Thunder know closing out Pacers won't be easy in Game 6 of NBA Finals

Peter Sblendorio, New York Daily News on Jun 19, 2025

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NEW YORK — The odds are overwhelmingly in the Oklahoma City Thunder’s favor.

In the previous 31 NBA Finals in which the series was tied 2-2, the team that won Game 5 went on to win the championship in 74% of them.

And in the previous 49 Finals to go at least six games, the team that went up 3-2 won the title 82% of the time.

Both apply to the Thunder, whose 120-109 victory over the Indiana Pacers in Game 5 has them on the precipice of their first championship since moving to Oklahoma City some 17 years ago.

But the Thunder aren’t celebrating just yet.

“We have one more game to win,” said Thunder point guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the NBA’s MVP.

Oklahoma City looks to clinch the crown in Thursday night’s Game 6 at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.

It will be the first elimination game of the postseason for the Pacers, who are 7-3 at home in the playoffs and 1-1 there in the Finals.

Working against the Pacers is a right calf injury for star point guard Tyrese Haliburton, who managed only four points on 0-of-6 shooting in Game 5 at Oklahoma City’s Paycom Center.

Haliburton said he plans to play in Game 6.

“Our backs are against the wall,” Haliburton said, adding, “There shouldn’t even be a conversation about Game 7 or anything like that,” Haliburton said. “This is the game, so everybody’s got to be prepared. It starts with me, and we’ve all got to be better.”

After falling behind 2-1 in the series, the top-seeded Thunder have won back-to-back games, dealing the fourth-seeded Pacers their first consecutive losses since March.

In Game 5, the Thunder’s NBA-best defense delivered perhaps its most dominant showing of these Finals, forcing 23 turnovers that led to 32 points.

Indiana committed eight turnovers in the fourth quarter — and at one point turned the ball over on four consecutive possessions — as Oklahoma City iced the victory.

“We’ve got to try to stay there for as long as we can,” Gilgeous-Alexander said of the Thunder’s emphatic finish. “It’s a lot easier said than done, playing against a really good basketball team, but we’ve got to try to stay in that space and that momentum on both ends of the floor for longer periods of time if we want to hoist this thing.”

The Thunder led by as many as 16 points in the second half of Game 5, only for Indiana to close the gap to two points with under nine minutes left in the fourth quarter.

It was a scene reminiscent of Game 1, when the never-say-die Pacers rallied back from a 15-point fourth-quarter deficit to win, 111-110, behind a Haliburton jumper with 0.3 seconds remaining.

But the Thunder weathered the Pacers’ furious comeback bid on Monday, with Jalen Williams scoring 11 of his game-high 40 points in the fourth.

“That was honestly the same exact game as Game 1,” Williams said. “Learning through these Finals, that’s what makes a team good.”

The Pacers have demonstrated their resiliency throughout this postseason, too, as they also rattled off historic comebacks against the Milwaukee Bucks, Cleveland Cavaliers and New York Knicks in the prior rounds.

They’ll need to punch back again on Thursday to force a winner-take-all Game 7 in Oklahoma City.

“We’ve had our backs against the wall many different times over the last two years, had to figure out different ways to win,” Haliburton said. “The way that this year has gone, nobody said this was going to be sweet.”

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