2025 NBA Finals
The Oklahoma City Thunder beat the Indiana Pacers 4-3 to win the 2025 NBA Finals, their first title since 1979, with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander named MVP.
The Oklahoma City Thunder won the 2025 NBA Finals, beating the Indiana Pacers 4-3 and closing the series with a 103-91 Game 7 win at home on June 22, 2025. It was the franchise’s first championship since the 1979 title it won as the Seattle SuperSonics, and the first ever claimed under the Oklahoma City banner. Guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, already the league’s scoring champion and Most Valuable Player that season, was named Finals MVP, becoming the first Canadian to win the award.
| Fast facts | |
|---|---|
| Champion | Oklahoma City Thunder (4-3) |
| Runner-up | Indiana Pacers |
| Dates | June 5–22, 2025 |
| Venue(s) | Paycom Center, Oklahoma City; Gainbridge Fieldhouse, Indianapolis |
| Series result | Thunder won 4-3; clinched Game 7, 103-91 |
| Finals MVP | Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (Oklahoma City) |
| Audience | Game 7 averaged 16.53M viewers; 18,203 in attendance |
The setup
The Thunder arrived as the heaviest favorite the Finals had seen in years. Oklahoma City finished the 2024-25 regular season 68-14, the best record in the league, built around the three-level scoring of Gilgeous-Alexander, the interior defense of Chet Holmgren and a deep, switch-everything perimeter rotation. The roster that reached the Finals was not the one that had been bounced a round earlier the previous spring: after the 2024 playoffs, general manager Sam Presti added veteran size and toughness, signing center Isaiah Hartenstein in free agency and acquiring wing defender Alex Caruso by trade. Those additions gave a young core the physical ballast it had lacked. In the Western bracket the Thunder swept the Memphis Grizzlies, survived a seven-game grind against the Denver Nuggets in the semifinals, then dispatched the Minnesota Timberwolves in five to reach the first Finals of the Oklahoma City era.
Indiana took the longer, stranger road. The Pacers finished 50-32 and entered the postseason as the East’s fourth seed, a pace-and-space outfit organized around the vision of Tyrese Haliburton and the scoring of Pascal Siakam. They eliminated the Milwaukee Bucks in five, overwhelmed the top-seeded Cleveland Cavaliers in five, and then beat the New York Knicks in six to win the conference. By June, Indiana had become the series-swinging specialist of the bracket, a team that kept trailing late and kept finding answers — a reputation it carried straight into the championship round against the favorite.
How it happened
The Pacers made clear immediately that they would not defer. In Game 1 at Paycom Center, Indiana erased a double-digit fourth-quarter deficit and Haliburton buried a go-ahead jumper with 0.3 seconds left to steal the opener, 111-110. Oklahoma City, stung but not rattled, answered two nights later with a comfortable 123-107 win to level the series before the trip east.
Indiana then protected its home floor. Game 3 went to the Pacers 116-107, pushing the home team in front 2-1 and tightening the pressure on the favorite. The Thunder responded in Game 4 with a 111-104 win on the road, squaring the series 2-2 and seizing back control of the format. Returning to Oklahoma City for Game 5, the Thunder produced their most complete night of the series, a 120-109 victory that put them within one win of the title.
Indiana would not go quietly. Facing elimination at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, the Pacers blitzed the Thunder 108-91 in Game 6 to force a deciding game — the first Game 7 in the NBA Finals since 2016. The finale, on June 22, 2025, turned on its first quarter: Haliburton, who had been playing through a right calf strain, went down on a non-contact drive and was helped off with what was later diagnosed as a torn right Achilles tendon. He did not return. The Pacers hung close without their floor general — reserve guard Bennedict Mathurin led them with 24 points — but Oklahoma City pulled away behind Gilgeous-Alexander’s 29 points, 12 assists and five rebounds to win 103-91 and claim the title.
By the numbers
| Game | Date | Score | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Game 1 | June 5, 2025 | Pacers 111, Thunder 110 | Haliburton’s go-ahead jumper with 0.3 seconds left stole the opener in OKC |
| Game 2 | June 8, 2025 | Thunder 123, Pacers 107 | Oklahoma City leveled the series 1-1 at home |
| Game 3 | June 11, 2025 | Pacers 116, Thunder 107 | Indiana protected home court for a 2-1 lead |
| Game 4 | June 13, 2025 | Thunder 111, Pacers 104 | Oklahoma City squared the series 2-2 in Indianapolis |
| Game 5 | June 16, 2025 | Thunder 120, Pacers 109 | The Thunder moved within one win, up 3-2 |
| Game 6 | June 19, 2025 | Pacers 108, Thunder 91 | Indiana forced a deciding Game 7 |
| Game 7 | June 22, 2025 | Thunder 103, Pacers 91 | Haliburton exited in the first quarter with a torn Achilles; OKC clinched |
The record
Per Basketball-Reference and ESPN, games played June 5–22, 2025.
Gilgeous-Alexander averaged 30.3 points across the seven games, with 5.6 assists and 4.6 rebounds a night; Siakam led Indiana at 19.3 points per game. The deciding game drew an average of 16.53 million viewers on ABC, the most-watched NBA Finals game in six years, in front of 18,203 at Paycom Center.
Honors
- Oklahoma City Thunder — 2025 NBA champion
- Shai Gilgeous-Alexander — 2025 Finals MVP
- 2025 NBA Most Valuable Player (Gilgeous-Alexander)
- 2024-25 NBA scoring champion (Gilgeous-Alexander, 32.7 PPG)
- First Canadian to win Finals MVP
- Franchise's first title since 1979 (Seattle SuperSonics)
Per Basketball-Reference, 2024-25 season.
The arguments
The debate that shadows the 2025 title is the health of the losing team. Haliburton’s torn Achilles in the first quarter of Game 7 removed Indiana’s most important player from the decisive game, and some observers argue that a healthy Pacers backcourt makes the margin — and perhaps the outcome — different. Others counter that Oklahoma City had already built a 3-2 lead, won its three series games by double digits, and would have been favored in a full-strength Game 7 regardless; by this reading the injury shaped the manner of the ending, not the identity of the champion.
A second argument concerns how the Thunder were built. Supporters frame the roster as a model of patient drafting — a homegrown MVP and a center developed in-house — supplemented rather than purchased, pointing out that the team carried no luxury-tax bill. Skeptics note that the Hartenstein signing and the Caruso trade were deliberate win-now moves, and that a 68-win juggernaut winning the title is less an underdog story than the expected result. A related thread debates where this team sits historically: a 68-14 regular season followed by a championship invites comparison to the league’s great single-season runs, but the seven-game Finals and the Denver semifinal that also went the distance give the counter-argument that the Thunder were pushed harder than a dominant champion “should” be.
Why it matters
The 2025 NBA Finals delivered Oklahoma City its first championship and confirmed Gilgeous-Alexander — scoring champion, MVP and Finals MVP in a single season — as the face of the league’s next era, while making him the first Canadian to be named Finals MVP. For Indiana, it was a near-miss defined by both an improbable playoff run and the cruelty of a season-altering injury in the final game. And as the most-watched Finals game in six years, staged between two of the NBA’s smaller markets, Game 7 offered a reminder that compelling basketball, not market size, is what fills the room.
