The Pacers will try to stretch their lead in the best-of-seven championship series when they host game four on Friday before the series heads back to Oklahoma City for game five on Monday.
🏆 GAME 3 FINAL SCORE 🏆
Tyrese Haliburton leads a late @Pacers charge at home to take a 2-1 series lead!
INDIANAPOLIS — Bennedict Mathurin scored 27 points off the bench, Tyrese Haliburton added 22 and the Indiana Pacers reclaimed the lead in the NBA Finals by beating the Oklahoma City Thunder 116-107 in Game 3 on Wednesday night.
Haliburton also had 11 assists and nine rebounds for the Pacers, who got 21 points from Pascal Siakam and enjoyed a whopping 49-18 edge in bench points. The Pacers, who lost Game 2 in Oklahoma City, improved to 10-0 since mid-March in the game immediately after a loss.
“So many different guys chipped in,” Haliburton said.
Jalen Williams scored 26 points, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander added 24 and Chet Holmgren had 20 for the Thunder, who led by five going into the fourth.
Game 4 is in Indiana on Friday night.
History says the Pacers are in control of the series now; in the 41 previous NBA Finals that were tied at a game apiece, the Game 3 winner went on to hoist the trophy 33 times — an 80.5% clip.
Oklahoma City forward Chet Holmgren is surrounded by Pacers and fouled by Myles Turner in the second half.
(Michael Conroy / Associated Press)
It was back-and-forth much of the way, at times looking like an absolute classic. There were 15 ties; to put that in perspective, there were 13 ties in the five-game entirety of last year’s finals between Boston and Dallas. The last time there was a finals game with more ties: Game 1 between Cleveland in Golden State in 2018, which was knotted 17 times.
TJ McConnell finished with 10 points, five assists and five steals for Indiana; since all those stats started being charted, nobody had ever come off the bench and done that in an NBA Finals game.
“We just had guys make plays after plays,” Haliburton said. “Our bench was amazing.”
The Pacers’ Aaron Nesmith fouled Alex Caruso — a hard foul, for certain — with 2:35 left, and officials took a long look to determine if it met the criteria for a flagrant foul. A common foul was the final call and instead of two free throws plus the ball, it was just two free throws for Caruso. He made both, cutting the lead to 110-104.
But the Pacers — at home in an NBA Finals game for the first time in 25 years — kept control the rest of the way.
Six years later, the deal for George is considered tragically lopsided, the Clippers fleeced and forced to watch assets they surrendered lift the Oklahoma City Thunder to within three wins of an NBA championship.
The trade wouldn’t be looked upon harshly had the Clippers won a championship in the five seasons that George and Leonard played together. But the deepest the team advanced was the Western Conference finals in 2021.
George left as a free agent last offseason, signing with the Philadelphia 76ers. Leonard has played in only 266 of 472 games with the Clippers because of injuries. The Clippers paid George $195.9 million and have paid Leonard $194.6 million — with Leonard under contract for another two years and $100.3 million.
Meanwhile, one of the two players shipped to the Thunder along with five first-round draft picks, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, has blossomed into the NBA‘s most valuable player. And the 2022 draft pick acquired from the Clippers was used to select Jalen Williams, a rising star who averaged 21.6 points a game this season.
Both are bargains. Gilgeous-Alexander — known as SGA — was paid just $13.5 million his first three seasons with the Thunder before signing a five-year, $173-million contract that will take him through the 2026-27 season. Williams has made $13.7 million in three seasons and will be paid $6.6 million next season, the last of his rookie contract.
And it’s a deal that just keeps giving — to the Thunder, who as a result of the trade get the Nos. 15 and 24 picks in this year’s draft and the Clippers’ first-round pick in 2026.
Asked to evaluate the deal moments after the Clippers defeated the Thunder in January 2024, George grudgingly acknowledged that the pendulum had swung toward Oklahoma City.
“I just think both sides won,” he said. “I did think it was quite a lot that the Clippers were willing to give up. … When that trade first happened, we knew Shai was going to be really, really good, but he’s special.”
George sighed and continued: “I guess in a way, Oklahoma won that trade with the picks and future MVP, but both sides won.”
The fact is, the Clippers couldn’t say no to the deal. Why? Because Leonard was a free agent coming off an NBA title with Toronto in which he was Finals MVP, and he was weighing offers from the Lakers and Raptors as well as the Clippers.
