The Oklahoma City Thunder have won the NBA Finals, capping a thrilling seven-game series against the Indiana Pacers with a dominant 103-91 victory.
It is the Thunder's first NBA championship since the franchise relocated to Oklahoma City in 2008. And the Thunder are the seventh different NBA team to win a title in the past seven years, a remarkable run of parity for the league.
"It doesn't feel real. So many hours, so many moments, so many emotions, so many nights of disbelief, so many nights of belief," the Thunder's Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who was named Finals MVP, said in a TV interview after the game. "This group put in the hours, and we deserve this."
The series was the first NBA Finals since 2016 to reach Game 7, and both teams had staged comebacks in earlier games, setting the stage for a dramatic and competitive winner-take-all finale. But Indiana's star point guard, Tyrese Haliburton, exited the game in the first quarter with an Achilles injury.
Haliburton, 25, had emerged as a bona fide star in this year's playoffs, as he and the Pacers staged comeback after comeback to elbow their way into the Finals as the Eastern Conference's No. 4 seed. In four different games, he hit a game-tying or game-winning shot in the final five seconds, including Game 1 of the Finals.
Then, trouble arrived: He strained his right calf in Game 5, raising questions about his ability to continue playing in the Finals. He played just 23 minutes in Indiana's 108-91 romp of the Thunder in Game 6.
For the game's first seven minutes, it seemed Haliburton was on track for another miraculous effort, scoring nine points on five attempts.
But his luck could only last so long. With 5:00 remaining in the first quarter, Haliburton tried to push off his right foot to dribble past Gilgeous-Alexander, then collapsed to the floor in visible pain. He screamed and pounded the floor with his fist as trainers tended to him, and he could not walk on his own to the locker room.
The Pacers would not go down without a fight. At halftime, Indiana led by one point, 48-47.
But the absence of the team's starting point guard began to show in the third quarter, when the Pacers struggled to score and committed seven turnovers. That allowed Oklahoma City to build a 13-point lead, a margin that reached 22 points early in the fourth quarter. The Thunder defense stifled the Pacers, who scored the fewest points of any game in their postseason run.
Oklahoma City's trophy is a fitting end to a dominant season. The Thunder had the league's best regular-season record at 68-14. And their 26-year-old star guard, Gilgeous-Alexander, was named the league's Most Valuable Player.
Gilgeous-Alexander shone in the biggest game of his young career, with 29 points and 12 assists. Fellow guard Jalen Williams, forward Chet Holmgren and sixth men Alex Caruso and Cason Wallace all scored in double digits.
"They behave like champions. They compete like champions. They root for each other's success, which is rare in professional sports," said Thunder coach Mark Daigneault. "This is an uncommon team, and now they're champions."
As the Seattle SuperSonics, the franchise won an NBA title in 1979. Once they moved to Oklahoma and rebranded as the Thunder, the team was home to star after star — Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, James Harden — and now Gilgeous-Alexander, the third player to be named MVP in Oklahoma City. But before this year, the team had reached the Finals only once, in 2012, and lost.
The Pacers had also never won an NBA championship, though their wait must continue. The team had reached the Finals only once before this year, falling in 2000 to the Los Angeles Lakers.
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