The 2024-25 NBA season will come to a close tonight. Game 7. NBA Finals. Let’s do this.
Indiana Pacers @ Oklahoma City Thunder – 5:00 PM PT / 8:00 PM ET
- Series tied 3-3
NBA Finals Open Thread – Sunday, June 22
Winner take all.
By Tony Xypteras | 56 Comments | Jun 22, 2025
Jun 19, 2025; Indianapolis, Indiana, USA; Indiana Pacers guard Tyrese Haliburton (0) defends against a shot by Oklahoma City Thunder guard Luguentz Dort (5) in the third quarter during game six of the 2025 NBA Finals at Gainbridge Fieldhouse. Mandatory Credit: Kyle Terada-Imagn Images
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Pacers have been proving me wrong for a while now, and I am loving it. Hoping they can do it one more time.
Heading to the arena now with my bibby jersey on.
One last game for all the marbles. Can the Pacers shock everyone yet again and Hali ends up Finals MVP?
I can’t imagine the dismissive little chap and Monte are watching this one.
Barring a historic performance if tge pacers win the mvp will be siakim
Would love to see Hali win MVP but seems Siakim more deserving thru 6 games .
Ultimate team of destiny moment. Go TH!
Unrelated but KD is headed to Houston. Probably means that DRoz becomes the Heat’s consolation prize. I’d be satisfied with matching salary and their first rounder this year.
Unlikelt hey give the Kings that 1st for DDR. Salary and a young player, maybe a 2nd too.
I’ve whipped out my Hali Kings jersey! Let’s gooo
Closest we’ll probably ever be to sniffing a chip. Peja with the Mavs and Jwill with the heat are still top 2 for now
i need to burn this jersey. Nooo
There goes Hali’s Achilles. I could see it snap loose in the replay. Damn. That sucks.
Oh damn, was it really the achilles? I don’t have cable so not watching it, but man that really sucks. That probably means he’ll miss the entirety of next season.
You could see it pop. Crazy him and JT done for next season.
Dame Lillard as well. And he’s 34, so he might never be the same player again.
Poor Hali. Damn.
How about a Game 7 with OT!
Wouldn’t that be something!?
Still a close game at half. 48-47 Pacers lead.
If Pacers win it and Tyrese gets MVP. Then next year San Antonio wins it all… is that enough for Vivek to hate the NBA life and sell his share of the team?! I mean I’ll take any strand of hope moving forward with this team at this moment.
Oh shit. Just scrolled down and saw Tyrese done… damn best wishes Tyrese. I haven’t watched a minute of nba games since Kings done. Only get some news here and nba sight.
Still anyone’s game, but OKC slowly pulling away.
Pacer TOs are killing them. Hali ability to distribute and space badly missed.
For as much flak DDR gets here, it is at these moments that Indy could have used someone to slow down, iso, get a bucket and 1 or FTs to stop this OKC run. Sadly, the Kings are so far out from needing DDR on their current timeline.
You are correct, and that is why DDR may have value to a contender. The Kings, like you said, have no use for a clutch bucket getter if you are a .500 team. A contender, on the other hand, could use his skillset.
Looking like that’s gonna be a wrap. Sucks what happened to Tyrese, here’s hoping the recovery goes smoothly.
Congrats to OKC on winning. They’re gonna be good for a looooooooooong time.
Congrats to the OKC roster, Daigneault, and Presti, they did a fantastic job this year.
Second’d. Best team won.
Gotta say amazing to be at in the flesh. I don’t think anyone in the arena sat the entire game. Lot of fans cried. Felt bittersweet cause I just witnessed what could be sac one day. Congrats to the thunder and showing how you run a small market team. Devastating and devastated watching Hali go down. I lost real tears. The best part, okc fans all around me shook pacers fans hands. True sportsmanship to an equally deserving fanbase that lost its best guy for a long time and best shot probably ever. Felt both sides of the spectrum and pray those Indy fans don’t have the same feeling we had when Webber went down so long ago!
Thanks for sharing.
Feel horrible for Tyrese (and Indiana). Hope he recovers fully.
Congrats to the Thunder. To win with such a young team, that’s pretty special. It’s hard to build a dynasty with today’s constraint, but they may be in a very good position to do so anyway.
