Thunder win Game 7 of the 2025 NBA Finals over Indiana Pacers: Full recap and player analysis

SGA is on the podium after winning his Finals MVP trophy and is playing hype man for his running mate Jalen Williams, who averaged 23.6 points per game against the Pacers.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who already has one MVP trophy from the regular season, just took home another.

SGA was named Finals MVP after averaging 30.3 points, 4.6 rebounds and 5.6 assists against the Pacers.

He's the first player in 25 years to lead the league in scoring, win the regular season MVP and the Finals MVP.

ABC’s cameras caught Tyrese Haliburton on crutches in the tunnel as the Pacers walked off the court after losing the NBA Finals. It was an emotional scene, as multiple Indiana players were in tears on the way to the locker room.

Oklahoma City won its first NBA title since relocating from Seattle 17 years ago. It continues the NBA's run of championship parity, becoming the seventh different champion since 2018. There was a moment to remember with 30 seconds left, as Shai Gilgeous-Alexander checked out and gave his coach a hug.

Oklahoma City held off one last mini-comeback from the Pacers and won Game 7 of the NBA Finals 103-91.

This is the Thunder’s first title since relocating to OKC in 2008.

Thunder lead 98-87 with about 90 seconds to go as the Pacers continued to hang around.

The Pacers are ever so slightly hanging around, though it would take a Herculean effort to win this game.

Keep an eye on Shai Gilgeous-Alexander — he has five fouls.

Indiana needed only 2:42 of game time to cut its deficit to 91-79 with more than 4 minutes left in the game. That came after Oklahoma City had gone on its own run, of 20-4.

Oklahoma City leads, 90-75, with 5:50 to play in the fourth quarter, as a Thunder championship appears within reach.

Indiana's ability to rally late in games does funny things to opponents, who tighten up and stop playing the way that built their leads. But that isn't happening tonight, as Oklahoma City is as loose in the fourth quarter as they have been all night. The fact that Indiana has made only two 3-pointers the entire second half has something to do with that.

The Thunder have raced out to a 89-68 lead in the fourth as a championship appears to be all but a formality at this point.

No Pacers players except T.J. McConnell have scored since the 8:32 mark of the third quarter. Without Tyrese Haliburton, Indiana can’t seem to create any semblance of an offense right now.

The Pacers have not scored yet in the fourth quarter as they've played for three and a half minutes.

Oklahoma City Thunder fans during the game against the Indiana Pacers. Logan Riely / NBAE / Getty Images

Oklahoma City scored 18 points off of seven Pacers turnovers in the third quarter alone, which has gone a long way toward extending the Thunder's lead to 13 entering the final quarter. Limiting mistakes has been a signature for Indiana all postseason.

The Thunder have their biggest lead of the game as we head into the final quarter of the NBA season. Can the Pacers mount yet another improbable comeback?

The Thunder forward — who is the team’s second-leading scorer — picked up his fourth foul in the third quarter. That could come into play later tonight.

The Thunder have their first double-digit lead of the game and their largest lead of the night

Turnovers are killing the Pacers, who are up to 17 giveaways, which have led to 27 OKC points.

T.J. McConnell has scored the last 8 points for the Pacers. After OKC took a nine-point lead, the McConnell burst helped cut the score to 69-64.

T.J. McConnell of the Indiana Pacers. Jesse D. Garrabrant / NBAE / Getty Images

With Oklahoma City finally making 3-pointers, it has pushed its lead to 65-56, its largest of the game, with 7:13 to play in the third quarter. Thunder fans in this arena have been waiting for a reason to get loud, and a 9-0 run in the last 80 seconds has done the trick. The Thunder were 4-of-18 from 3 in the first half; in the third quarter they are 4-8.

The Thunder lead 65-56 with 7:13 left in the third.

The Pacers have turned the ball over 13 times for 20 Thunder points, including five turnovers in the third quarter alone.

Indiana has averaged 18 turnovers in its last three Finals losses, compared to roughly 12 in its last two wins. They’ve already exceeded that total tonight.

Oklahoma City was brutally inefficient shooting 3-pointers during the first half. So, naturally, it opens the second with as wild a basket as you can imagine from Lu Dort.

