2025 NBA Finals preview: Pacers-Thunder key matchups, schedule, biggest X-factor and championship prediction
After an 82-game marathon, followed by three grueling rounds of postseason competition, we now approach the finish line of the 2024-25 NBA season. The Western Conference champion Oklahoma City Thunder — the West’s No. 1 seed, and the top overall seed in the postseason bracket — will take on the Eastern Conference champion Indiana Pacers in the 2025 NBA Finals.
It’s the first postseason meeting between the two franchises. The Thunder enter looking for the franchise’s first title in its Oklahoma City era and first since the former Seattle SuperSonics won it all back in 1979. Indiana similarly heads into the Finals looking to break a lengthy championship drought: The Pacers haven’t raised a title banner since the great Slick Leonard led them to three ABA championships in four years between 1970 and 1973, before the ABA-NBA merger.
NBA Finals preview
What we know about the Thunder
That they’ve been the best team in the NBA since October’s opening tip.
Oklahoma City had the NBA’s second-best record and net rating during the 2023-24 season, and were one of only two teams to finish in the top five in both offensive and defensive efficiency. (The other, the Boston Celtics, won the NBA championship.) And then they brought back all of their most important players, traded for Alex Caruso and signed Isaiah Hartenstein.
Here’s what I posited as the Thunder’s best-case scenario when I previewed their season all the way back at the beginning of October:
The newcomers function exactly as envisioned, resulting in the Thunder fielding top-two units on both ends and proving to be the class of the league from the opening tip. [Shai Gilgeous-Alexander] wins MVP, [Jalen Williams] and Chet [Holmgren] earn All-Star nods, and the rest of the supporting cast earns Bricktown’s undying affection. Oklahoma City returns to the NBA Finals for the first time since 2012 — and wins the franchise’s first championship since the move from Seattle.
At the risk of spraining something by patting myself on the back … kind of nailed it?
The Thunder finished second in points scored per possession and first in points allowed per possession, according to Cleaning the Glass. Hartenstein averaged a double-double to go with nearly four assists and a block in just 27.9 minutes per game, shooting 58% from the field and holding opponents to 56.3% shooting at the rim. Caruso knocked down 3-pointers at a league-average clip on higher volume than Josh Giddey had, posted a near-4-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio and was arguably the most disruptive individual defender in the NBA on a per-minute basis. That’ll work.
Gilgeous-Alexander, the league’s premier driver and most elusive scorer, did win MVP. Williams, a picture-perfect do-it-all complement, did make the All-Star (and All-NBA and All-Defensive) team. Holmgren very well might’ve joined them at All-Star Weekend if not for an early-season hip fracture; he’d return in February and finish the regular season averaging 15 points, 8 rebounds, 2 assists and 2 blocks per game while shooting 37% from 3 on more than 100 attempts. (There have only been three such seasons in NBA history. Holmgren, two years into his career, has two of them. Unicorn stuff.) The rest of the rotation, from defensive menaces Luguentz Dort and Cason Wallace to energy-injecting wings Aaron Wiggins and Isaiah Joe, play their roles to perfection.
The results have been historic: the seventh team ever to win 68 games; the highest average margin of victory ever; a defense that profiles as one of the stingiest since the ABA-NBA merger; the best era-adjusted efficiency differential since the ’96 Bulls; the top overall seed in the 2025 postseason.
After making quick work of the Grizzlies in Round 1, Oklahoma City survived a titanic test from Nikola Jokić and his champion Nuggets in a seven-game second-round war before outclassing the Timberwolves in the conference finals. The Thunder went 12-4 in the tougher conference, outscoring opponents by 11.2 points per 100 possessions — on pace for the best net rating of any champion since the Year 1 KD Warriors. Provided, of course, they spend the next two weeks looking like they have for the last eight months: like