NBA Finals 2025: How the Pacers present a different type of ‘puzzle’ for the Thunder to solve
OKLAHOMA CITY — On the court, Cason Wallace doesn’t do anything slow. Seated at a podium at the Thunder’s Wednesday media day session ahead of Game 1 of the 2025 NBA Finals, though, the second-year guard eased off the gas and took a second to think.
Wallace, who has blossomed into one of the NBA’s best young point-of-attack stoppers, had just fielded a question about guarding Tyrese Haliburton — the Pacers’ All-Star and All-NBA point guard. Wallace guarded Haliburton plenty during two regular-season meetings between Oklahoma City and Indiana; he figures to find himself across from Haliburton plenty over the next couple of weeks, too.
So: What do you do with a problem like Tyrese, the engine of a hard-charging Indiana offense that scored nearly 120 points per 100 possessions in its 12-4 run through the Eastern Conference playoffs? What’s Job No. 1 when you’re dealing with a quicksilver ball-handler who’s a high-volume, high-efficiency shooter capable of popping for 30 in any given game, but who’d much prefer to set the table for his teammates all night to the tune of double-digit assists? What’s the first thing your defense looks to take away?
Wallace took a beat to consider. Then, with a smile, he decided.
“Everything,” he said.
What Wallace’s answer lacked in specificity, it made up for in sheer soundness of logic. After all, when you’re as all-consumingly excellent as the Thunder’s defense is — No. 1 in points allowed per possession during the regular season, No. 1 in the playoffs, one of the stingiest units the league has seen since the ABA-NBA merger — you don’t have to choose; you just erase. Specificity is for lesser beings.
“I go into every matchup the same — just trying to take them out,” Wallace said. “Just trying to take the ball from them.”
Wallace and the Thunder defense have been exceptionally good at that. Oklahoma City led the NBA in steals, deflections, loose balls recovered on defense and points scored off of turnovers this season. The Thunder landed two players on the 2024-25 All-Defensive Team — on-ball pitbull Luguentz Dort and do-it-all forward Jalen Williams — and they might not even be the third-best defenders on the court at any given point in a Thunder game, depending on how head coach Mark Daigneault is juggling his lineups and what kind of night Wallace, Alex Caruso and big men Chet Holmgren and Isaiah Hartenstein are having.
Their style is suffocation. Their brand is brutality. Their business is stuffing you in a locker and taking your lunch money … and brother, business is booming.
“They’re super physical — they’re annoying,” Pacers forward Obi Toppin said with a smile during Indiana’s media availability. “But they’re young. They’re young and they’re just in your … mess. Like, I don’t want to say S-H, but y’all know what I want to say. They’re just in you, the whole game. It’s annoying.”
The task facing the Pacers: Be even more annoying to their hosts by reminding them that they can’t hit what they can’t catch.
The Pacers like to push the ball up the court after makes or misses, hunting leakouts and hit-aheads at every opportunity. When they can’t advance the ball with touchdown passes, they just sprint with the dribble, looking to get into their first action as early as possible. Cover that up, and they’ll run you through three more before the shot clock’s even halfway gone, leveraging center Myles Turner’s shooting prowess to spread you out with a true five-out attack — Haliburton’s the only member of Indiana’s starting five shooting under 40% from 3-point land in the postseason — to create passing angles and driving lanes through which to bury you in buckets.
“It really opens up the floor,” said Holmgren, who knows a thing or two about how powerful it can be for an offense to feature a floor-spacing 7-footer. “It’s not even so much about opening up the floor and being able to attack just the five — it comes down to opening up the floor for everybody else to be able to attack as well.” [Defending it] really comes down to being able to play solid — kind of defeat the point of attack.”