OKC has started the third quarter on a 9-3 run to take a five-point lead, tied for its largest of the game.

The Thunder start with the ball as the third quarter begins.

The longer Indiana stays in this game, the more its confidence that it can pull off this upset grows. The Pacers are accustomed to winning difficult games on the road this postseason, and nothing about that body of work the past two months suggests they will be cowed by losing star point guard Tyrese Haliburton.

Oklahoma City must be able to gain the upper hand in the opening minutes of the third quarter.

For Oklahoma City, who will join Shai Gilgeous-Alexander as a second scoring option? He’s the only Thunder player in double digits. Oklahoma City has been stout defensively, but its offense was spotty in the first half.

The Thunder are also shooting only 4-of-18 from 3-point range. If they find their outside shot, that will make life incredibly difficult for the Pacers.

For Indiana, who will emerge in the absence of Tyrese Haliburton? Will Bennedict Mathurin take on some of the scoring load? Can T.J. McConnell recreate some of his magic from earlier in the series? Nobody on the Pacers can replicate Haliburton’s role as a facilitator, but they desperately need someone to help swing the game with timely buckets.

Keep an eye on Pascal Siakam in the second half. Siakam won a championship with the Raptors in 2019 and has been a steady force for Indiana throughout the postseason. He is capable of making a major impact on both ends of the floor. If Indiana is going to pull off a shocking upset, Siakam will almost definitely have to lead the way.

Despite losing Tyrese Haliburton for the game in the first quarter, the Pacers aren’t backing down.

Pascal Siakam leads Indiana with 10 points while Andrew Nembhard has added nine.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander leads the Thunder (and all scorers) with 16. He also had seven assists.

It’s been a tight battle so far, as neither team has led by more than five points.

Indiana has made more 3s than OKC, but also has nine turnovers compared to only five for the Thunder.

Tyrese Haliburton’s father told ABC’s Lisa Salters that Haliburton suffered an achilles injury in the first quarter. He did not confirm the exact injury and said he was surrounded by family in the locker room.

Not since 1988 has a team scored 100 points or more in an NBA Finals Game 7. In the five Finals to reach a Game 7 since 1988, only three of the 10 teams have even cracked 90 points. That's because these games are bogged down by fatigue and more than two weeks of teams growing used to one another's punches and counterpunches. We're seeing that play out tonight as well, as the Pacers go into halftime leading 48-47. Oklahoma City is shooting 4-of-18 from 3-point-range, while the Pacers are 8-of-16 from deep.

Oklahoma City's scouting report changes entirely with Tyrese Haliburton out of the game for Indiana, and I wonder how much confusion it might cause the Thunder as they suddenly must account for Andrew Nembhard and T.J. McConnell becoming the primary ballhandlers for the Pacers.

The Thunder are so deep defensively that they should be able to adjust on the fly, but Indiana is using rotations it rarely relied on, and it might be more difficult to defend for a team hard-wired to expect the Pacers to play a certain way.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander leads the Thunder with 12 points.

Pascal Siakam has eight for Indiana.

Thunder reserve guard Cason Wallace is not a household name like his teammates, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, or Jalen Williams, but has been one of his team's best players nearly one-and-a-half quarters into Game 7.

He already has three steals, with two in the Pacers' backcourt, totally disrupting their ability to get into their offense. And when Indiana thought it had a mismatch with Pascal Siakam backing Wallace down on the low block, Wallace didn't give up any room and eventually forced a scoreless possession. He's been suffocating on defense.

The Thunder lead 34-32 with 7:14 left in the first half.

Guards Cason Wallace and Alex Caruso are wreaking havoc off the bench for OKC, combining for six steals.

The Pacers have six turnovers compared to the Thunder’s one.

Bennedict Mathurin's rest on the bench lasted only half a minute, as Indiana needs his microwave scoring ability more than ever with Tyrese Haliburton out of the game. Mathurin, of course, was a hero of Game 3, scoring 27 points in 22 minutes, but has been quiet ever since. He has five early points here.

The Pacers say Haliburton will not return due to a lower right leg injury.

