The Oklahoma City Thunder won the NBA Finals on Monday night, June 23, capping a thrilling seven-game series against the Indiana Pacers with a dominant 103-91 victory. It is the Thunder's first NBA championship since the franchise relocated to Oklahoma City in 2008. And the Thunder are the seventh different NBA team to win a title in the past seven years, a remarkable run of parity for the league. It doesn't feel real. So many hours, so many moments, so many emotions, so many nights of disbelief, so many nights of belief, the Thunder's Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who was named finals MVP, said in a TV interview after the game. This group put in the hours, and we deserve this. The series was the first NBA Finals since 2016 to reach Game 7, and both teams had staged comebacks in earlier games, setting the stage for a dramatic and competitive winner-take-all finale. But Indiana's star point guard, Tyrese Haliburton, exited the game in the first quarter with an Achilles injury. Haliburton, 25, had emerged as a bona fide star in this year's playoffs, as he and the Pacers staged comeback after comeback to elbow their way into the Finals as the Eastern Conference's No. 4 seed. In four different games, he hit a game-tying or game-winning shot in the final five seconds, including Game 1 of the Finals. Then, trouble arrived : He strained his right calf in Game 5, raising questions about his ability to continue playing in the Finals. He played just 23 minutes in Indiana's 108-91 romp of the Thunder in Game 6. For the game's first seven minutes, it seemed Haliburton was on track for another miraculous effort, scoring nine points on five attempts. But his luck could only last so long. With five minutes remaining in the first quarter, Haliburton tried to push off his right foot to dribble past Gilgeous-Alexander, then collapsed to the floor in visible pain. He screamed and pounded the floor with his fist as trainers tended to him, and he could not walk on his own to the locker room.
