The NBA Finals are underway, with the Indiana Pacers having stolen home-court advantage with a thrilling come-from-behind victory in Game 1. While the Pacers stormed back from a massive hole in the playoffs to claim a win yet again, the Oklahoma City Thunder remain the playoffs’ top seed and the strong betting favorite to secure their first four wins. So, what do the Pacers need to do if they want to beat the odds? We turned to NBA 2K25 to find out.
Where Things Stand In Reality
Before we get to all the bad tidings the video game brings with it, let’s start with a positive note for the Pacers. Things stand about as well as they could possibly have asked for after one game. While the Thunder looked set to assert their dominance in Game 1 after putting the Pacers through a turnover-laden nightmare in the first half, and let by 15 inside of the last ten minutes leaving them with a 96.4% win percentage, the Pacers stormed back with a 32-16 run capped off with a last second dagger by Tyrese Halliburton for a 111-110 win.
What’s more, it’s hard for the Thunder to even take too much solace in having built that strong lead as overcoming long odds has been far from an anomaly for the Pacers. In fact, this was just their third most improbable comeback this postseason. After just one team in the prior 20 years pulled off a 7-point comeback in the final 50 seconds of a playoff game prior to this season, the Pacers did it three times in seven games, hitting each of their Eastern Conference foes with it once.
No lead is safe against these Pacers. With a 1-0 series lead the Pacers now ensure they will head home for the first time with a series tied 1-1 at worst, and that defending home court is all that’s needed to claim their first NBA title.
Why The Thunder Are Still Favorites
In short, talent wins games, perhaps no more so in any other major sport than in basketball where high usage of a small group of stars is the key to most Championship sides, and Oklahoma City has a lot of talent. The obvious headliner is league MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, a player who can put up points by the bucketload.
He’s supported by a tandem of Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren who are both capable of putting up their own numbers. Holmgren also pairs up with Isaiah Hartenstein to create a twin-towers pairing that is a nightmare around the basket, dominating the boards and making it difficult for opponents to create their own offense around the bucket.
While the Pacers are far from slouches themselves, there is a reason the Thunder are the two-time reigning top seed in the ridiculously challenging NBA Western Conference, and why they racked up 68 wins this year. The Oklahoma City Thunder are extremely good at basketball and that is a major advantage in a best-of-seven.
Check Out: This Retro-Styled Indiana Pacers Hoodie Is 55% off for Their Playoff Run
What NBA 2K25 Says
Nothing good for the Pacers, that’s for sure. It took four simulations of the series for the Pacers to reach their second win. Not in one series, but rather overall, as the first three passes saw the Thunder dominate to the tune of 4-1, 4-0, 4-0. Things appeared to turn around briefly in the fourth pass as the Pacers took a 3-1 lead only to fumble at the last task, a feat they’d repeat again from 3-2 up in the fifth and final unmodified sim managing to go 0-5 in title-winning games and 0-5 with their own elimination on the line.
The domination in series results was borne out in the minute data, too. Shai was dominant, claiming the Finals MVP in all five simulations while averaging 33.23 PPG with 6.08 Assists, in comparison to Halliburton’s strong but less dominant 23.07 PPG and 10.2 Assists. As teams, across 27 games the Thunder managed an average result of 120.31-109.38, a decisive margin for a finals matchup.
What If Chet Holmgren Gets Space Jammed?
With a fair fight clearly not yielding any results for the Pacers in 2K it was time to see what needed to happen to make the Pacers the better team on the virtual court. For starters, what if star big man Chet Holmgren suddenly lost all ability. With all his attributes dropped to 25 (plus any in-game boosts of a point or two) the 7’1” skeleton is suddenly a 41-rated last man on the roster who won’t be anywhere near the court.
With Holmgren gone, Hartenstein loses a strong defensive partner, while Holmgren also leaves a void on the offensive side of the ball. The Pacers, long bullied on the boards by the Thunder, took quick advantage, threatening to embarrass the Thunder in four with a home game for the title and a 3-0 series lead. They even nearly overcame their rebounding deficiencies, trailing overall slightly by capturing more defensive rebounds.
And then they lost four straight to drop their sixth consecutive simulated championship series, this time with Oklahoma City down its #2 man. Not a great sign of 2K’s faith in them to find three more W’s in the next two weeks.
What If Shai Gilgeous Alexander Forgets How To Score?
If nerfing Chet isn’t enough, what if instead we take it right to the top dog. Now, fully deleting Shai from the team seemed surely too much of a hindrance for the Thunder to overcome, but what if instead he turned into anti-peak Russell Westbrook? No shooting touch and bad shot selection at all times is the recipe, as every shooting attribute (and, for Gilgeous-Alexander haters, his foul drawing) gets dropped down to the minimum.
True to his Westbrookian archetype, Gilgeous-Alexander continued to get his points. He may not have been nearly as good at scoring, but he wasn’t going to stop trying. What he didn’t keep getting was Finals MVP, as a touchless Gilgeous-Alexander was finally what the Pacers needed to capture the title in five and let Halliburton get his hands on both trophies!
What The Pacers Need To Do To Win Three More Games, According to 2K
So, while things remain pretty dire for Indiana if NBA 2K25 is to be believed, they are still leading in the real world, so what do they need to do to keep the good times rolling? Here are four keys:
- Get On The Boards: The Thunder were absolutely dominant on the boards throughout the simulations, but particularly in the blowout series. While gaps dropped to about 3 or 4 rebounds on each side of the ball in the 4-3 series losses, they were at or around double digit deficits for each in the blowouts.
- Make Their Shots: Another consistent component of wins by the Pacers throughout the sims was hot shooting days. Creating good looks and knocking them down has powered their real world comebacks and the game agrees a good day shooting is critical to their success against their more talented opponents.
- Shut Down Auxiliary Scoring: A player like Gilgeous-Alexander is almost always going to get an elite player points hauls, but where the Thunder hammered the Pacers in sims was in secondary and tertiary scoring from Holmgren and Williams. By limiting these two in wins the Pacers were able to let their more balanced scoring, and their better-at-distributing star, lead them to wins.
- Live In Reality: At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is the real world result series, and things have been going pretty well on that front. The Pacers lead 1-0, and are 13-4 this postseason. Their nuclear scoring runs can sink any team and are always a weapon the Thunder will be forced to respect until the final whistle of the final game.
So, while the Pacers lead, it’s clear that 2K agrees with bookies that the Thunder remain resounding favorites. What do you think? Are the experts getting this all wrong, or will the NBA’s top team over the last two seasons make good on that dominance when all is said and done?