Clippers owner Steve Ballmer needed to be convinced that giving up the slew of draft picks was a smart move. Leonard signing with the Lakers was an unthinkable outcome to Clippers coach Doc Rivers, and he jokingly told Ballmer the Clippers would need to relocate to Seattle if that happened.
“Steve Ballmer was nervous about the picks,” Rivers told The Times in 2019. “I said, ‘Steve, you keep saying six picks for Paul George is insane, but you’re saying it wrong. It’s not six for Paul; it’s six for Paul and Kawhi. So three for each. I would do that.’ You have to look at it in those terms.”
Knowing the Clippers desperately needed to consummate the deal, Thunder general manager Sam Presti demanded SGA — who was coming off an impressive rookie campaign — respected forward Danilo Gallinari and the draft picks.
Unforeseen was that SGA would rapidly rise from promising youngster to foundational piece to perhaps the best player in the NBA. He led the league in scoring this season with 32.7 points a game. He put up 34 points, eight assists and five rebounds in the Thunder’s win over the Indiana Pacers in Game 2 of the Finals on Sunday.
In Game 1, a stunning Pacers comeback was helped by two late missed shots by SGA. Still, he scored 38 points, and his 72 in his first two NBA Finals games is a league record.
“I’m being myself,” Gilgeous-Alexander told reporters. “I don’t think I tried to reinvent the wheel or step up to the plate with a different mindset. Just try to attack the game the right way. I think I’ve done a pretty good job of that so far.”
Through 18 playoff games, SGA is averaging 30.4 points, 6.8 assists, 5.6 rebounds and 1.8 steals. Only Michael Jordan and LeBron James have recorded those numbers during a playoff run of 16 or more games.
None of this is a complete surprise. SGA provided the Clippers with opportunities to feel seller’s remorse soon after the trade. On Dec. 22, 2019, he scored 32 points with five assists and two steals in a 118–112 Thunder victory. Two years later almost to the day, he made a three-pointer at the buzzer to give the Thunder a 104–103 win.
Next is closing out the Finals and delivering a title to Oklahoma City — something that has proven elusive for the Clippers, the oldest franchise in North American professional sports to have never played in a championship game.
“This is where we are, you can’t go back in the past,” SGA said. “You can only make the future better. That’s what I’m focused on.”
OKLAHOMA CITY — This has been Oklahoma City’s formula all season: Lose one game, respond in the next.
That’s exactly what the Thunder did in Game 2 of the NBA Finals.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 34 points, Alex Caruso added 20 off the bench and the Thunder beat the Indiana Pacers 123-107 on Sunday night to tie these finals at one game apiece.
Jalen Williams scored 19, Aaron Wiggins had 18 and Chet Holmgren finished with 15 for the Thunder. It was the franchise’s first finals game win since the opener of the 2012 series against Miami.
“We did some things good tonight. We did some things bad,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “We’ve got to be able to get better and be ready for Game 3.”
Tyrese Haliburton scored 17 for Indiana, which erased a 15-point, fourth-quarter deficit in Game 1 but never made a push on Sunday. Myles Turner scored 16 and Pascal Siakam added 15 for the Pacers, the first team since Miami in 2013 to not have a 20-point scorer in the first two games of the finals.
Game 3 is Wednesday at Indianapolis, in what will be the first finals game in that city in 25 years.
“A bad first half, obviously, was a big problem,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. “And we just played poorly. A little better in the second half. But you can’t be a team that’s reactive and expect to be successful or have consistency.”
Gilgeous-Alexander’s first basket of the night was a history-maker: It gave him 3,000 points on the season, including the regular season and playoffs. And later in Game 2, he passed New York’s Jalen Brunson (514) as the leading overall scorer in these playoffs.
But the real milestone for the MVP came a couple hours later, when he and most everybody else on the Thunder got a finals win for the first time.
A 19-2 run in the second quarter turned what was a six-point game into a 23-point Thunder lead. It might have seemed wobbly a couple of times — an immediate 10-0 rebuttal by the Pacers made it 52-39, and Indiana was within 13 again after Andrew Nembhard’s layup with 7:09 left in the third — but the Thunder lead was never in serious doubt.
“They did a good job being disruptive,” Siakam said. “They got out in transition. … They were super aggressive, which is what they do.”
With the noise level in the building often topping 100 decibels — a chain saw is 110 dB, for comparison purposes — the Thunder did what they’ve done pretty much all season. They came off a loss, this time a 111-110 defeat in Game 1, and blew somebody out as their response.
