A PURE CHAMPIONSHIP🏆 Windy credits Thunder BUT is ‘personally affected’ by Hali injury | SC with SVP

A PURE CHAMPIONSHIP🏆 Windy credits Thunder BUT is ‘personally affected’ by Hali injury | SC with SVP

the Hallebertton injury is the one storyline and I’ll get your thought on it but I don’t want that unless it’s your headline no no i I don’t want that to eclipse what has just happened but it’s difficult because there are these two storylines going side by side aren’t they i’m going to have a complicated memory of tonight um this is an or an organic championship for the Thunder they built this team from scratch they they were down to nothing they drafted these guys they developed these guys nobody forced their way here via trade nobody you know they didn’t win the lottery they did this through grit and hard work they were great from the first moment the day of the season they earned this thing all the way through they are a pure champion doing it for the first time even if they win two or three more championships with this group nothing will feel as pure as this and yet I feel sick and I’m not recovered from seeing the slow motion of his of his calf and even they won the game in the third quarter with a classic Thunder run with turnovers and the and the flurry and everything but as the fourth quarter is happening and I’m watching the Thunder go through this dry spell and the Pacers get the lead I think to nine or whatever 10 10 i’m thinking if they had Hallebertton that this is going to go down to it and they’d have been thinking the same they’d have been wondering the same thing wouldn’t they i um I just feel sick about it i don’t I I You’re right nothing i hate it when anybody puts an asterisk on this because this is a celebration not only of tonight but of the full season the full build and everything like that and I and I really want to put a hard period and then a paragraph but this is one I don’t know in 23 years if I’ve ever felt more personally affected by seeing something on the court why do you think that is you know the Durant injury was terrible durant was a two-time champion you know was a two-time champion he had gone to the mountaintop um you know the you know Paul George I was in the night it was in in Vegas that night when Paul George I felt horrible about that i felt horrible about that he was able to recover you know I was in the building this year when Tatum got hurt i was in the building for all of those i felt different about this was visceral this was visceral in all honesty the air came out of the building the thunders intensity level dropped there’s no doubt um I think it’s human nature i mean you see the guy go down and they probably figure that we’ll be able to get to the finish line because we’ll have enough i and unless you’re a fan of in order the Bucks the Cavs or the or the Knicks then the guy took fans on a joy ride with what he did and I understand if you’re fans of in Milwaukee Cleveland and New York you say “Yeah maybe not so much us.” But if you love the game I don’t know how you couldn’t love what the man did and then I said the legs for him to come out the way he did tonight it felt like he was ready to show off on this stage i’m not saying win the game but certainly he might have won the game they were ahead at the half i understand they were ahead at the half so I feel like first off I just feel terrible for Tyrese and his family because he knew in that exact moment you saw he’s saying no no no because he knew exactly what happened he looks behind him for the person that kicked him like we hear from everybody that this happens to and he knows what happens and he can’t believe this risk he is tasting his moment he has hit three three-pointers they’ve got the lead he is having the moment of his life and it comes with the worst moment of his life because of the risk that he’s taken and so it’s absolutely gutting and I can’t get past it right now i’m not over it as somebody who watches the game i have no skin in the game and I can’t get over it right now the whole rest of the first half my stomach is in knots i’ve never felt that way about watching a game before so I have a very mixed feeling about this and I don’t want to take anything away from the Thunder they need to be celebrated they deserve to be celebrated and I think you’re framing it well i think I’m just saying for me sitting here I completely relate to what you’re saying i went into the hallway to see that team walk up because I wanted to see it and I saw a resolute bunch man and the things they’re saying can’t repeat them all but you can imagine it’s a fiery bunch that believes okay we’re good we got all we need to do this and I thought right on that’s what you want to see but the truth of the matter is seven games in against this team you need that guy to win this game and they didn’t have him and so ultimately I think it’s this season if you told me before the playoffs started the Thunder are going to win I’d say well that feels like an appropriate outcome based on who they were throughout and I would still say as much uh but you do feel you feel cheated that that once you got to this stage of the competition that it wasn’t all our good on all of your good the correct team won but it still feels it just it just feels a little l especially because I’m not sure the Pacers are going to get another shot at it the Thunder are going to get more shots i’m not sure the Pacers are and not to do with that injury it’s just a lot of things had to fall into place for them to make this run and so you know and he he hits those three threes like and also you know the reason they lost control of the game was because of turnovers of course third quarter he’s their best guy he’s their best he doesn’t turn the ball over when he’s on his game mhm so I don’t know i um it’s a this is a tough one to square it’s a tough one well the beauty of of writing is that it’s not as immediate as this so you’ll have a time to take a deep breath yeah clear your thoughts clear the screen and then you sit down you start doing what you do so well and you’re right when you want when you want to write about this Thunder team and what they what they were from the fall until now the summer and it’s the summer all across the country what do you where do you start with this team i I think it’s amazing is the day that the Thunder decided to blow up their team which was the day they decided to do the Paul George trade they took the first step towards winning the championship because the night they traded Paul George they got Shay Gildas Alexander and I I tell this story you know when Adrien Wjinarski broke that news because it’s a shocking news story okay it came out in the middle of the night his story Shay Guiltus Alexander’s name appears for the first time in the fourth paragraph guy in the fourth paragraph woge you’re burying the lead the guy just won MVP all the MVPs all the trophies by the way nobody credits him he did win the Oscar Robertson trophy too for Western Conference MVP put that on the mantle he’s got four MVPs gives him the fourth paragraph so to me that’s what really the story this is they started to win this championship the day they gave up on their last team and that is a a lesson for the whole NBA there’s there’s for every team that is rising in the league one must be falling there’s a finite number of wins only one team can celebrate and this was a fiveyear journey that got them here and they didn’t skip any steps and that should be celebrated

Brian Windhorst joins SportsCenter with Scott Van Pelt to share his immediate reaction to the Oklahoma City Thunder winning the 2025 NBA Finals in seven games, noting that the Indiana Pacers may have mounted a comeback had Tyrese Haliburton not exited early due to injury.

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