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.
Home runs are greeted with a celebratory shot of espresso and the donning of an Armani jacket. Victories are marked with bottles of red wine while the soaring voice of opera singer Andrea Bocelli echoes through the locker room. Welcome to baseball, Italian-style. Written off as 80-1 underdogs before the World Baseball Classic started, Italy’s fairytale tournament has carried them all the way to today’s (Taipei time) semi-finals in Miami against Venezuela. On Saturday, Italy — who scored a stunning upset of a star-studded US lineup during the pool phase — kept their unbeaten campaign alive with a nail-biting 8-6
Jannik Sinner on Sunday beat Daniil Medvedev in the Indian Wells final 7-6 (6), 7-6 (4), winning seven straight points to rally from a 4-0 deficit in the second-set tiebreak and claim the title without dropping a single set. The No. 2-ranked Italian beat Medvedev for the ninth time in their last 10 matches to claim his first title at the California desert tournament. Medvedev handed top-seeded Carlos Alcaraz his first loss of the year in the semi-finals of the BNP Paribas Open. Sinner congratulated fellow Italian Kimi Antonelli, who won Formula One’s Chinese Grand Prix earlier on Sunday. “It
Luka Doncic on Monday scored 36 points as the in-form Los Angeles Lakers powered to their sixth straight victory with a 100-92 defeat of the Houston Rockets. A crucial showdown between the third and fourth-ranked NBA Western Conference teams ended with the Lakers pulling away in the final minute of the fourth quarter to claim an impressive win on the road. The victory gives the Lakers (43-25) a valuable cushion over the Rockets (41-26) as they jostle for post-season positions in the West. Doncic was once again instrumental in dragging the Lakers over the line while a hard-nosed defensive effort
THRILLING GAME: The loaded US roster featuring Paul Skenes, Bryce Harper and Aaron Judge reached their third straight WBC final game, after 2017 and 2023 Gunnar Henderson and Roman Anthony on Sunday homered, and the US limited the Dominican Republic’s electric offense to win a thrilling semi-final 2-1 and move one win from capturing their second World Baseball Classic (WBC) championship. The loaded US roster led by NL Cy Young Award winner Paul Skenes and featuring stars Bryce Harper and Aaron Judge reached their third straight WBC title game after winning in 2017 and falling to Shohei Ohtani and Japan in 2023. The US are to face the winner of this morning’s (Taiwan time) semi-final between Italy and Venezuela a day later. The Dominicans reached
RSS