Even after the shock of the Tyrese Haliburton injury, the Pacers aren’t going away just yet. Indiana leads 28-27 with roughly 10 minutes left in the second quarter.

Even with Haliburton out of the game for the final 4 minutes of the opening quarter, Indiana stayed with the Thunder to trail only by three.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander led Oklahoma City with eight points and Alex Caruso scored six off the bench. Haliburton had scored a game-high nine points before exiting with his injury. Considering how improbably Indiana has won games during this postseason, would anyone necessarily count them out to still win this?

Backup Pacers point guard TJ McConnell has been Indiana's secret weapon throughout these Finals, changing the outcomes of several games with his contributions in bursts.

Yet with Tyrese Haliburton in the locker room undergoing medical attention on what appears to be a right leg injury, Indiana now needs McConnell to be a difference-maker for likely the rest of the game. Can he sustain his pestering defense for the next three quarters? It's no hyperbole to say that Indiana's title hopes partially hinge on it.

After trying to make a play off the catch, Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton seemed to hurt his leg and hit the ground in pain. He slammed his hand down on the court multiple times.

Tyrese Haliburton sustains an injury during the first quarter against the Oklahoma City Thunder. Justin Ford / Getty Images

The entire Pacers’ bench got up to surround Haliburton after a timeout.

Haliburton entered the game dealing with a right calf injury.

The first Pacer off the bench tonight was Bennedict Mathurin.

Mathurin has been underwhelming this series, scoring only 17 points combined over the last three games after a 27-point outburst in Game 3.

Can Indiana get another big scoring performance from Mathurin? He’s the type of role player who can swing a game.

It's difficult to overstate how loud this arena has been, and yet Tyrese Haliburton has already quieted it three times with each successive 3-pointer he has hit to put Indiana ahead, 14-10, forcing an Oklahoma City timeout.

Each shot has been from 24 feet or further, and each one has led to an audible "ooh," like the air ever so slightly being let out of a balloon.

Paycom Center looks to be 98% Thunder fans, with only very small pockets of Pacers fans visible in their yellow shirts sticking out from the rest of the arena in Thunder blue.

The Pacers lead 11-6 with under 8 minutes to go.

Game 7s are usually defensive struggles and that seems to be the case so far.

The last game of the NBA season has officially tipped off!

Either the Pacers win their first championship in franchise history or the Thunder will win their first title since arriving in Oklahoma City.

Hopefully, the 20th Game 7 in NBA Finals history is a classic.

The Thunder’s home court advantage is potent — OKC is 10-2 at home in these playoffs. That easily could have been 12-0 save for some last-second heroics (Aaron Gordon’s 3-pointer with 3 seconds left for Denver; Tyrese Haliburton’s pull-up with 0.3 left in Game 1 of this series).

It’s much more than the record: The Thunder have a +20.7 net rating at home, compared to a -6.2 net rating on the road (where they are 5-5). Thunder players openly discuss how they feed off their raucous crowd, and this becomes most noticeable on defense — the Thunder’s defensive rating is 12.7 points per 100 possessions better at home this postseason.

How will the Indiana Pacers defend MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander?

In Game 6, the Pacers forced SGA into one of his worst games of the postseason, holding him to only 21 points while forcing 8 turnovers.

Indiana stopped sending a full-court press at Gilgeous-Alexander, taking away some of his driving lanes, while also double-teaming him more aggressively in the halfcourt.

How successfully the Pacers defend the MVP will go a long way in determining who wins Game 7.

Players for both team show up to Paycom Center in their best.

Luguentz Dort.  Logan Riely / NBAE / Getty Images

Jarace Walker. Logan Riely / NBAE / Getty Images

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Logan Riely / NBAE / Getty Images

Jalen Williams. Logan Riely / NBAE / Getty Images

Here are some quotes from the players immediately after Game 6:

“One game for everything you ever dreamed of,” Shai Gilgeous-Alexander said of Game 7 on Sunday. “If you win it, you get everything. If you lose it, you get nothing. It’s that simple.”

“It’s so, so, exciting. As a basketball fan, there’s nothing like a Game 7,” Tyrese Haliburton said. “There’s nothing like a Game 7 in the NBA Finals. Dreamed of being in this situation my whole life. So, to be here is really exciting.”