Picked OKC but didn’t think Indiana would be as competitive as they were. Congrats to both teams. We could be seeing a mini dynasty with OKC given their youth, payroll, and remaining draft capital.
idk but I think Houston just made a big mistake with the Durant trade. Durant now 37 is unlikely to stay healthy throughout a full season and he not the same player he was just a few year ago. Houston IMO abandoned a beautiful rebuild plan. At this point, I’d rather have Green and the 10th pick than Durant. Unfortunate for the Kings because there were rumors about a trade that sent DDR to Houston for Brooks and the 10th. Obviously a trade the Kings should have jumped all over if true. Houston needed a scorer and they got one, but I think the price was too high. Durant has been fools gold the last couple of years. We shall see.
Rockets fanblog has been crucifying Jalen the last few months and are actually glad to see him leave. They see him as inefficient (horrible EFG%) and, despite the athleticism, could not turn it on in the playoffs when it mattered the most.
What concerns me more is that the KD trade cannot be finalized until July 6 because of the poison pill contract of Jalen Green. There are whisperings that Phoenix is trying to get a third team involved, and I would not be surprised if Vivek gets duped into trading for Beal’s contract. Sleep is going to be hard to come by in the next few weeks as a Kings fan.
Let’s see. I’d take that Beal contract if we can dump DDR and Monk and pick up a couple of draft picks in the deal. I’d love that pick that Houston just traded to Phoenix. I’d love for that trade to fall apart. I think the Kings and Rockets can make a beneficial deal. The trade that was proposed on ESPN was DeRozan for Brooks and the 10th pick. That would be an absolute steal for the Kings.
If the PHX FO thinks that a line up of Booker, Green, DDR, Beal, and Richards makes noise in the west, DDR for Brooks will make the PHX FO look very Kangzian. Reminds me of their failed 3 headed PG era i.e. Dragic, Bledsoe, and it.
Houston had the second best record in the Western Conference this season, and won a wonderful 52 games with this mostly young team.
But come playoff time – they looked too young, particularly there young guns. Jalen Green was Huerter-esque and Sengun was Sabonis-oid as well, IMO. Who’s the best biggest gun on the market? Kevin-effin’-Durant, who just came off another impressive season.
I think this was a great way for the Rockets to do a bit of “win now” without giving up too much of their already young youth movement (remember, they have Jarabi Smith, Jr. and Reed Shephard and with the already blossoming star in Amen Thompson, as well as our favorites in Tari Eason and another nice piece in Cam Whitmore). To me, they don’t need to get younger “for the future”. They need to get playoff wins. Hello, Kevin Durant.
I think this is a well thought out and decisive move for Houston.
For Phoenix, they get another frontcourt player, a mid-late lottery pick this year, a Dillon Brooks/Greyson Allen extremely hate-able duo – they should get back Garrison Mathews and we can fully detest them.
To me, this speaks to: Expect Devin Booker in another Uni.
It’s not about Houston getting younger, to me it’s getting a little more seasoning. Senjun, Green, Smith, Sheppard and Thompson are only going to get better. To disrupt that core for a 37 year old star with a history of injuries and rapidly declining IMO was a bad idea. Reminds me of the Nets. Marks was rebuilding that team nicely and abandoned ship and went for the big 3 superstars and it failed.
I say this as someone who believes Kevin Durant is a top 10 player of all time. That Kevin Durant no longer exists.
Really like what Phoenix did here. If I’m the GM, I keep Booker, dump Beal and use the draft assets to build a nice future.
Great series. Well fought by both teams. Both teams are great models for how to build.
Seeing how well coached and disciplined both teams were on both sides of the floor makes you realize how far…really really really far away the Kings are from contending. Sigh, life as a Kings fan is nothing but pain.
Yup, the roster isn’t even playoff worthy and the coach is the most inexperienced in the league. If anyone in that front office thinks this team is competitive I really have to question their basketball intellect.
Agree, seems the term 2 years away from being 2 years away is accurate .
So let the offseason begin. The most exciting time to be a Kings fan, because the regular season isn’t nearly as fun!
If I’m not mistaken the King have between now and the 29th to decide what they want to do with Keon’s contract situation. If I had to guess, I feel they decline his TO and let him hit RFA. They then match any other offers and retain him. He might even sign a deal with the Kings outright.
Terrance Davis is technically still rostered, but his 25-26 contract if fully unguaranteed. I”m not sure of the CBA rules on his deal, but could it be traded to a team that then cuts him to lower the cap? If so, he could be a nice little sweetener to some apron team looking to save money.
With no other bigs and a roster to fill out, I imagine Perry will choose to pick up the cheap TO on Isaac Jones, but who knows.
Hollinger has Keon as the #10 FA this summer. Behind the Athletic paywall.
Has him rated as worth more than the MLE at 24.7 million. It’s going to be a tricky needle to thread.
