Ahead of the NBA Finals between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Indiana Pacers, Sports Illustrated takes a look at the 10 biggest questions that could determine the series and gives a prediction on which team will win the NBA championship.
What is Oklahoma City’s key to victory?
Chris Mannix: Uh, be OKC? Indiana does a lot of things well. The Thunder do all of them better. Indy wants to play fast? OKC can play faster. Indiana has a great lead guard? Meet the MVP. The Pacers throw waves of defenders at you? Meet the law firm of Dort, Caruso and Wallace that will make Tyrese Haliburton long for the days of Mikal Bridges.
We can go micro: The Thunder need to create turnovers. They need to limit turnovers. They need to win the battle of transition. But the reality is that, on paper, this is a mismatch.
Liam McKeone: Gumming up the Pacers’ passing lanes. Stopping the transition attack will obviously be key to limiting Indiana’s production, but Rick Carlisle’s offense peaks when the ball is pinging around the perimeter nonstop. The Knicks often hurt themselves in the Eastern Conference finals by slowly getting back on defense, but their doom came when the Pacers were slipping passes right between their defensive rotations in pick-and-roll actions. Haliburton is obviously the conductor of the orchestra, but all members of the rotation are smart, willing passers; it plays a huge role in making up for the lack of individual creation outside Haliburton and Pascal Siakam.
If the Thunder successfully haunt potential passing lanes without giving up open drives or shots (as they’ve done all season), they’ll succeed in making the Pacers hesitate, even just for a millisecond—and in the Finals, a millisecond is the difference between an open shot and a heavily contested one. It’s an important strategy against any team but especially against Indiana, leading all playoff teams in assist percentage, assist-to-turnover ratio and assist ratio. Should OKC force the Pacers into enough isolation possessions because they can’t get the ball moving, the Thunder will easily win the series.
What is Indiana’s key to victory?
CM: Get Myles Turner going. Turner is having a strong postseason. He was brilliant in the second round against Cleveland (16.2 points per game, 56.3% from three) and made some big shots against the Knicks. But Turner was dreadful in two games against the Thunder this season. He averaged 11.5 points, shot 31.6% from the floor and 14.3% from three. Turner needs to outplay Chet Holmgren. He needs to keep Isaiah Hartenstein away from the rim. He needs to have the series of his life.
LM: Hitting their catch-and-shoot three-point attempts. The Thunder are nearly arrogant with their defensive strategy, happy to send two or three defenders into the paint when an opposing ballhandler gets by his man because they’re so confident in their ability to recover and contest when the ball gets kicked out to the perimeter. It obviously works well, but the risk OKC takes is giving opponents a sliver of space to get up shots in catch-and-shoot situations. The Thunder have allowed opponents to take 27.8 three-pointers off the catch per game.
In other words, the Pacers are going to get those shots. Which is great news because they’ve been the best team in the playoffs in converting those attempts. So far Indiana has made 43.9% of its catch-and-shoot three-point attempts, taking an average of 21.5 such shots per game. It’s very difficult to create good looks against this Thunder defense, but if the Pacers can consistently make them pay with shots off kick-outs from the paint it could force the Thunder to change their defensive identity—and with it, the series.
Who has the coaching edge?
CM: Mark Daigneault is widely viewed as an elite head coach, both for strategy and his fearlessness when it comes to playing anyone at any time. But Carlisle has been here before. Hang around the Pacers long enough and you’ll hear them speak of Carlisle reverentially. I don’t think it’s a lopsided advantage, but you have to give the edge to the guy who has a title in his trophy case.
LM: The Pacers. Daigneault has been magnificent throughout the season and shown he learned from previous mistakes with various minor adjustments throughout this playoff run. But Carlise is minted with a championship and has the Pacers playing like a team far greater than the sum of its parts. He knows what it takes to win a title and has exhibited a few times in the last two years that he’s great at fine-tuning his offense to attack at just the right angles to take advantage of the opponents’ weaknesses. Carlisle has suffered a few obvious blunders, especially against the Knicks, but even acknowledging that it’s hard to bet against the guy who has been here before.
Who is the x-factor for Oklahoma City?
CM: Holmgren. He missed both regular-season games against Indiana due to injury, so he’s something of an unknown to these Pacers. Indiana will probably play small in this series, which means less of the two-big lineup from Oklahoma City. Holmgren will be asked to score in the paint on one end and limit Turner on the other.
LM: Jalen Williams. The biggest difference between the Thunder’s seven-game war against the Denver Nuggets and their five-game mowing down of the Minnesota Timberwolves was Williams’s play. The fourth-year forward struggled with his shot in the conference semis against Denver, averaging only 17.6 points per game on 37.5% shooting from the floor (including a putrid 23.7% from three on 5.4 attempts per game). The switch flipped in the Western Conference finals, with Williams’s 22.2 ppg, shooting 49.4% from the field and 46.2% from beyond the arc. The difference, both on the scoreboard and how OKC’s offense looked, was stark.
For all their amazing traits, the Thunder are not an awesome half-court offensive team and Williams is crucial to their ability to produce when they can’t get out in transition. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander will rightfully demand a ton of attention from the defense; Williams simply must take advantage and make his shots against a defense tilting away from him. We’ve seen how bogged down the Thunder can get when he doesn’t.
Who is the x-factor for Indiana?
CM: Aaron Nesmith. It doesn’t get any easier for Nesmith, who after a successful turn defending Jalen Brunson will now draw Gilgeous-Alexander in the Finals. Nesmith will have to find ways to make Gilgeous-Alexander inefficient while staying out of foul trouble against one of the NBA’s best at drawing them. Nesmith will need to be efficient offensively, too; OKC often leaves the corner open when it protects the paint. If Nesmith is open out there, he needs to knock down threes.
