2024-2025 OKC Thunder Games Thread

[Zagor]

Minny was too physical for him. I think he can find his shot during this off days.
But Wiggins could be even more important.

[bbms]

for you that love the two big lineups, you'll see a lot of that this series

unless pacers play hartenstein off the court, mark will play two bigs as long as he can

how pacers rebound?

that's the question going through marks mind at the moment. and it's a good question

[Dadouv47]

Before the postseason started I said that it would be a successful season going to the finals but I thought we would be playing Boston.
I know Indy is good and I'm scared of them and of OKC inexperience but can't deny that it would be a huge huge failure not to win this championship.

[falcolombardi]

Before the postseason started I said that it would be a successful season going to the finals but I thought we would be playing Boston.
I know Indy is good and I'm scared of them and of OKC inexperience but can't deny that it would be a huge huge failure not to win this championship.

I was on the "boston is not nearly invincible and they are showing real mortality' train before the playoffs and will defend that okc could beat them at full strenght/health (3-1 against them since 2024 fwiw)

But is true that without boston there now we dont have a "excuse" to lose

I dont think it changes much, we should always approach every title run as if the contention window could shut down at any moment (because it can)

[Dadouv47]

Before the postseason started I said that it would be a successful season going to the finals but I thought we would be playing Boston.
I know Indy is good and I'm scared of them and of OKC inexperience but can't deny that it would be a huge huge failure not to win this championship.

I was on the "boston is not nearly invincible and they are showing real mortality' train before the playoffs and will defend that okc could beat them at full strenght/health (3-1 against them since 2024 fwiw)

But is true that without boston there now we dont have a "excuse" to lose

I dont think it changes much, we should always approach every title run as if the contention window could shut down at any moment (because it can)

I agree but the path to a championship will never be as easy as this year. I would rather play the Pacers than Miami in 2023, Boston in 2024 and so on. We can obviously win a title if we lose the finals this season but never with such an "easy" path (with all due respect to Minny and Indiana that are still good teams).

and yeah our contention window could shut down and we can get injury badluck again. Chet got two severe injuries in 3 years and we are lucky the last one happened very early in the season. Gotta cash in and get that banner.

[bbms]

remember those micro lineups with jdub at center?

i have a feeling we'll see some of those

[Luv those Knicks]

Before the postseason started I said that it would be a successful season going to the finals but I thought we would be playing Boston.
I know Indy is good and I'm scared of them and of OKC inexperience but can't deny that it would be a huge huge failure not to win this championship.

Indy is surprisingly good. Very athletic and one of the best passing teams I've ever seen. They're really good at moving the ball around and finding the open man. Some very good 3 pt shooters and they bothered the hell out of Brunson the last few games putting a long athletic guy to cover him all the way up the court. Brunson still got his points, but you could tell that having a defender on him the entire time bothered him.

They're not good in a slower half court or isolation game. They're not very good at rebounding, so they have weaknesses. If you can hit your 3s, I think you win, or defend their pace. I think you're the safe bet anyway. They exploited weaknesses my Knicks had in our depth and some of our defenders and they got a lucky bounce to win game 1, but following that, I can't deny that they adjusted to us and looked like the better team, even if Hali's lucky bounce in game 1 hadn't fallen.

Getting past their slow (10-15) start this year, and once they started clicking, Indy was one of the top 4 teams in the league, so I wouldn't underestimate them, but I still think your team has this, in 5 or 6 games.

[bbms]

zach lowe show with kirk goldsberry discussing the finals was very, very, good.

zach lowe was like "can the pacers poke here...?" and kirk had a funny reaction "pft!? there's no poke! there's no weak spot"

[Xatticus]

They scare me. The odds are way off and I don’t like it. We need to appreciate the challenge. The way we came out against both Memphis and Minnesota after taking 2-0 leads concerns me. Indiana isn’t going to give this to us. We handled them comfortably during the regular season, but that shouldn’t give us a false sense of security. This is a different team and we’ve seen what can happen if we let the intensity drop during this postseason.

[ThunderBolt]

They scare me. The odds are way off and I don’t like it. We need to appreciate the challenge. The way we came out against both Memphis and Minnesota after taking 2-0 leads concerns me. Indiana isn’t going to give this to us. We handled them comfortably during the regular season, but that shouldn’t give us a false sense of security. This is a different team and we’ve seen what can happen if we let the intensity drop during this postseason.

Agree. There is too much “all time great” talk being thrown around. While that might be true when it’s all said and done, we’ve shown a tendency to get complacent and buy in to our own hype a couple of times in these playoffs. As long as we stay healthy, I think we win. I doubt it happens in under 6. Five would be great to win our own court.

[Dadouv47]

They scare me. The odds are way off and I don’t like it. We need to appreciate the challenge. The way we came out against both Memphis and Minnesota after taking 2-0 leads concerns me. Indiana isn’t going to give this to us. We handled them comfortably during the regular season, but that shouldn’t give us a false sense of security. This is a different team and we’ve seen what can happen if we let the intensity drop during this postseason.

