INDIANAPOLIS — Game 7. The greatest two words in sports. The NBA has arrived here with what has been a wildly entertaining, balanced, and well-played NBA Finals. Fans will surround televisions and screens across the nation and the globe, tuning in to see whether the Oklahoma City Thunder or Indiana Pacers will be crowned NBA champions for the first time.
Those fans also will walk away from Game 7 with a vision of the future of the NBA.
“It’s a new blueprint for the league, man,” the Pacers’ Myles Turner said after Indiana advanced to the Finals. “I think the years of the superteams and stacking, it’s not as effective as it once was. Since I’ve been in the league, the NBA is very trendy. It just shifts. The new trend now is kind of what we’re doing.”
This has been a changing of the guard playoffs, which culminate on Sunday.
Part of that is a change in star power. There is no LeBron James or Stephen Curry returning to this stage, nor is there Kevin Durant or Giannis Antetokounmpo. Instead, it’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Tyrese Haliburton establishing themselves as the future of the league. Those stars are at the forefront of a transition to a younger generation of stars that the NBA and its broadcast partners have been too slow to embrace, leaning into the safety of established brands. But it was 23-year-old Anthony Edwards and his Minnesota Timberwolves who eliminated Curry and LeBron from this year’s playoffs, while the future of the league may be in San Antonio with 21-year-old Victor Wembanyama.
Depth, versatility and modern NBA rosters
However, the change is more than just the star players, it’s how the rosters are built around them.
“It’s two young teams. I feel like we’re kind of showing the world it’s different basketball now,” Pacers big man Obi Toppin said. “It’s about two teams just going out there, playing extremely hard, and everybody, including the guys on the bench, coming in here, and making an impact.”
While the Pacers and Thunder certainly have stars — Gilgeous-Alexander is the league’s MVP — the goal used in building these rosters was not simply to compile superstars and then hope the role players around them are good enough (think Philadelphia or Phoenix).
The Thunder and Pacers are not heliocentric teams, these are rosters specifically built to take advantage of the strengths of Haliburton and Gilgeous-Alexander, where they can serve as conductors of offenses where everyone eats. The goal is to have depth, balance, and identify versatile players who can effectively fit the system. The Pacers and Thunder assembled rosters with enough of those kinds of quality players that they can go all out when on the court — pressing on defense and playing at a high tempo — then be subbed out for fresh legs that will play just as hard. The trend is not to have two or three superstars and hope the rest of the roster can hold up, it’s to have eight or nine or 10 versatile players good enough to play minutes in a Finals game, staying within their roles.
“The new trend now is just kind of what we’re doing, OKC does the same thing,” Turner said. “Young guys get out and run, defend and use the ‘power of friendship,’ is how they call it.”
That’s something else these teams have — great chemistry. The players get along. It’s more collegial. These aren’t “12 players, 12 cabs” kind of teams, these guys want to hang out. That will be the most difficult part for other teams to mimic.
The NBA is a copycat league, but in this case, the change in roster construction will be driven more by the league’s punishing luxury tax aprons and associated penalties than by trying to follow the model of the latest champion. The league has attempted to flatten out the talent pool in the name of parity, which has increased the need for teams to establish an identity and build upon it.
It’s not new: Denver did much the same thing, where they have a star in Nikola Jokic, but they built a team to take advantage of his otherworldly passing skills. It’s why good players such as Aaron Gordon and Michael Porter Jr., can look even better, because they are in a system that plays to their strengths.
The Thunder and Pacers built title contenders by drafting wisely, making clever trades — both Haliburton and SGA came to their teams via trades — but it’s also always thinking about fit. Indiana trading for Pascal Siakam was not about getting the biggest name, but rather about finding the best fit for their roster. The same goes for scooping up Obi Toppin from the Knicks. This past summer, the Thunder had the cap space and trade assets to go after a big-name player; instead, they focused on landing Alex Caruso and Isaiah Hartenstein. Fit mattered.
“When we traded for Tyrese, it was pretty clear that we needed to play with tempo,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. “[President of Basketball Operations] Kevin Pritchard and [General Manager] Chad Buchanan have built a roster with guys that can run and defend around him.
“In today’s game, roster construction seems to be changing. A lot of the best rosters now are built on balance, and that’s certainly what we’re trying to do. I think that’s what Oklahoma is doing, too.”
They are. And it’s the way of the future, no matter who wins Game 7.
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