Pacers-Thunder first NBA Finals Game 7 since Warriors-Cavs

Games like these can make or break legacies!

Here we are, Dub Nation HQ. Seven games to decide everything. Two franchises standing at the crossroads of immortality and heartbreak, with 48 minutes separating them from their deepest dreams or darkest nightmares.

The Oklahoma City Thunder roll into Game 7 carrying the height of expectations that feel heavier than Chet Holmgren’s frame but twice as unforgiving. They’ve been the NBA’s golden child all season, posting the best regular-season point differential in league history while looking like the team destined to usher in basketball’s next dynasty. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander just completed the rarest of feats—winning MVP, the scoring title, and reaching the Finals—something only Jordan, Shaq, and Kareem have pulled off. This was supposed to be their coronation.

But destiny, as it turns out, doesn’t read the script.

The Indiana Pacers have spent these playoffs casually rewriting the laws of basketball physics. They’ve completed historic comebacks in all four rounds, defying odds that literally approach one-in-four-billion territory. Tyrese Haliburton has hit buzzer-beaters with the casual confidence of someone ordering coffee, while their bench unit—led by the manic energy of T.J. McConnell—has turned every arena into their personal playground.

For Oklahoma City, this isn’t just about their first championship since fleeing Seattle. It’s about validating an all-time dominant season. A loss here would make them one of the most accomplished teams ever to not win it all—a distinction that sits in your stomach like bad sushi for decades.

Trust me, as a fan of the 2016 Warriors, I know how this feels. But we’ll get back to that.

For Indiana, they’re 48 minutes away from completing perhaps the most shocking championship run in league history. No fourth seed has won a title since the ‘95 Rockets, and the Pacers have been a case of the classic fight of the underdog.

This is generational basketball warfare. Gilgeous-Alexander trying to announce the Thunder’s arrival as the NBA’s next dynasty. Haliburton attempting to cap one of the most impossible postseason runs in league history. A small-market Oklahoma City crowd that’s waited 17 years for this moment versus a Pacers team that’s mastered the art of ruining everyone else’s fairy tales.

Nine years ago, LeBron James and the Cavaliers walked into Oracle Arena and did the impossible—completing the only 3-1 Finals comeback in NBA history while ending the Warriors’ 73-win dream season. That Game 7 ended 93-89, a defensive slugfest where both teams forgot how to shoot and the basketball gods decided Cleveland’s 52-year championship drought had suffered long enough.

I remember rewatching that fourth quarter months later with some beer, finally able to appreciate the poetry of it all. The Warriors went down swinging the only way they knew how—launching contested three-pointers with the desperate fury of a team that built its identity on making the impossible shot. Steph scampering for half an inch of space, Klay planting himself beyond the arc like a man possessed. It was pure Warriors basketball: chaotic, beautiful, and ultimately heartbreaking.

The Cavaliers played chess. The Warriors played jazz. Chess won.

But here’s the wild part: that was supposed to be the changing of the guard. LeBron’s masterpiece. The end of Golden State’s dynasty before it really began. Instead, it was just intermission. The Warriors added Kevin Durant, won two more titles, and spent the next half-decade redefining basketball excellence.

Sunday night, we get our first Finals Game 7 since that June evening in Oakland, and everything has changed. The Thunder and Pacers represent basketball’s new generation—Shai Gilgeous-Alexander trying to announce his arrival the way Steph did in 2015, Tyrese Haliburton channeling that same fearless energy that made those early Warriors teams appointment television.

One team will complete their championship destiny. The other will spend the summer wondering how they let immortality slip through their fingers—just like those 73-win Warriors did all those years ago.