“You could ask every team in the NBA. Every team would take this opportunity to take this chance,” Chet Holmgren added. “We’re no different. It’s on us to go out there and make the most of it.”

“There’s not a lot of Game 7s that happen. So, to have this opportunity to play in a Game 7 with this team is a blessing and wouldn’t want to do it with any other team,” Obi Toppin said.

Read the full story here.

Talking with officials from the teams and within the league before tipoff, there is a general consensus: Everyone is carefully watching how relaxed the Thunder — the second-youngest team ever to make the Finals, and which cruised through the regular season only to be pushed to the limit by Indiana — come out and play tonight.

Oklahoma City has Game 7 experience during these playoffs already, having advanced out of the second round by beating Denver on their home court, but few expected this particular series to go this long.

There’s a phrase that’s ubiquitous in Indiana. You see it on chalkboard signs outside of bars. You hear it from fans, coaches and players. It was emblazoned on T-shirts at Game 3 of the NBA Finals. It’s even the slogan for the state’s basketball Hall of Fame.

In 49 other states, it’s just basketball. But this is Indiana.

It was in 1925, after all, that the inventor of basketball, James Naismith, watched a state high school tournament and declared Indiana “the center of the sport.”

Now, 100 years later, between a stunning Indiana Pacers run to the finals and the exploding popularity of the Indiana Fever, Naismith’s observation has never been more true.

Read the full story here.

At 4-foot-11, Kristin Chenoweth is still making it to the NBA Finals.

The award-winning actress, singer, Oklahoma native, Oklahoma Hall of Fame inductee and unabashed Thunder fan is performing “The Star-Spangled Banner” before Game 7, the NBA announced.

This is the 20th Game 7 of an NBA Finals in league history, and only four road teams have ever won. Indiana is trying to join these teams among the visitors who have pulled it off:

1969: Boston Celtics over Los Angeles Lakers

1974: Boston Celtics over Milwaukee Bucks

1978: Washington Bullets over Seattle SuperSonics

2016: Cleveland Cavaliers over Golden State Warriors

League-mandated pregame press conferences with coaches don't typically elicit much interesting material — especially after an NBA Finals that has stretched nearly three weeks.

Yet Indiana Pacers coach Rick Carlisle appeared furious before tipoff of Game 7 when he ignored his opening question and instead said that "all I'm thinking about right now" was a video he had seen today that showed buses in Oklahoma City's colors with "CHAMPIONS" painted along the side. Stern-faced and short with his answers, Carlisle was not happy with Oklahoma City's preparations for a championship parade.

"I just saw a video that’s probably going to go viral," Carlisle said, "of some buses, open-top buses, presumably for the parade that are already painted with them as champions. That’s all I’m thinking about right now."

Both of these teams are built on winning the possession game: forcing turnovers, not turning the ball over themselves, securing some offensive rebounds, scoring easy buckets in transition, and simply creating more scoring opportunities than their opponent.

Which team has executed that has swung from game to game, but in Game 6 it was clearly Indiana.

“I think last game, we didn’t play our brand of basketball and we didn’t play our brand of defense and we just let them be comfortable,” Isaiah Hartenstein said of the Thunder. “So I think it’s a mix of things. They do a great job of never changing the way they play. So they get out, they run. And it’s our job to just get back to playing our style of defense and going from there.”

Turnovers and bench points will be bellwethers in Game 7, as they have been throughout the series.

Read the full article here.

Cities have rallied behind their teams since sports began, yet in Oklahoma City, what is atypical is the degree to which that relationship is not one-sided. Fans, city officials and the team itself are intertwined more closely than perhaps any other NBA market. Fans show up for the Thunder in uncommon ways — during late nights at the airport, yes, but also at the ballot box, where a 2023 measure to use public money to help fund a new Thunder arena scheduled to open in 2028 passed with 71% of the vote.

The team has returned the embrace.

