2025 NBA Finals Preview

The 2025 NBA finals are set – can the Oklahoma City Thunder complete the dream season or can the Indiana Pacers replicate their magic from the past two series?

The Thunder, outside of the Nuggets series, have completely rolled through the regular season and playoffs behind a top three offense and best defense in the league, with a total record of 80-18 in both. The Pacers on the other hand, started the regular season sluggish, falling as low as 11th in the standings around 20 games into the season. But everything changed at the turn of the calendar year, where Indiana finished the year winning 34 of its final 48 regular season games. Their momentum continued in the playoffs where they’ve posted a 12-4 record en route to their first finals appearance since the turn of the century behind the best offense in basketball.

In terms of how these teams were built, they’re nearly mirror images of each other. Both these small-market teams were built through the draft and strategic trades over the past five years, turning each from a lottery team to a Finals team in half a decade. Both are relatively young teams with veteran leadership, both traded for their franchise cornerstone while they were young and developed them into NBA superstars – and in terms of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, an MVP. Both hang their hat on the ability to go 10 or 11 guys deep into the rotation, but also getting enough out of their starters to get things done down the stretch. But only one team can prevail and earn their franchise a rare championship.

So the question is, who will prevail? Let’s break it down.

The bread and butter of this series is going to be watching the Pacer offense versus the Thunder defense. The Pacers earned the number one offense in the league this season and in the playoffs by playing team basketball, having shooters at all five positions to spread the floor and pushing the pace through maybe the league’s best distributor and pure point guard in Tyrese Haliburton. On the other hand, the Thunder earned the best defense in the league through their scrappy, defensive-minded guards and dual-big lineup with Isaiah Hartenstein and Chet Holmgren. To go deeper with a basic breakdown, the guards, like Lu Dort and Alex Caruso, body up the opposing team’s best player with their leverage and physicality, forcing the offense to dump it down low to their big who Hartenstein can body up and Chet Holmgren can sit in help defense and come over as a shot-blocker with his length. However, the Pacers ability to spread the floor, along with unselfish play and love for the three-ball, we could see Indiana expose the Oklahoma City defense better than maybe anyone else.

On the other side is where I think this series will be decided. I see a massive advantage for the Thunder offense against the Pacer defense in this matchup. In the regular season, the Thunder ranked third in the league in offense, while the Pacers were all the way down at 17th in defense. While the Pacers are playing better defense in the playoffs than the regular season – maybe good enough to be borderline top 10 in the league, it’s not top three. This means the Pacers are going to have to try and outscore the Thunder, which I don’t see happening enough to win the series given the Thunder’s defense.

With Oklahoma City’s very inconsistent shooting, and Indiana’s offensive ability, I could see the Pacers snagging a game or two, but I have my doubts in their ability to win four before the Thunder do, especially on the road. The Thunder just have so much more balance on both sides of the ball, and have so many bodies they can throw at Haliburton and Pascal Siakam to get them out of rhythm offensively. With all this being said, I have the Thunder winning this series in five games, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander completing the perfect season, winning MVP, the championship and finals MVP.