Including the NBA Cup title game, which doesn’t count in any standings, the Thunder are now 18-2 this season when coming off a loss. Of those 18 wins, 12 have been by double digits.
“That’s a long 48 hours when you lose Game 1 like that, coming into Game 2,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “The guys did a great job of just focusing on what we needed to do to stack to a win tonight. That’s how we got it.”
OKLAHOMA CITY — Tyrese Haliburton and the never-say-die Indiana Pacers pulled off yet another last-second comeback, this time on the NBA’s biggest stage.
Haliburton’s 21-foot jumper with 0.3 seconds left gave Indiana its first and only lead of the game, and the Pacers stunned the Oklahoma City Thunder 111-110 on Thursday night in Game 1 of the NBA Finals after a comeback for the ages.
“Man, basketball’s fun,” Haliburton said. “Winning is fun.”
Newsletter
All things Lakers, all the time.
Get all the Lakers news you need in Dan Woike’s weekly newsletter.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
Especially like this.
The Pacers turned the ball over 25 times, trailed by 15 points in the fourth quarter against a team with the best home record in the NBA and had no answers for Shai Gilgeous-Alexander — the NBA MVP who led all scorers with 38 points.
But they had the league’s new Mr. Big Shot, who has now had one of these moments in every series the Pacers have played in these playoffs.
— April 29, Indiana trailed Milwaukee 118-111 with 34.6 seconds left in overtime. Haliburton scored with 1.4 seconds remaining and the Pacers won 119-118.
— May 6, Indiana trailed Cleveland 119-112 with 48 seconds left and won 120-119. Haliburton got the winner with 1.1 seconds to play.
— May 21, Indiana trailed New York 121-112 with 51.1 seconds left in regulation. Haliburton sent it to overtime on a jumper with no time on the clock; Indiana won 138-135.
Now, this.
“We’ve had lots of experience in these kinds of games,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said.
The Pacers were down by 15 with 9:42 left, their rally the biggest in the fourth quarter of a finals game since Dallas also came from 15 down to beat Miami on June 2, 2011.
Carlisle coached those Mavericks. And, well, here he is again.
“That’s a really good team,” Oklahoma City coach Mark Daigneault said. “Credit them for not only tonight but their run. They’ve had so many games like that that have seemed improbable. And they just play with a great spirit and they keep coming. They keep playing.”
Pascal Siakam led the Pacers with 19 points. Obi Toppin scored 17, Myles Turner had 15, and Haliburton and Andrew Nembhard each had 14.
Jalen Williams had 17 and Lu Dort scored 15 for Oklahoma City, which was 36-1 at home with 15-point leads this season.
Game 2 is at Oklahoma City on Sunday night.
Oklahoma City led by 15 early in the fourth when Carlisle called time and subbed out all five players, seeking a spark. It worked. The Pacers outscored the Thunder 15-4 over the next 3:26 — getting within 98-94 on a three by Turner with 6:16 left.
They weren’t done. And in the final second, they found a way. Again.
“We had control of the game for the most part,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “Now, it’s a 48-minute game. And they teach you that lesson more than anyone else in the league — the hard way.”
The Oklahoma City Thunder “have a lot more work to do” after reaching their first NBA Finals since 2012 with a win against the Minnesota Timberwolves, says Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
The NBA’s Most Valuable Player (MVP) scored 34 points, seven rebounds and eight assists in the 124-94 victory as the Thunder won the best-of-seven Western Conference finals series 4-1.
The Thunder remain on course for a first NBA title, having been beaten by the Miami Heat in 2012.
“This is a step in the right direction but we have a lot more work to do to get to our ultimate goal, so let’s buckle up and get ready,” said Gilgeous-Alexander.
“That’s all that I’m focused on. This isn’t the end of our road.”
The Thunder will host game one of the Finals next Thursday, when they face the winners of the Eastern Conference finals between the Indiana Pacers and the New York Knicks for the NBA title. Indiana lead the series 3-1 with game five on Thursday.
Gilgeous-Alexander joins Steph Curry, LeBron James and Kobe Bryant as the only players in the past 20 years to reach the Finals in the same year as winning the MVP.
The 26-year-old Canadian, also named Western Conference MVP on Wednesday, is on course to become the first scoring champion since Shaquille O’Neal in 2000 to win an NBA title in the same season.
Chet Holmgren added 22 points while Jalen Williams also scored 19 for the Thunder, who are the youngest team in the NBA Finals since the Portland Trail Blazers in 1977, with an average age of 25.6 years.
