The Oklahoma City Thunder on Sunday crowned a dazzling season with an NBA title, pulling away relentlessly in the second half to beat the Indiana Pacers 103-91 in Game 7 of the NBA Finals.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 29 points and handed out 12 assists and the Thunder’s swarming defense finally proved too much for a Pacers team that lost talisman Tyrese Haliburton to a leg injury just seven minutes into the contest.
The underdog Pacers hung tough and held a 48-47 lead at halftime, but the Thunder outscored them 34-20 in the third quarter and pushed the lead to as many as 22 points in the fourth.
Photo: Kyle Terada-Imagn Images/USA Today
“It doesn’t feel real, so many hours, so many moments, so many emotions, so many nights of disbelief,” Gilgeous-Alexander said, his voice breaking. “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,” he said.
Gilgeous-Alexander put himself among some of the game’s greats as he earned Finals Most Valuable Player (MVP) honors to go with his regular-season MVP and scoring title along with his first championship.
Photo: AP
The 26-year-old Canadian star becomes the first player since LeBron James in 2012-2013 to win both the NBA regular season MVP and Finals MVP in the same campaign.
Jalen Williams scored 15 of his 20 points in the second half and Chet Holmgren added 18 points, eight rebounds, a steal and five of the Thunder’s eight blocked shots.
The Thunder, who led the league with 68 regular-season wins, captured their first title since the club’s controversial move to Oklahoma City in 2008, the franchise having won it all in 1979 as the Seattle SuperSonics.
The Pacers, three-time American Basketball Association champions in the 1970s — remain in search of a first title since joining the NBA.
Haliburton, already nursing a right calf strain when the Pacers won game six to force the first Finals game seven since 2016, had scored nine points — all on three-pointers — when he went down as he tried to drive past Gilgeous-Alexander.
Haliburton’s right leg gave out, and he sprawled forward, slapping the court in pain and disappointment.
Teammates gathered around him before he was helped off the court and to the locker room, supported and hopping on one leg with a towel over his head.
“What happened with Tyrese, all of our hearts dropped,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said, adding that Haliburton was in the locker room at halftime “and he was very much a part of a group that believed that they could do this.”
In his absence, the Pacers dug in. Down by three after the first quarter, they grabbed a 48-47 lead on Andrew Nembhard’s step-back three-pointer with 4.3 seconds left before halftime.
In a first half that featured 10 lead changes, the three-point shot was an early difference-maker for the Pacers, who connected on eight of 16 from beyond the arc in the first half, but had just three after the break.
The Thunder struggled early from long range, but Gilgeous-Alexander made his first three-pointer of the night with 8:16 left in the third, Holmgren followed with a trey and Jalen Williams added another — the quick 9-0 run giving Oklahoma City a 65-56 lead that set the stage for the rest of the game.
“We had 24 minutes to go get it — we had 24 minutes to finish our season,” Gilgeous-Alexander said of the Thunder’s mindset coming out for the third.
Nottingham Forest FC are to go into the Europa League play-off round after a 4-0 win over Ferencvaros TC on Thursday, while Celtic FC secured their place in the knockout phase with a victory over FC Utrecht. Aston Villa FC finished second in the league phase after recovering from two goals down to beat FC Red Bull Salzburg 3-2 with their spot in the last 16 already assured. Forest stood an outside chance of climbing into the top eight going into the final round of matches, but needed to beat Robbie Keane’s Ferencvaros and rely on other results going their way. Sean Dyche’s
HEATED RIVALRY: The pair had met 14 times previously, with Sabalenka winning eight of the encounters and entering the final as the favorite to take the title Elena Rybakina took revenge over world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka to win a nail-biting Australian Open final yesterday and clinch her second Grand Slam title. The big-serving Kazakh fifth seed held her nerve to pull through 6-4, 4-6, 6-4 at Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne in 2 hours, 18 minutes. It was payback after the Belarusian Sabalenka won the 2023 final between two of the hardest hitters in women’s tennis. The ice-cool Rybakina, 26, who was born in Moscow, adds her Melbourne triumph to her Wimbledon win in 2022. It was more disappointment in a major final for Sabalenka, who won the US Open
Denver superstar Nikola Jokic returned from a 16-game injury absence to post a 31-point, 12-rebound double-double on Friday and propel the Nuggets to a 122-109 NBA victory over the Los Angeles Clippers. Three-time NBA Most Valuable Player Jokic had not played since suffering a bone bruise in the left knee he hyperextended in a game against Miami on Dec. 29 last year. The Serbian big man did not miss a beat. He led all scorers, connecting on eight of 11 shots from the field, and also handed out five assists with three steals while playing just 24 minutes, 32 seconds as the
BATTERED AND BRUISED: Alcaraz suffered a cramp in the third set, but was allowed treatment despite Zverev’s protests, and continued on to win in five-and-a-half hours An ailing Carlos Alcaraz battled past Alexander Zverev yesterday in five epic sets to reach his first Australian Open final and move within a match of becoming the youngest man to complete a career Grand Slam. The world No. 1 outlasted the German third seed 6-4, 7-6 (7/5), 6-7 (3/7), 6-7 (4/7), 7-5 over a titanic 5 hours, 27 minutes in hot conditions to head to tomorrow’s title match. He only narrowly avoided crashing out after a huge fright at 4-4 in the third set when he pulled up in pain with what appeared to be cramp. He was allowed to have treatment
RSS