LM: Siakam. Maybe I took the easy way out by picking the second-best player on both teams, but it’s true! The Pacers are going to struggle to score against a great Thunder defense. They even struggled at times against a not-so-great Knicks defense. Siakam was there to bail them out in the Eastern Conference finals and they’ll need him to do it again in the Finals. The offense goes with Haliburton, but Siakam’s ability to create against an off-balance defense is critical to their success on that end of the court, and if he can put up a few big games like he did in the last round, Indiana has a puncher’s chance of sticking with its more talented opponent.
It feels like a swing point because the Timberwolves similarly needed Julius Randle for that purpose and the Thunder had him in a blender. They zeroed in on him so effectively he got benched near the end of the series. That cannot happen to Siakam, or the Pacers won’t live for long.
Whose legacy will be elevated the most with a win?
CM: Gilgeous-Alexander. When you win an MVP, you enter rarified air. After that, it’s about climbing over the elite players you are bunched in with. The last player to win the MVP and a championship in the same season: Stephen Curry. Before that, LeBron James. Before that, Tim Duncan. Winning a title and an MVP in the same season would be a nice feather in the cap of a player who is looking more and more like an all-time great.
LM: Sam Presti. He’s constantly lauded as one of the top evaluators in the NBA and the lead-up to the Finals has largely included an enormous amount of praise directed his way for successfully building a contender from the ground up yet again. Resetting the franchise after trading James Harden, watching Kevin Durant walk for nothing and then trading Russell Westbrook and Paul George only to end up with another MVP and title contender is the stuff of general manager legend. A championship would serve as the perfect capper and give him a case to be considered one of the best NBA executives of the century. The difference between building good teams and building a championship team is slim, but Presti has lived in that margin for a decade now. He’ll break out of it if he gets his ring.
Which bench player will come up clutch when his team needs it?
CM: Alex Caruso. Caruso is a jack-of-all-trades defensively. He battled Nikola Jokic in the conference semifinals. He took turns on Anthony Edwards last round. Who knows how OKC will deploy him—he could get time on anyone from Haliburton to Turner—but however it is, Caruso will deliver.
LM: Isaiah Joe. During the regular season, Joe recorded 33 games with at least three three-point makes. In the playoffs? He has only three. The postseason gauntlet is not kind to smaller sharpshooters like Joe, but the Pacers are a pretty good matchup for him. There will be a moment early in the series where the Thunder are struggling to score and Joe will strike like lightning against an Indiana defense that can lean undisciplined at times. He can provide the one thing the Thunder really lack—deadeye deep shooting—and could be due for a big stretch of shotmaking.
Which matchup will be most fun to watch?
CM: Haliburton vs. Lu Dort/Caruso/Cason Wallace. Oklahoma City has shut down some elite guards this postseason. Can Haliburton be the Swiss Army knife offensive player he was against the Knicks? Or will the Thunder defense claim another All-Star victim?
LM: Gilgeous-Alexander vs. Haliburton. Not exactly a unique answer, but what more could we really ask for? Both are maestros with the ball in their hands and control the game, yet both do so at their own pace. Gilgeous-Alexander stops and goes like a creek flowing around rocks. Haliburton’s gazelle legs propel him through the open court so naturally it sometimes looks like he’s running a track meet while everyone else is playing basketball. And in both cases, their teams go as far as they can take them. Without Gilgeous-Alexander’s offense, the Thunder look like they’re battling through the mud offensively, and without Haliburton’s aggressiveness, the Pacers look directionless. It will be a blast watching both operate at the highest level.
Why should the Thunder feel confident entering the Finals?
CM: They were the best team in the NBA in the regular season and they have been the best team in the playoffs. And, as noted above, everything that Indiana does that makes them special, OKC does it a little bit better.
LM: Simply put, they are the best team in the world right now. The Thunder boast playoff-caliber talent from one to nine on the roster and a variety of nifty role players to fill the 10th role. They play elite defense, and defense wins championships. Whether it’s through their superior talent, incredibly physical defense, or shotmaking from their MVP, OKC just overwhelms opponents. The team has weaknesses but no fatal flaw. And everything they’ve done in winning 68 regular-season games and going 12–6 in the playoffs so far has worked pretty much to perfection. It’s hard to not be confident with all that behind them.
Why should the Pacers feel confident entering the Finals?
CM: Indiana has defied the odds before. The Pacers were 30–1 underdogs to win the East, then went out and stomped on Cleveland, won two games at Madison Square Garden and closed out the Knicks. There is an unflinching belief within this roster that they can succeed. Faced with these odds, they have to lean into that.
LM: When everything is clicking for a team, they feel immortal, and that’s pretty much what this playoff run has been like for the Pacers. They’ve been comeback kids, pulling off unbelievable victories over the last few weeks against different opponents. They haven’t been favored to win either of the last two rounds, yet did so in convincing fashion. Most of all, the Pacers have clearly been blessed by the basketball gods, with bench players putting up career-best minutes at the exact moment needed and shots like Haliburton’s Game 1 Eastern Conference finals game-winner going in. The Thunder seem to represent bigger odds than they’ve faced so far, but what do they care about odds? Indiana believes in itself more than anything.
Final Predictions
CM: Thunder in 5. Too much talent, too much skill, too much depth. Any notion that the Thunder might not be ready for this moment faded with big wins against Denver and the whipping Oklahoma City put on Minnesota. Indiana will squeeze out one win on its home floor. And the Thunder will celebrate its first (Oklahoma City) championship on theirs.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as NBA Finals: 10 Questions That Will Determine Thunder-Pacers Series.