Gilgeous-Alexander added: “These guys really make me feel like I’m a kid playing AAU basketball, like I’m 15 years old again.
“It’s just fun. That’s what makes us really good. We have so much fun being out there together.”
Meanwhile, the Timberwolves saw their season end in the conference finals for the second year running, having lost to the Dallas Mavericks last year.
“They dominated the game from the tip,” said Anthony Edwards, who scored 19 points for the Timberwolves, who were led by Julius Randle with 24 points.
The performance of Mark Daigneault’s side was an impressive response to the 143-101 thrashing they suffered in game three.
“We did a good job of staying in the moment tonight,” Gilgeous-Alexander said.
“We obviously had a bad taste in our mouth from the last game, and we just wanted to control the things that we could control tonight. I think staying in the moment was the best way to do so.
“We could have been better tonight for sure. Tonight wasn’t perfect, but we gave ourselves a chance… and we got a W.”
The Timberwolves pushed Oklahoma City all the way, with Nickeil Alexander-Walker scoring 23 points off the bench, Jaden McDaniels contributing 22 points, and Donte DiVincenzo finishing with 21.
“Everything is out there,” Alexander-Walker said.
“There’s no secrets. They know how to beat us. We know how to beat them. It’s just about going out there and doing it and who wants it more [and who is] trying to execute it more.
“We showed that at times throughout this game, but consistency, that’s all it has to be.”
Victory in game five in Oklahoma on Wednesday (01:30 BST on Thursday) will secure the Thunder a place in the NBA Finals for the first time since 2012, where they would face either the Indiana Pacers or the New York Knicks.
RAIN is set to fall in just hours in parts of the UK, marking the end of the remarkably dry start to spring, the Met Office has forecast.
Some areas could even see thunder as the skies open up amid the driest start to the season in nearly six decades.
2
Rain could be on the way today across major cities in the UKCredit: Alamy
2
It comes amid the driest start to spring in six decades, with Brits enjoying temps as high as 29C over the past few weeksCredit: Alamy
The Environment Agency has also warned there could be a risk of a drought this summer without sustained rainfall, with millions of households told they may face water restrictions in the coming months.
As of Friday, just 80.6mm of rain has been recorded for the UK this spring – that’s almost 20mm less than the record low of 100.7mm, set in 1852 for the full season.
However, this could change imminently, as the Met Office has warned of showers landing in the north of the UK throughout Monday.
Met Office meteorologist Kathryn Chalk explained showers hit across southern Scotland and northern England overnight on Sunday, with some reaching as far south as Wales.
Heading into Monday morning, there are expected to be “much-welcome” showers across the central belt of Scotland, northern England, and Northern Ireland.
Cities such as Edinburgh and Glasgow in Scotland could be washed out by the rainfall, as could Manchester in the north of England.
Met Office meteorologist Dan Stroud added that Monday would see sunny spells in the west develop widely with a “few scattered showers developing across the north during the course of Monday afternoon”.
He added: “One or two of those could be heavy, potentially thundery, but most places are going to be warm and dry.”
However, from Tuesday onwards there could be “an increasing chance of showers across southern areas of the country,” Dan said.
“Then beyond that, Thursday and Friday are likely to become dry, fine and sunny again, with good deals of sunshine for much of the country.”
Conditions in the UK this spring had been “remarkably dry up until now”, Dan explained.
However, as we approach the final week of May, which is also when schools break for half-term, the weather is “looking increasingly changeable, with areas of cloud and rain arriving from the west”.
The Met Office explained the prolonged warm and very dry spell, which has seen Brits enjoy temperatures as high as 29C, was primarily caused by high pressure.
However, by Tuesday, changing conditions could see “occasional heavy and potentially thundery showers developing across parts of Wales and the Midlands, with one or two of those breaching into London“.
Discussing Wednesday’s forecast, Dan said: “It will be a bit of a chilly start across England and Wales with plenty of sunshine to kick the day off.
“But showers will develop across England and Wales, with some of those showers potentially heavy and thundery and breaching into the London area.”
Met Office forecast
Today: Cloudy at first, but turning brighter with warm, sunny spells developing for most.
Mainly dry, though showers bubbling up in the west, perhaps turning heavy or thundery during the afternoon.
Tuesday to Thursday: Sunshine and showers for some on Tuesday and Wednesday, these perhaps heavy and thundery at times.
Drier on Thursday with bright or sunny spells. Locally chilly overnight.