Sam Presti, the team’s top basketball executive since 2007, “may be the only GM in America who texts with the mayor,” the mayor himself, David Holt, said with a laugh in his office, which is decorated with a framed Thunder jersey. It hangs to the left of the desk where, this week, Holt signed an agreement that will keep the team in Oklahoma City through 2053 and could extend up to 15 additional years.

Read the full article here.

It will be the 20th Game 7 in NBA Finals history. Home teams have gone 15-4 to this point — but a road team won the most recent one of these showdowns, when Cleveland topped Golden State in 2016.

Tyrese Haliburton’s strained left calf wasn’t much of an issue in Game 6. That doesn’t mean it should be ignored in Game 7.

There were a couple of moments early in Game 6 when he clearly hesitated to push off on his left leg, but it ultimately didn’t matter because his shot was falling and the Thunder’s defensive pressure was not cranked up to its usual intensity. Haliburton finished with 14 points, five assists, and played less than 23 minutes in the blowout.

Also of note: The Thunder rarely dragged Haliburton into a pick-and-roll and made him move laterally quickly on defense. Expect more of that in Game 7.

Read the full article here.

At the Indiana Pacers’ team practice ahead of a crucial Game 6 of the NBA Finals, assistant coach Jenny Boucek was doing everything but focusing on the history she’s been making.

According to the league, Boucek is the first woman to be a staff assistant coach on an NBA Finals team. “I don’t think twice about it on a day to day-to-day basis,” Boucek told NBA News after Wednesday’s team practice. “I just want to coach the team, go to war with them, try to help us win a championship.”

Read the full story here.

Brad Thomas and Vaughn Dalzell weigh in on the player props for Game 7 between the Indiana Pacers and Oklahoma City Thunder, focusing on the over for Tyrese Haliburton's point total and the under for Isaiah Hartenstein.

James Capers, Josh Tiven and Sean Wright joined a very small club tonight.

Capers, Tiven and Wright were announced by the NBA as the officiating crew for Game 7 of the NBA Finals between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Indiana Pacers. It’s the first Game 7 of a finals for all three, who are now the 22nd, 23rd and 24th referees in NBA history to land such an assignment.

Unlike the league’s four most recent champions, Boston, Denver, Golden State and Milwaukee, who drafted and developed their franchise cornerstones, or the 2020 Los Angeles Lakers, who signed LeBron James as a free agent and whose glamour status made them the preferred trade destination for its other star, Anthony Davis, Indiana’s front office has struck gold by trading its way up.

Of the 10 players Indiana has typically leaned on during this postseason, half were acquired via trades, including three of the top four scorers in Pascal Siakam, Tyrese Haliburton and Aaron Nesmith. Since the Miami Heat built a superteam through free agent signings and won consecutive championships in 2012 and 2013, the only NBA champion to have relied that much on trades were the 2019 Toronto Raptors, who traded for four of their top five leading scorers.

“There’s no one right way to do it,” Pacers general manager Chad Buchanan told NBC News. 

Read the full story here.

Dan Patrick reacts to Game 6 of the NBA Finals between the Thunder and Pacers, where T.J. McConnell and Obi Toppin excelled for the Pacers, while Tyrese Haliburton played through his injury.

Drew Dinsick breaks down the Thunder vs. Pacers matchup in Game 7 of the NBA Finals, looking at the trends for both teams and how bettors can find profitable live betting angles.

There was one margin in particular that propelled Indiana to a stunning, 108-91 win over the Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 6 of the NBA Finals on Thursday night, the same one that coach Rick Carlisle said cost them Game 5: Turnovers.

In Game 5, the team coughed up the ball a whopping 22 times in an 11-point loss, including seven in the first quarter and eight in a tightly contested fourth. And they came in a variety of forms, from bad passes to aimlessly dribbling into traffic to picking up the ball too far away from the hoop.

In Game 6, Indiana had zero turnovers in the first quarter, only two by halftime, and seven by the end of third — building a 30-point lead before backups played the majority of the fourth quarter.

Read the full story here.

2016: Cavaliers defeat the Warriors

2013: Heat defeat the Spurs

2010: Lakers defeat the Celtics

2005: Spurs defeat the Pistons

1994: Rockets defeat the Knicks

1988: Lakers defeat the Pistons

1984: Celtics defeat the Lakers