Thunder vs. Pacers live updates: Follow NBA Finals Game 1 between Oklahoma City and Indiana

OKC has taken a 19-13 lead early in the first. The Pacers are lucky to be that close considering the keep giving the ball away.

Credit Indiana for its ability to withstand an emotional start to the opening quarter that saw them trail 7-0 but not become overwhelmed by the spotlight and pressure. They trail only 14-10 with 4:59 to play in the first quarter. But now with three-fifths of Oklahoma City's starting lineup off the floor and resting, Indiana's lineup of Tyrese Haliburton, Pascal Siakam and Aaron Nesmith needs to take advantage.

...Why is that important? Here were Haliburton’s splits earlier in the playoffs based on whether he made or missed his first field-goal attempt — and the difference is stark:

...And we have a tie game at our first timeout of the game. A 10-3 run by Indy, capped by an Andrew Nembhard 3-pointer, has the game knotted at 10 with 7:07 left in the first.

Indiana trails 7-0 after the first 2:30 of the game. The Pacers are definitely adjusting to the physicality of the Thunder’s defense.

The crowd reception for new NBA MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was predictably a din of noise during pregame intrdocutions. But the loudest moment inside the arena thus far was a 3-pointer by Jalen Williams that put the Thunder ahead 7-0.

The Thunder won the tip and we’re off!

Jay Croucher and Drew Dinsick preview the 2025 NBA Finals between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Indiana Pacers, sharing one longshot on each team who could be named the Bill Russell NBA Finals Most Valuable Player.

This Finals series pits one of the NBA’s best offenses against one of the league’s best defenses.

Indiana trails only Cleveland in scoring offense and offensive rating in the playoffs, while the Thunder have been among the NBA’s best defenses this season.

Indiana is 0-4 when held under 110 points this postseason and 12-0 when exceeding that amount. The Thunder have held their opponents to below 110 points in 10 out of their 16 games this postseason.

Guard Cason Wallace will start in place of center Isaiah Hartenstein in Game 1 of the Finals, as the Thunder will begin with a smaller look against the fast-paced Pacers.

The lineup of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Wallace, Lu Dort, Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren has played 26 minutes so far in the playoffs, and is a plus-22 in that time.

The Thunder posted the best record in the NBA in the regular season, winning a franchise-record 68 games. 

In the playoffs, the Thunder lost just four games over three rounds en route to the Finals. Oklahoma City swept the Grizzlies in the First Round, beat the Nuggets in seven games in the Conference Semifinals and then beat the Timberwolves in five games in the Western Conference Finals. 

The Thunder outscored opponents by an average of 10.8 points per game over the first three rounds with four of their 12 wins by more than 30 points, which set a NBA record.

Oklahoma City is just the fourth team ever to win 80 games ahead of the NBA Finals, including both regular season and playoffs. The others are the 2016 Warriors (who lost the Finals to the Cavaliers), and the 1996 and 1997 Bulls, who both won the Finals.  

Brad Thomas and Vaughn Dalzell reveal their favorite player props for Game 1 of the NBA Finals, highlighting Tyrese Haliburton and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander on opposite ends of an Over/Under.

This year will mark the seventh straight season with a different champion, which will be the longest such streak in NBA history. This will break a tie with a stretch of six straight seasons with a different champion from 1975-80. 

The last six NBA champions were the Celtics, Nuggets, Warriors, Bucks, Lakers and Raptors.

The Warriors won in 2017 and 2018.

Despite Oklahoma City's status as a heavy favorite to win the NBA Finals, Dan Patrick thinks Indiana can steal wins in a battle between two teams that can "shoot their way" out of any scoring situation.

After a disastrous All-Star format in 2025, NBA commissioner Adam Silver says the next iteration of the game (which will be on NBC in 2026!) will have some kind of international aspect.

Don’t be surprised if the NBA tries to crib some aspect of the NHL’s “4 Nations Face-Off” tournament, which was a critically acclaimed All-Star battle earlier this year.

