New king on the block

OKLAHOMA CITY — Shai Gilgeous-Alexander walked off the court for the final time this season, collapsed into the arms of coach Mark Daigneault and finally smiled.

It was over.

The climb is complete. The rebuild is done. The Oklahoma City Thunder is champion.

The best team all season was the best team at the end, bringing the NBA title to Oklahoma City for the first time.

Gilgeous-Alexander finished off his MVP season with 29 points and 12 assists, and the Thunder beat the Indiana Pacers — who lost Tyrese Haliburton to a serious leg injury in the opening minutes — 103-91 in Game 7 of the NBA Finals on Sunday night.

"It doesn't feel real," said Gilgeous-Alexander, also named the Finals MVP.

"So many hours. So many moments. So many emotions. So many nights of disbelief. So many nights of belief. It's crazy to know that we're all here, but this group worked for it. This group put in the hours and we deserve this."

Jalen Williams scored 20 points and Chet Holmgren had 18 for the Thunder, which finished off a season for the ages. Oklahoma City won 84 games between the regular season and the playoffs, tying the 1996-97 Chicago Bulls for third most in any season. Only Golden State (88 in 2016-17) and the Bulls (87 in 1995-96) won more.

While it's a first for Oklahoma City, it's the second championship for the franchise. The Seattle Super-Sonics won the NBA title in 1979;the team was moved to Oklahoma City and rebranded in 2008, but there's nothing in the rafters at Paycom Center to commemorate that title.

In October, a championship banner is finally coming. A Thunder banner.

"They behave like champions. They compete like champions," Daigneault said. "They root for each other's success, which is rare in professional sports.

"I've said it many times, and now I'm going to say it one more time: They are an uncommon team and now they are champions."

Pacers' guard Haliburton, already nursing a right calf strain when the Pacers won Game 6 to force the first Finals Game 7 since 2016, had scored nine points — all on three-pointers — when he went down to what his father said was an Achilles tendon injury about seven minutes into the game.

In his absence, the Pacers dug in. Down by three after the first quarter, they grabbed a 48-47 lead on Andrew Nembhard's step-back three-pointer with 4.3 seconds left before halftime.

In a first half that featured 10 lead changes, the three-point shot was an early difference-maker for the Pacers, who connected on eight of 16 from beyond the arc in the first half, but had just three after the break.

The Thunder struggled early from long range, but Gilgeous-Alexander made his first three-pointer of the night with 8:16 left in the third, Holmgren followed with a trey and Williams added another — the quick 9-0 run giving Oklahoma City a 65-56 lead that set the stage for the rest of the game.

"We had 24 minutes to go get it — we had 24 minutes to finish our season," Gilgeous-Alexander said of the Thunder's mindset coming out for the third.

Pacers' coach Rick Carlisle said his team just wasn't good enough in the third quarter, but he praised his team's effort in the fourth.

"There was no surrender," Carlisle said. "It was all defiant fight until the end."

Bennedict Mathurin led the Pacers with 24 points and 13 rebounds for Indiana off the bench.

Pascal Siakam and TJ McConnell added 16 points apiece, and Nembhard scored 15.

But, the famously resilient Pacers who have authored a string of stirring comeback wins this season, finally came up short.

The Pacers who were 10-15 after 25 games and were bidding to be the first team in NBA history to turn that bad of a start into a championship had leads of 1-0 and 2-1 in the series, but they simply didn't have enough in the end.

As the Thunder players celebrated their historic win, Indiana's wait for its first NBA title continues.

"Deflated, but proud of everything we've accomplished," McConnell said.

Home teams improved to 16-4 in NBA Finals Game 7s, and the Thunder became the seventh champion in the last seven seasons, a run of parity like none other in the league's history.

Siakam was part of the Toronto team that won in 2019, Thunder guard Alex Caruso was part of the Los Angeles Lakers team that won in the pandemic "bubble" in 2020, Milwaukee won in 2021, Golden State in 2022, Pacers forward Thomas Bryant and Denver prevailed in 2023, and Boston won last year's title.

And now, the Thunder gets its turn. The ninth franchise to win a title in NBA Commissioner Adam Silver's 12 seasons, the youngest team to win a title in nearly half a century has finally reached the NBA mountaintop.

Agencies Via Xinhua