NBA MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander bent over, his shorts clamped between his palms, clamped his fingers tightly and pressed against his knees. If the Indiana Pacers do continue to win the 2025 NBA final, that should be their third game, 116-107 defeat of the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Indiana doesn’t need that miraculous comeback in the last few minutes, which will define this playoff. But on Wednesday night, it could make it even more shocking by exhausted Gilgeous-Alexander and Thunder.
Oklahoma City’s relentless ball pressure, a hallmark of its 68-win season and a feature that brought it to the NBA finals, finally relaxed in the second half of Game 3. Gilgeous-Alexander, Gilgeous-Alexander, who was neither harmonious nor made himself one of the greatest pure racers to put his nights in a fervent way.
Cherubic Pacers were accepted by a team of destiny in 2025. They were too naive to be afraid, too tenacious to fail. But this may not give them enough credit. Perhaps, they have their own superpowers in these finals.
Indiana, beat
The most qualified team in the NBA can’t make the most of their superpowers in the first two games of the finals. In Game 1, less than 9% of Pacers’ property was in transition, and although that number increased to 12.9% in Game 2 (per glass cleaning), it was still below its season average.
Apart from the numbers, their half-time property also feels slow. Throughout the regular season, Indiana is always faster than simple tracking numbers suggest. Many of its “half-court” properties will first attack the cross-game found by throwing the ball to the floor. Head coach Rick Carlisle’s team may have reached 12 shot clocks, but the push speed ultimately makes it nice.
We hardly saw this early in the finals, and there was no more pain than Tyrese Haliburton suffered. In the second game, he scored just five points on seven attempts entering the fourth quarter of garbage time. But in the garbage, Carlisle found something effective: take the ball out of Halliburton’s hand, even if it’s just a second.
Other players would raise it or Halliburton would throw it forward and then sprint to allow him to get rid of Oklahoma City’s perimeter defender without live streaming. OK, guess the first timeout Indiana ran in Game 3:
Haliburton, who finished 22/9/11 in Game 3, performed better for most of the game. He gained Oklahoma City guards multiple times when the ball was in his hands, especially by rejecting the screen or pretending to refuse, either way to change the angle. He also got what he gave him in the form of a float or pull-up jumper. By the end of the game, yes, the Oklahoma City defender seemed tired of applying this extended ball pressure and falling off.
This drama has it all:
Andrew Nembhard threw the ball at Bennedict Mathurin (27 points) and then filled Haliburton’s place. In just five seconds to secure the rebound, Indiana has made several passes and ball moves. Luguentz Dort had already run to Indiana’s counterattack when he switched back to Haliburton only to find him 10 feet away, buried under Myles Turner’s screen. He lost a cat game, forcing Chet Holmgren to make an emergency switch, but Haliburton has already launched three games.
Clean glass takes more than 17% of Indiana’s third game as a transition opportunity, even at the regular season average. That – all the quick property doesn’t list it as a transition – not only helps Halliburton. Pascal Siakam posted on camera at nearly 20 seconds in the second quarter, meaning the Thunder’s backline is not ready to compete for position and jump across the entire admission pass.
Mathurin finally feasted it, the exact type Indiana couldn’t make during the first two games of the final:
1: IND attempts to post Pascal with OKC defense in unit numbers on shooting locks in G1
2: ind throws an entrance pass with 20 on the shooting lock in G3 pic.twitter.com/zgdabkyssj
— Lucaskaplan (@lucaskaplan_) June 12, 2025
Many walkers have done a lot of plays. Mathurin made a controversial shot; TJ McConnell stole the inbound pass (plural) and entered the defense’s teeth; Halliburton won many battles at the offensive point. But the Pacers as a team are able to play in Game 3, which should pour the pit into Oklahoma City’s belly.
Remove “O” from OKC
However, Thunder should pay more attention to its own offense.
In Game 2, head coach Mark Digneault did his best to stroll his fashion superstar on many tracks and it worked. Gilgeous-Alexander initiated property near the half-time logo almost every time, and after baking a guy on the hedge screen (i.e. Haliburton and Myles Turner), he couldn’t stop with his full steam head.
He scored 38 points, while Oklahoma City created a lot of free throws and 3 points in comfortable driving and playing. Indiana’s reaction to this thunder tweak is a bold one: Do you want to play the full game? let’s do it.
Nembhard, Ben Sheppard, Aaron Nesmith and other guards Gilgeous-Alexander guarded him for 94 feet. Early on, the result was no different from Game 2:
But Indiana sticks to the plan and brings a significant dividend. Gilgeous-Alexander started to drag down, while Haliburton and Turner learned how to get close to the ball screen. Perhaps Indiana’s best representative of the night in this game, Turner supported Nembhard’s excellent efforts by sliding his feet, which led to one of Oklahoma City’s 19 turnovers.
Nembhard denied SGA and then ended up sticking to him through the screen. Myles has a great footsteps, and Hali preys on a poor pass: pic.twitter.com/mx3gwbjjar
— Lucaskaplan (@lucaskaplan_) June 12, 2025
Bad shooting
However, Thunder’s most worrying statistics are not 19 mistakes. Again, the lens distribution. Oklahoma City tried to make 21 3-pointers and shot 39 from mid-range by cleaning the glass.
Indiana didn’t pull until a few minutes of dying, but it was worth winning the game. Like Game 1, the Thunder did not find enough high-quality shots to be extended. Even if it is going well with 68 Victory of Sword Saint, things are difficult.
Part of that was building a roster around Gilgeous-Alexander and Jalen Williams to become two high-user golfers. Part of it is the monotony of the above-mentioned offense, which is becoming easier and easier to plan as a series of developments.
Gilgeous-Alexander’s decision was a bit inadequate on Wednesday, as shown in the previous paragraphs. Williams is fair to say that he scored 26 points on 18 hits 9, and he didn’t show that he always went into the edge and sprayed onto the shooter’s handle. But the walkers deserve praise here, too. By the fourth quarter, they were all able to put pressure on Gilgeous-Alexander 40 feet away while also recovering to the big man in Oklahoma City in the near term.
Due to all of the above factors, none of these properties ended with a three-pointer, and it was a pill that was hard to swallow the Thunder:
In such an intensive, engaging final, there are endless changes in certain matchups or players. Even though you don’t know from this article, Game 3 will be the Bennedict Mathurin game for much of Indiana. Nor did we delve into the weird decision, the double roster of Holmgren and Isaiah Hartenstein, who played him, just a few minutes (minutes of success), nor did we play Siakam more often as the lonely man.
However, after watching Game 3 of this epic series, the lineup decision will not stick to my mind. Instead, the symbolic drama goes beyond the scented Gilgeous-Alexander’s defined still image, a dagger that only Indiana can stab.
When Pascal Siakam is on the floor, the Pacers are better in every 100 games on defense. Ranked in the 99th percentile.
Watch him guard the SGA on this critical property. Wow. pic.twitter.com/cqeqcvv41i
— Esfandiar Baraheni (@JustesBaraHeni) June 12, 2025
Nembhard tracked the loose ball 30/70 after Siakam-led Gilgeous-Alexander was completely shut down and headed by Haliburton’s strong hedge. Later there were two kicks passing, and Siakam returned the favor to Gilgeous-Alexander, only one of which was still in the air in his lungs. The Pacers had only one minute left for six minutes on the court. They saw a chance to score.
Is it the right game in this case? That’s next to it. This is their play.