Asked during his annual state-of-the-NBA remarks before Game 1 of the NBA Finals, league commissioner Adam Silver said that he sees no reason to reduce the length of the 82-game regular season, and said that the league's data did not support the suggestion that the longer season increased injuries.

"Money is part of it," Silver said. "There's no question about it, we're a business. But having said that, I don't really see the benefit to reducing the number of games."

Seemingly in response to a report from The Athletic that broadcaster Doris Burke's place on ESPN's top NBA broadcast team is "not guaranteed" for next season, Indiana coach Rick Carlisle opened his remarks before Game 1 with a lengthy declaration in support of Burke, whom he called a friend who had "changed the game."

When New York fired coach Tom Thibodeau this week, it thrust Oklahoma City coach Mark Daigneault, who was hired in 2020, into fifth place on the list of NBA coaches with the longest tenure with one team. He was asked before Game 1 whether he felt like a veteran coach.

"Now when you're coaching against Rick Carlisle," Daigneault said with a smile. Carlisle has 993 career victories and has been a head coach since 2001. "I feel like a rookie."

There is a severe thunderstorm watch for three more hours covering Oklahoma City, and an additional flood watch in the region, as well, but inside Paycom Center, there's a calmness as players just begin to start their warmups. This arena will turn into a carnival atmosphere by the 7:30 p.m. local tipoff but for now the atmosphere is quiet inside the building.

Oklahoma City — who boasts the youngest roster in the league — won a franchise-record 68 games in the regular season, becoming just the 7th team in NBA history to win 68 games in the regular season. Indiana started the regular season slower, sitting under .500 at the start of 2025, but the Pacers have earned a reputation for comebacks, rallying to reach the Finals thanks in part to their late-game dramatics. 

The Thunder’s defense has been suffocating all postseason, minus a couple of blips in the conference finals. As much movement and verve as the Pacers play with in the half-court, they cannot afford to play against OKC’s set defense if they want to score consistently. That means Indiana will need to do even more of what it did against the Knicks: create turnovers for easy scores and run incredibly hard even off made baskets for semi-transition opportunities.

If the Pacers are forced to play anything resembling a half-court game against the Thunder, they will lose. OKC’s defense is probably the best of this decade, and it has been even better in the playoffs than it was during the regular season. If Indiana is going to win, it needs to consistently attack when the Thunder can’t get set.

Both franchises enjoyed success with nine-time All-Star Paul George on the floor and both franchises can trace much of their current success back to their returns from eventually trading George away. 

George was drafted by Indiana in 2010 and played his first seven NBA seasons with the Pacers. In 2017, he was traded to the Thunder for Victor Oladipo and Domantas Sabonis. Sabonis spent four plus seasons with Indiana, earning a pair of All-Star nods before the Pacers traded him to Sacramento as part of a 6-player trade, including Tyrese Haliburton. 

George spent two seasons with Oklahoma City, earning All-Star and All-NBA honors both years. In July 2019, he was traded to the Clippers, with the Thunder receiving Shai Gilgeous-Alexander along with five first-round picks.

The Pacers have come back to win four games in which they trailed by 17 points in the playoffs — the most in a single playoffs in the play-by-play era (since 1997-98), per NBA.com.

Since 1996-97, there have been four playoff games in which a team rallied to win after trailing by seven or more points in the final 0:50 of the 4th quarter or OT. The Pacers have three of those four wins in this playoff run, one in each round.

Drew Dinsick shares why he envisions live betting throughout this year's NBA Finals, while Jay Croucher remains "bullish" about the Pacers' Game 1 outlook against the Thunder.

The Thunder and Pacers occupy two of the smallest markets in the NBA, with Oklahoma City being the league’s third-smallest TV market and Indianapolis being the seventh-smallest TV market. 

With the best regular season record in the NBA, the Thunder have held homecourt advantage throughout the playoffs and have been dominant at PayCom Center, going 8-1 so far in the playoffs, with their lone loss coming to Denver in Game 1 of the Western Conference Semis. 