If he can get that kind of money I fear Vivek let him walk, because that would totally cap them out. The cheap ass move would be to pick up his TO, get one year of very cheap production then let him walk in free agency. And for anyone who doubts the Kings can mess this up, just look back to they handled Isaiah Thomas.
Yeah, that’s the worry. If that’s too much for them to spend, then trading him now may be the best move. Or pick up the option and trade him at the deadline.
Maybe he won’t get that much in RFA. The new aprons are changing things in ways I don’t understand yet.
The “Let’s trade Luka so we don’t have to pay him the supermax” seems like something that will happen more often.
The “Big 3 Max contract guys and minimums to surround them” aka the Fakers model may be dying. Just too limiting.
If you’re wanting to max out at say 190 mil to stay out of the apron stuff. Can try to spend 100 on the first 3(guys on their first or second contract). Then you have to average 10 mil per for the other 9.
We also have complained, time and again, of the Kings bidding against themselves (that’s a long list).
It is absolutely a “let’s see what they do” time of the year in Kingsland.
If one were searching for optimism from a Kings fan perspective, it would be that the last two NBA championships were not won by mercs, but by keystone players (Jokic and SGA) that rode out rebuilds on their respective teams. Hat tip to both of them.
The catch, of course, is pragmatic ownership and management, and therein lies the rub for the Kings.
And 1 – Indy is a shining example of what can happen when you use your draft assets well, make the big trade when it presents itself (without counting pennies) and don’t panic fire your head coach. Great season for them and their fans.
Unfortunately our owner not only counts pennies, but repeatedly goes after every shiny penny(Monta, Buddy, Zach) he sees.
Agree wholeheartedly.
Standing ovation to OKC and their ownership and front office and coaching, they won this championship after completing a long and top 5 of all time number of wins in a season campaign (3 seasons of build, and 3 seasons this year: Fall/Spring/Summer).
And as good as that was – just as much respect and congratulations go to the Indiana Pacers who were ready to be crowned Champs for all but the second half of a Game 7. What an exciting and fantastic season for the 4th best team in the Eastern Conference regular season (50 wins). They conquered the Bucks, the Cavaliers and the Knicks – that’s the 5, 1, and 3 seeds. We pooh-poohed their first two series wins against injured Milwaukee and more injured Cleveland, but they dogfought (word?) some entertaining last moment victories against New York (they fired their Coach!, created a legend status for Ty Haliburton) and damn if they didn’t have us all at the edge of our seats for a Game 7 that no one dared predict with confidence over who would win.
And now we turn to the draft, free agency, post season trade season – our the hopeful part of the year for us Sacramento Kings fans.
Summer League starts on a Thursday this year!
Vegas Summer League that is
Draft is this Wednesday and Thursday. Perry has a day and a half to get us into Wednesday, as rumored.
It is going to be a fun week in the NBA, I am expecting lots of ground shifting – some seismic, some semi-seismic, some topsoil
No shi_ it’s about using your draft assets well and making the right trades. How profound.
Saw a post somewhere that the Kings are the only team to draft 3 All-NBA PGs this century.
The Kings draft history has been spotty for sure but they have drafted well enough to be relevant. It’s the subsequent moves that have been a disaster. A few us on this site warned about the sugar high plan of trading Halliburton, trading for Huerter etc. While we had a brief moment of success and excitement the plan ultimately failed as we predicted. I’d love to be moving forward with Fox, Halliburton and Murray and a nice draft pick right now.
Instead we have a bloated payroll of bad contracts and no draft pick this year. A 3-4 tear down and rebuild is required to be relevant at some point.
And we’re old
Just to clarify, there is no guarantee the Kings get Keegan. The Kings won that pick in part because Fox and Sabonis hardly played after the trade. The Kings jumped in the lottery that year. A few more wins with Hali on the team in place of Sabonis and the Kings may have drafted Johnny Davis or Ousmane Dieng. Would Richaun Holmes still be the starting center? Does Monk come in free agency? Who knows where the Kings could be today.
Oh Geez, just to clarify, they could have dropped further yes and gotten Jalen Williams. I think we get the point.
By the way, I screamed from the mountain top don’t overpay for Holmes. I said 3 years for $30 million with the third year being a team option.
Maybe we look at trading Murray if he commands a decent haul. I’m not comfortable being in the position where we have to offer a max contract to keep him. I like him but not sure I like him that much. As if now, he’s a 4th option on a championship contender.
Keep your eye on Cedric Howard from Wash St. as the years move forward. Maybe the next Jalen Williams sleeper.
Kon Kneupple will be the biggest bust in the draft should he go in the top 10. I don’t know who the hell he’s going to guard in the NBA.
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