OKLAHOMA CITY — Luguentz Dort flexed and preened, and Alex Caruso popped his jersey to the crowd. Meanwhile Shai Gilgeous-Alexander could barely muster a smile, the Most Valuable Player so exhausted, so drained he couldn’t lift his head, his eyes fixated across the way to his family.
But he had time for the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy a few minutes later, fortified by triumph, along with raising the Bill Russell Trophy that signified his personal place in history as one of the few to win regular-season MVP and Finals MVP in the same season.
No meme-able moments, no super celebration planned — just exhaustion.
“Yeah, it’s been a long journey. Long season,” Gilgeous-Alexander told Yahoo Sports, nearly two hours after the game, still on the postgame media circuit. “A lot of games. I just wanted to go out and give it my all tonight. And I think I did so.”
What an emotional night, what a long three weeks, a long 13 years for the Oklahoma City Thunder, the defining roar — a cathartic release from a fan base that believed it would be in June every year with a franchise that had done everything right despite market and financial disadvantages that proved difficult to overcome.
It took seven games, a heartbreaking injury and a game challenge from an Indiana Pacers team that refused to exit the stage promptly, but the first championship in Oklahoma City history was clinched Sunday night with a 103-91 win at Paycom Center.
Gilgeous-Alexander had one of his least efficient games in the series and was clearly fatigued down the stretch after 40 breakneck minutes, but grinded out 29 points and 12 assists — including the decisive stretch in the third quarter that turned a halftime deficit into a double-digit lead.
The shooting line (8 for 27) is reminiscent of Kobe Bryant’s 6-for-24 performance in Game 7 of the 2010 Finals, but efficiency be damned in these spots — a championship is to be won, by any means necessary.
“So much weight off my shoulders. So much stress relieved,” Gilgeous-Alexander said in his news conference. “No matter what, you go into every night wanting to win. Sometimes it just doesn’t go your way. Tonight could have been one of those nights where we found a way.”
Giving all you have is romanticized in professional sports, without the promise of a payoff. But feeling it, while also knowing your main counterpart possibly gave his Achilles to the game, to the series, to history — it puts a different spin on the phrase.
Tyrese Haliburton looked game for the moment. He looked ready for all the gloriousness Game 7 had to offer, the opportunity to beat a favored team on the road, in their building — hitting three early triples, all well-beyond the line.
He was talking, he was barking — a primal yell to the smattering of fans wearing Pacers yellow in the stands. In Game 6, he looked to the heavens after making his first triple, the gates opening.
Exhausted but triumphant, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander hoists the Larry O’Brien Trophy after delivering Oklahoma City its long-awaited first title. (Alonzo Adams-Imagn Images)
(IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect / Reuters)
In Game 7, he writhed in agony, banging his fist on the hardwood, crying out because he knew his injured calf gave way to something so much more severe.
He knew.
Like Kevin Durant did in 2019 — almost in the same manner, hitting long jump shots on the road, giving his team life. Then his leg gave, and history was forever changed in that moment in Toronto.
Unfortunately, the story of the NBA Finals cannot be accurately told without noting the toll. For all its beauty, the brutal reality sits in the cost. The best of Klay Thompson. The best of Kevin Durant.
In some ways it leaves you with the same feeling, that you’d wished the series ended earlier, that even with the Thunder being worthy champions deserving of every ounce of praise they’ll receive, that the series didn’t have to claim limbs and careers.
Before the Pacers gathered around Haliburton, one Thunder player came to check on him, knowing he wasn’t OK — Gilgeous-Alexander.
These two teams are partners in history, forever bonded by competition and, unfortunately now, trauma.
“I just asked him if he was all right. Seemed like he was in pain,” he said. “You just hate to see it in sports in general, but in this moment, my heart dropped for him. I couldn’t imagine playing the biggest game of my life and something like that happening. It’s not fair. But competition isn’t fair sometimes.”
Game 7’s are never truly fair, or pretty. The body is beaten and atrophied after nine months and over 100 games of nonstop competition — nobody is fresh or at their absolute best.
Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton writhes in pain after suffering a devastating injury in Game 7, a moment that shifted the Finals and silenced a roaring start. (Kyle Terada-Imagn Images)
(IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect / Reuters)
But the last few years have produced satisfaction for suffering or tortured franchises, luck smiling after frustrating years for the Milwaukee Bucks, Denver Nuggets and Boston Celtics. It showed what team building, continuity and learning through pain can produce.
“This unfolded kind of quickly,” Thunder general manager and executive vice-president Sam Presti said to the adorning fans in the immediate wake of the win.
Call that the understatement of the decade.
Gilgeous-Alexander was the first step in this turnaround, in officially removing all residue from the Kevin Durant-Russell Westbrook years, even if the scar tissue remained with everyone living in Oklahoma City.
In some ways, the fans seemed happier than the players — so much so, the players didn’t know how to pop the cork on Champagne in the locker room. But the angst of the city was never transferred to the players. Even Presti himself, owner of all the draft picks from every team for the foreseeable future, had to own the tag of being the best executive in sports without the ultimate prize.
That’s no more.
“Not at all, honestly,” Gilgeous-Alexander told Yahoo Sports when asked if there was extra weight on the players because of the franchise history. “They don’t put pressure on us, the fans, the organization, the front office. They let us be us. They tell us, if we want to win we should go win. And that’s what we did.”
The Thunder are champions because they were the best team all season, outlasting everyone in the Western Conference, and did just enough to hold off the Pacers. They’ll go down in history as one of the best single-season teams in league history while having to scratch for everything in this winner-take-all Game 7.
If nothing else, they avoid ignominy.
“Going into halftime a lot of it was not letting up because [Haliburton]’s not playing,” Thunder forward Jalen Williams said. “Then, too, just don’t panic. When you’re that close to a goal, but got to understand the other team is feeling the same way we are.”
The Thunder trailed by one at the half after Andrew Nembhard hit a stepback triple, but soon unleashed a mini-version of their 40-minutes-of-hell defense to start the third quarter. Gilgeous-Alexander, Williams and Chet Holmgren — the three stalwarts — were the key to changing the complexion of the game while Dort and Caruso hounded anyone wearing a gold jersey.
Williams finished with 20 points, 4 rebounds and 4 assists, and several emotion-filled outbursts, the moments nearly overwhelming him.
Eight Pacers turnovers led to 18 points, and the Thunder were able to withstand yet another run from Pacers reserve T.J. McConnell (12 in the third). So wiped out was McConnell by night’s end, he wore the night on his face some 90 minutes after the buzzer sounded.
That’s the minimum of what the Thunder require, just to compete with them, let alone beat them.
Bennedict Mathurin tried to carry the Pacers in the fourth, finishing with 24 points and 13 rebounds (seven offensive), but they were outdone by a lack of firepower. They were not outdone by a lack of spirit or heart.
The Thunder didn’t make the Pacers quit — they outlasted them in an old-school 15-round boxing match and won on the cards.
“You watch any Game 7 of a Finals, any Game 7 period, but Game 7 of the Finals, it’s a different feeling, a different level of pressure,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “The gravity of the game is overwhelming for everybody participating.”
Daigneault is now in the elite category, a young coach from the G League plucked by Presti years ago to spearhead this accelerated march to contention — and now history.
Their structure is why Gilgeous-Alexander had the clairvoyance to commit to the franchise early, and never once has anyone uttered a desire for elsewhere.
“Sam and Mark. Their approach. Winning mentality,” Gilgeous-Alexander told Yahoo Sports. “Building habits. The things they prioritize are winning things, and it’s no coincidence we’re winners.”
They’re not just winners, they’re exhausted champions, etched in history.
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