The Thunder have a total home scoring margin of +221 in this postseason, which would be the best in a single playoff run in NBA history.

Five of OKC’s eight home wins in these playoffs have come by more than 25 points, including a 51-point win over the Grizzlies in Game 1 of the first round.

The Pacers, on the other hand, have been road warriors this postseason. Indiana’s six road victories are tied with the Knicks for the most during these playoffs. Indiana is three road wins from tying the 1995 NBA champion Rockets for the most in a single NBA postseason. 

When Oklahoma City gets 10-plus steals this season, it is 43-4. That is not a misprint. The Thunder led the league in steals during the regular season at more than 10 per game — two more per game than the league average — and have been even slightly better in the postseason.

The Pacers committed the third-fewest turnovers per game this season, and their very best attribute is their ability to play fast without being careless and giving away possessions. (That’s also what makes Indiana so good at pulling off comebacks.) But when their offense is disrupted, their fortunes are, too. The Pacers are 34-19 this season with fewer turnovers than their opponents, compared with 12-12 with more. And Oklahoma City has just the personnel to cause havoc.

For the second consecutive year, four Canadians will appear in the NBA Finals. This year’s Canadian representatives are all key members of their respective teams’ rotations — OKC’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Luguentz Dort and Indiana's Bennedict Mathurin and Andrew Nembhard. 

Last year’s NBA Finals between the Mavericks and Celtics featured three Canadian players (Dwight Powell, AJ Lawson, Olivier-Maxence Prosper) on Dallas, while Boston featured Oshae Brissett. Those four combined to score nine points in the Finals. 

Oklahoma City is a historic favorite in the NBA Finals. The Thunder are -9.5 point favorites to win Game 1 and -700 to win the series, according to our partners at BetMGM. Good luck finding a pundit who picked Indiana to win the series.

The Pacers are good with that. They have fully embraced their underdog role.

“If we were to win a championship, I don’t want to win any other way,” Tyrese Haliburton said on the eve of Game 1. “I don’t want to go around or over. I want to go through. You want to go through the best team, the best challenge. This is the best challenge. This is the best team in the NBA. It’s been the best team in the NBA all year.”

Read the full story here.

Indiana is one of 10 franchises never to have won a NBA championship. The others: Brooklyn Nets, Charlotte Hornets, Los Angeles Clippers, Memphis Grizzlies, Minnesota Timberwolves, New Orleans Pelicans, Orlando Magic, Phoenix Suns and the Utah Jazz.

The Pacers won three ABA titles in the 1970s before the league merged with the NBA.

This season’s Finals are the 79th in the league’s history. Of the previous 78 championships, 77 were won by top-four seeds.

The latest finalists meet that criterion. Oklahoma City finished the regular season with the West’s top seed, while Indiana was fourth.

Still, decades of precedent suggest that only Oklahoma City meets the NBA’s even tougher championship standard, because each of the league’s last 29 champions has been top-three seeds. If Indiana wins this season’s NBA title, it would become only the second fourth-seeded champion in league history and the first since 1981.

The lesson: The NBA regular season is often maligned for its length, but that length has also proved to be an effective predictor of which teams can endure four consecutive best-of-seven playoff rounds.

Read the full story here.

By the end of the Pacers’ series with the New York Knicks, Andrew Nembhard had frustrated Jalen Brunson so much to the point that Brunson headbutted him during Game 6. Can Nembhard do the same to the MVP of the league? So far during the postseason, nobody has had an answer for Gilgeous-Alexander.

Indiana can’t simply try to play with pace, because the Thunder like to play fast, as well. If the Pacers are going to have any chance in this matchup, though, they’ll have to make life difficult for SGA. Nembhard and (along with Aaron Nesmith, who could be limited after suffering an ankle injury in the conference finals) is going to be a key factor in trying to slow down the MVP.