Agree. There is too much “all time great” talk being thrown around. While that might be true when it’s all said and done, we’ve shown a tendency to get complacent and buy in to our own hype a couple of times in these playoffs. As long as we stay healthy, I think we win. I doubt it happens in under 6. Five would be great to win our own court.

yes and no. I think we lost more games because we lacked confidence and the shooting was bad because of it than we lost games because we were overconfident. Probably game 3 against Minny was us being complacent and the two games at memphis too. I don't think that's gonna be a thing in the Finals. I'm a bit more concerned about our players feeling the pressure because they know they are huge favorites while the Pacers were on underdogs the all season basically.

[Dadouv47]

Almost want to bet money on the Pacers to win the Series so I can win a lot of money to wipe away my tears if we lose but just no fun doing it. That being I said I think it's a decent value bet even if we are big favorites.

[bbms]

"all time" has slipped out of thunder players' mouths since a long time ago, they've been fully aware of how good they've been for a while now, and they kept playing arguably the hardest any team has played.

i'm hyped but i'm pretty confident they'll finish it. i think in this indiana series they'll be able to put to good use everything throughout the season. two bigs, micro ball, whatever.

they became ready the moment they dispatched jokic.

[Dadouv47]

I hate the fact that they had an entire week without playing because our core guys were playing the best basketball in these playoffs by a big margin. Game one gonna be VERY important.

I'm only concerned about the front court match up...if Chet/JDub/Hart can get the best of Siakam and Turner it will be a gentleman sweep.

[cjmcallist]

IND feels like an enigma. They're obviously a different team than the regular season, but with CLE and BOS facing injuries the East is WEAK. Might have been the easiest route to the Finals in a long time. So I'm not sure what to make of them. I also missed both conference finals due to travel.

I'm very excited for the finals.

I also have to say - the last few years brought out a lot of haters and it feels really good to see them sucking on eggs.

[bbms]

i agree with some of the guys (like nash and lebron, check today's mind the game) that have been preaching about thunder and the pacers being a gaze into the future of the nba.

okc plays a totally different brand of defense of almost everyone else and is probably superior by tactical and schematic design, it'll be copied by the teams with speed to do so. same applies for the pacers, but on the offensive end.

i think okc is favored and it's not even close because of personnel superiority (bigger, faster, stronger, higher iq on a game that's supposed to be defined by being big, fast, strong and high iq), but from a tactical level, the pacers are the real deal on offense, and i hope as a thunder fan that my team takes a lot from them.

this is a lot like that peyton manning's broncos x legion of boom seahawks super bowl imo. i hope the result is the same.

[Clav]

I know pacers are dangerous but I'm pretty confident that okc is just the better squad. I'm very much looking forward to the games and don't take indy lightly. They have a very nice offensive structure. My key of the series is how okc gameplans against the corner 3, putting Haliburton into on ball pressure, and how we cover Turner. Siakam has a chance to be a big x factor, and I really think he's their best player against us. However if we can pass the Jokic litmus test we can pass the pascal test

[bbms]

i think okc's defense is going to strike right in the teeth of their offense, which is the back court.

their offense is the fastest to get the ball out of the backcourt, and it's built on that, i think the thunder will bother it and pressure it right from the beginning, to the point indiana will give up getting the ball out with haliburton and nesmith will have to bring the ball over instead.

this series is going to be very unconventional. partially because indiana is likely trying to turn normal half court plays into transition plays by speed, and partially because okc isn't going to allow it and will play full court defense on situations stranger to conventional nba defense (a bit like gegenpress, or the press they put on ant last series, but in a more generalized way).

those are my 2 cents.

thunder in 5. haliburton and his fans will have a terrible offseason because he's unfairly going to be called overrated even though he's great.

[mr570]

They scare me. The odds are way off and I don’t like it. We need to appreciate the challenge. The way we came out against both Memphis and Minnesota after taking 2-0 leads concerns me. Indiana isn’t going to give this to us. We handled them comfortably during the regular season, but that shouldn’t give us a false sense of security. This is a different team and we’ve seen what can happen if we let the intensity drop during this postseason.

Some players also just "turn it on" in the playoffs and Haliburton has looked like one of those players. I think this series is going to be much more competitive than everyone thinks for sure. The Pacers can play offense similarly to how the Mavs did last year except better imo

[mr570]

i think okc's defense is going to strike right in the teeth of their offense, which is the back court.

their offense is the fastest to get the ball out of the backcourt, and it's built on that, i think the thunder will bother it and pressure it right from the beginning, to the point indiana will give up getting the ball out with haliburton and nesmith will have to bring the ball over instead.

this series is going to be very unconventional. partially because indiana is likely trying to turn normal half court plays into transition plays by speed, and partially because okc isn't going to allow it and will play full court defense on situations stranger to conventional nba defense (a bit like gegenpress, or the press they put on ant last series, but in a more generalized way).

those are my 2 cents.

thunder in 5. haliburton and his fans will have a terrible offseason because he's unfairly going to be called overrated even though he's great.

I've been wondering if Mark would do some insane Press Virginia style stuff lol