NBA Finals 2025: What to know ahead of Pacers-Thunder championship matchup
The Oklahoma City Thunder spent Christmas night in Indianapolis in a bittersweet mood.
They woke up on Christmas at home, with their families, and opened presents with their children before a late afternoon flight for a short road trip, which was positive. But they also were annoyed, whether they admitted it publicly or not, that 10 teams were playing five games on the NBA's marquee day -- and they were spectators.
They'd won a league-best 57 games the season before and had one of the top players in the league, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the previous season's MVP runner-up whom the NBA perhaps should've been featuring on its highest-profile day. The Thunder also were 23-5 at that point and on an eight-game win streak -- and not playing on Dec. 25 was looking kind of ridiculous.
Their hosts for a pedestrian non-national-television game on Dec. 26 were the Indiana Pacers. The Pacers had rolled their eyes four months earlier when the schedule read that they weren't playing on Christmas Day, despite making the Eastern Conference finals the season prior. It was the 20th consecutive year the Pacers had been deemed not worthy of a Christmas game.
In retrospect, this was an ironic moment in the season: The two teams that eventually would meet in the NBA Finals were together on the headline day for the league; they were just living the lives of small-market underdogs.
2025 NBA Playoffs
They woke up on Christmas at home, with their families, and opened presents with their children before a late afternoon flight for a short road trip, which was positive. But they also were annoyed, whether they admitted it publicly or not, that 10 teams were playing five games on the NBA's marquee day -- and they were spectators.
They'd won a league-best 57 games the season before and had one of the top players in the league, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the previous season's MVP runner-up whom the NBA perhaps should've been featuring on its highest-profile day. The Thunder also were 23-5 at that point and on an eight-game win streak -- and not playing on Dec. 25 was looking kind of ridiculous.
Their hosts for a pedestrian non-national-television game on Dec. 26 were the Indiana Pacers. The Pacers had rolled their eyes four months earlier when the schedule read that they weren't playing on Christmas Day, despite making the Eastern Conference finals the season prior. It was the 20th consecutive year the Pacers had been deemed not worthy of a Christmas game.
In retrospect, this was an ironic moment in the season: The two teams that eventually would meet in the NBA Finals were together on the headline day for the league; they were just living the lives of small-market underdogs.
2025 NBA Playoffs
From the play-in tournament to the NBA Finals, ESPN has you covered throughout the postseason.
• Conference finals: Preview | Picks
• Shelburne: Inside the Dorture Chamber
• Collier: What's fueling Haliburton's run
• Holmes: Are playoffs too physical?
• Pelton: Ranking every possible Finals matchup
• Herring: Playoff MVPs through two rounds
They ended up staging a terrific game that everyone would be thrilled to see repeated over the next two weeks.
The Pacers, still overcoming early-season injuries and malaise, were just a .500 team at the time, but they led the Dec. 26 contest for most of the way, and by as much as 16 points, even though star guard Tyrese Haliburton was held to just four points.
But the Thunder, relentless in their precision, turned the ball over only three times and cut off Indiana's classic game plan of crushing the opponent's mistakes. Gilgeous-Alexander tied his career high with 45 points, 16 of them coming in the fourth quarter, including a cold-blooded 3-pointer with just under a minute left with Bennedict Mathurin in his face. OKC prevailed 120-114.
It would've been a tremendous showcase game had it been afforded the spotlight. Instead, it's just an interesting footnote to the factoid uncovered by Yahoo Sports that the Pacers and the Thunder are the first teams to make the NBA Finals without playing on Christmas since 2007.
The league had its reasons and justifications: The Christmas 2024 slate produced several awesome games and tremendous television ratings, and it was a triumph for the NBA. But that didn't mean it wasn't a mistake. These were always two of the best teams in the league this season, and they've proved it over the past six weeks during very similar dueling playoff runs.
Brilliant point guards, exceptional depth, harassing defenses, killer transition play, shrewd game plans, varying stars, harrowing finishes, demonstrations of resilience, overall dominance.
Call them small market, predict low ratings, mock the respective cities' nightlife or the travel challenges or even the championship-hungry fans all you want.
Underestimating the Thunder and Pacers has been a losing ideology all season long.
The matchup of the season was there all along and right there on Christmas, even, hiding in plain sight. -- Brian Windhorst
Our NBA insiders are setting the stage for the NBA Finals -- Game 1 will tip off Thursday at 8:30 p.m. ET (ABC) -- including breakdowns of how each team got here, the most important matchups and how each team can win it all.
• Conference finals: Preview | Picks
• Shelburne: Inside the Dorture Chamber
• Collier: What's fueling Haliburton's run
• Holmes: Are playoffs too physical?
• Pelton: Ranking every possible Finals matchup
• Herring: Playoff MVPs through two rounds
They ended up staging a terrific game that everyone would be thrilled to see repeated over the next two weeks.
The Pacers, still overcoming early-season injuries and malaise, were just a .500 team at the time, but they led the Dec. 26 contest for most of the way, and by as much as 16 points, even though star guard Tyrese Haliburton was held to just four points.
But the Thunder, relentless in their precision, turned the ball over only three times and cut off Indiana's classic game plan of crushing the opponent's mistakes. Gilgeous-Alexander tied his career high with 45 points, 16 of them coming in the fourth quarter, including a cold-blooded 3-pointer with just under a minute left with Bennedict Mathurin in his face. OKC prevailed 120-114.
It would've been a tremendous showcase game had it been afforded the spotlight. Instead, it's just an interesting footnote to the factoid uncovered by Yahoo Sports that the Pacers and the Thunder are the first teams to make the NBA Finals without playing on Christmas since 2007.
The league had its reasons and justifications: The Christmas 2024 slate produced several awesome games and tremendous television ratings, and it was a triumph for the NBA. But that didn't mean it wasn't a mistake. These were always two of the best teams in the league this season, and they've proved it over the past six weeks during very similar dueling playoff runs.
Brilliant point guards, exceptional depth, harassing defenses, killer transition play, shrewd game plans, varying stars, harrowing finishes, demonstrations of resilience, overall dominance.
Call them small market, predict low ratings, mock the respective cities' nightlife or the travel challenges or even the championship-hungry fans all you want.
Underestimating the Thunder and Pacers has been a losing ideology all season long.
The matchup of the season was there all along and right there on Christmas, even, hiding in plain sight. -- Brian Windhorst
Our NBA insiders are setting the stage for the NBA Finals -- Game 1 will tip off Thursday at 8:30 p.m. ET (ABC) -- including breakdowns of how each team got here, the most important matchups and how each team can win it all.