2025 NBA FINALS: #1 Oklahoma City Thunder vs #4 Indiana Pacers (Series tied 1-1)

[knicksfan974]

Didn't watch the whole game, just parts, but looks like we got another subpar Hali performance. The Pacers will not get there if he doesn't take the lead and put up big numbers.

[durden_tyler]

Didn't watch the whole game, just parts, but looks like we got another subpar Hali performance. The Pacers will not get there if he doesn't take the lead and put up big numbers.

OKC defense (mainly, Dort) working, as it did against key players in previous match-ups. But yes, Haliburton needs to be more aggressive-- AND EARLY-- in Games 3 and 4 for them to have a shot at winning this series.

[Rainwater]

This is what I was expecting, don’t think Indiana had much of a chance

[MMyhre]

I still had OKC in 5, sticking to that. Now we even got Wiggins going, if he can heat up we have him and Carushow and IHart as big 3 bench thats highkey crazy. And btw, Chet and J-Dub have been bang average to bad and OKC have lead for all but 2 minutes, now imagine they play at just a regular season average or better? OKC cant lose this, it would require Haliban to explode consistently for 30 + and 10 + ast but OKC is too good of a defense for him.

[garrick]

Neither is being a scoring guard. IND got this far because Haliburton never let his ego get in the way of a win.

Um... only star guards that can score at will have won championships.


Haliburton just can't score at will.

I wish people would stop letting limitations become virtues. Everyone can see he can't break down defenses at will and score. He knows it and his teammates knows it.

SGA tonight dropped 34 on their head and Haliburton did absolutely nothing, like he always do when the game isn't going his way.

Pacers succeed in spite in Haliburton's passivity, not because of it.

There's nothing admirable about being the highest paid player and being paraded as a star and getting 30 and 40 points on your headtop and you can't do nothing about it.

You can't stop it and you can't respond lol. It's nothing to do with ego, it because he can't. When things don't go his way and his team can't carry him to the finish line so he can steal the show, he's a spectator.

Hali is a playmaker not scorer but yes he needs to be much more involved somehow if the Pacers want to win this series.

[NiceLikeChrist]

If I can posit a theory on why it's """neutral fans""" complaining and not Pacers fans... its because the Pacers fans posting in these threads have been regulars here for years, and understand how to post on the general board, aren't extreme homers, and understand their team is at a large talent deficit. And the """neutral fans""" aren't that neutral, they're heavily rooting for the underdog, effectively becoming homers for the Pacers this series, but without the discipline the long time Pacers fans have developed (seriously I remember them all from the Heat/Pacers series over a decade ago).

then you would be wrong. because neutral fans have been complaining about it all season, all playoffs, every series. so your argument falls apart there.

trying to act like it doesn't exist just makes you seem facitious at this point. it is obvious and clear as day every game OKC plays. as if the pacers are a likable team too. why would anyone root for them if they aren't from indiana? hell, most nba fans aren't even watching this series. you can bet the neutral fans watching have been watching all year and hope for a better product than what we're getting

[canada_dry]

People really trying to blame it on the calls?

Foh

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[yoadknux]

I thought OKC dominated hard, it was more of a blowout than the final score showed. That being said, 1-1 is an excellent score for Indy. The next two games at Indiana are going to be interesting.

[sammo89]

We need to get rid of conferences. They end up causing these huge mismatches in the finals that are just foregone conclusions

[MrPainfulTruth]

You would be correct. It’s quite literally anyone who isn’t an OKC fan. Any neutral fan can plainly see how overly biased the officiating is in OKC’s favor. Has been the entire year and all playoffs.

It might be season long reparations for having them lose the mavericks series last year with that garbage 3 pt foul. Hopefully it isn’t like this next season.

It's really not. OKC plays a scrappy brand of defense using smaller players.

Refs aren't gonna call everything, especially not on 6'4 guys digging on 6'9 guys.

You arent listening. They dont allow the same contact on both ends. What is an instant call on one end goes uncalled the very next play. Not once, not with one set of officials, but all the time. The games that were called correctly had a dramatically different outcome from all others. It was ONE game in seven in the Denver series

[MrPainfulTruth]

33-26 FTAs isn't an egregious difference. And it's not like those 7 FTAs would have made a difference. The game was already lost in the second quarter. The Pacers were awful all night.

This wasn't like a few years ago when Silver was trying to push the Lakers back into relevance and they were averaging like twice as many FTAs as their opponents. That **** was blatantly rigged. Small differences like this are normal. Maybe there was a little homecourt favourtism but I didn't notice it.

Thats too basic. The favorism happens in a much more subtle way - by NOT calling obvious fouls on defense (and never ever callign SGA for his patented pushoff, but thats just cosmetics). If you allow a lot more contact on one end but kind of "correctly" call contact on the other its very hard to complain, and it wont show up in the FTA big time. It will show up in a lot of turnovers, fast break point, missed shots.

[junot111]

Obviously Haliburton is not an iso scorer and can't expected to just "go to work" but it's inexcusable for him to not even try to be involved on offense. It's not like he's getting trapped or denied, he's just facing single coverage and giving the ball up.

When the offense stalls they need to go back to the basics a bit and run p&r with him and Siakam or pop with Turner. And Hali needs to be more aggressive with his jump shot which is his biggest weapon until they press up and give him room to attack downhill for the floater. He literally does it in the 4th quarter but refuses to do the same thing earlier

[Tnasty4l]

I'm still not worried. They did what they were supposed to do to not go down 0-2. We also come back after a lose and we will take games 3 and 4 at home.

[The-Stallion70]

OKC didn't have a plus 12.5 scoring margin by accident this year.

Pacers scoring margin this year was plus 2.5

I expect OKC to basically dominate the rest of the Finals, one loss by one point does not change my mind about that.

[RB34]

We need to get rid of conferences. They end up causing these huge mismatches in the finals that are just foregone conclusions

Like last year?

[nikster]

We need to get rid of conferences. They end up causing these huge mismatches in the finals that are just foregone conclusions

Yeah I wish the finals were more like the WCF...where OkC Beat Minny by 30 twice and was up 20 heading into the 4th in a 3rd game

[Jailblazers7]

Has anybody seen any shot quality data through 2 games? Ultimately, I think that’s what the series comes down to.

OKC (thanks to SGA) can generate quality shots at a consistent rate while Indy can’t because of OKC’s historically good defense. Even last night, a lot of the threes that Indy hit were higher difficulty looks.

[duppyy]

We need to get rid of conferences. They end up causing these huge mismatches in the finals that are just foregone conclusions

Yeah I wish the finals were more like the WCF...where OkC Beat Minny by 30 twice and was up 20 heading into the 4th in a 3rd game

NBA should just rig the games so each game is a nail biter!

[1bigfan13]

I said it after Game 1. As long as Mark Daigneault stopped being cute and played his normal lineups, OKC would be ok and should still win this series.

Last night he ditched the small ball and made the Pacers adjust to what the Thunder were doing.

I didn't like how we went into game 1 with a completely different starting lineup. I wanted to see them at least try out the double big lineup for a few minutes. But to immediately ditch it before Game 1, reeked of a coach who was already tucking tail and panicking.

Last night he stuck with traditional OKC rotations/lineups and we saw the results.

[Bergmaniac]

People on this board whining about OKC getting refs help after each of their blowout wins will never not be funny.