The OKC Thunder Are NBA Champions

The OKC Thunder Are NBA Champions

it is official the 2024 2025 NBA champions is the OKC Thunder it is bittersweet that the season is over like the 2025 postseason gave us gamewinners comebacks upsets gave us everything so I’m I’m kind of sad about it being over and I can’t wait to do the the rewatch deep dive later in the offseason when I get bored about what the hell happened in the 2025 postseason but the Thunder just wrapped off a 68 win regular season with the Larry O’Brien trophy and whether or not you respect his game you like him as a person or a player you got to you got to tip your cap to Shay Gibbs Alexander because just at the age of 26 he did he just did something that’s like very rare he won a scoring title he won the MVP he won a championship and then he wrapped it off with the finals MVP that that really is legendary stuff i got so much love and respect for this Pacers team man we gonna talk about them in a second for them to have that run in the fourth quarter where like okay see everybody in that arena was like oh my goodness no no for them to have that level of fight considering the circumstances I got nothing but love and I’ll always remember that team too and I feel like it’s rare for me to like have that kind of mindset towards the team that lost in the finals but that’s how good of a run it was for them and that’s how much fight they gave in every single series but again we going to talk about that now and we get we get to the third quarter and you know the Pacers are throwing the ball around they’re turning the ball over left to right and OKC ends up going up by high double digits or whatever and I’m thinking to myself if OKC closes out this game how will I remember them as a team and it is very simple and it is something that I’ve been very redundant when talking about it is that legendary defense that we have been seeing this team has the best turnover margin of any team in the postseason this team has just been an elite level defense and I know we’ve say it time and time again but now I’m thinking about it and look look let me show you how elite of a defensive run this was for them in the regular season these are the the stats right the offensive and defensive ratings in the first round of the playoffs they went against the Memphis Grizzlies who were sixth in offense the second round in the playoffs they went against the Denver Nuggets who were fourth in offense in the conference finals they went against the Minnesota Timberwolves who were eighth in offense and in the NBA finals they went against the Indiana Pacers who were 10th in offense y’all know that that is skewed based on the first 25 or so games of the season so this legendary defense just went against four offensive juggernauts and not only went against these four offensive juggernauts shut the faucet off quite a bit now of course we got two seven game series and they won like they just steamrolled their way through these things but I think a lot of the stuff that we saw of them going to seven game series was because the offense wasn’t as advertised that defense really was though so that’s how I remember this team forever engraved man i will forever remember this team for exactly that um this was a game that I think Chad Homer put on an absolute masterclass on the defensive side of the ball uh the the shooting and the offense has not been there for him this seven game series i thought tonight he was pretty good and and picking his spots and and using his body to get some easy ones but it was the defensive side of the ball where there was just stretches in that third quarter where nobody could score other than TJ McConnell shout out to TJ McConnell um and Chad Homer was blocking everything he was switching out he was preventing cuts he was just an absolute monster and I think it’s so easy for a player to recognize like man I’m shooting 11% from three and 30 something% from the field as a sevenfooter damn this just not really for me i can’t stay locked in and he just recognized the stakes recognized where he was and just really played a phenomenal phenomenal game um Sheay has been so good at the game by-game adjustments like you just don’t get two like poor decision-making games in a row from Shay last game I thought he looked pretty pretty bad when it came to decision-m you know and that was partially because the internet paces did an amazing job of mixing in when they were going to help where they were going to help from and who was who they were sending in this one I thought he really did think the game a little bit better and ended up playmaking better which in time ended up mean meaning that they got better looks a team that had struggled to even take three-pointers in this game i thought that they got what 16 18 up in the first half i’m like “Yeah OKC let’s do it.” They took 40-pointers tonight that’s not OKC but they recognize the the time and the place a lot of that’s because man when you get a team to turn the ball over 21 times you get so many extra possessions the Patriots shot 70 shots today uh almost 20 more shots from the OKC Thunder that is them getting out in transition and them getting second chance opportunities from Luke Dort in that uh second half and you know the Pacers tried to do everything that they could to match some of that energy to match some of these lineups but obviously they were at a big disadvantage considering what happened in that first first quarter and it I mean it may suck because I think through time it might be remembered as that right what happened with Tyres Hallebertton might be the first thing that comes to mind when you think about the 2025 NBA championship game seven and maybe it should be but I also don’t want to take away from what OKC has put together this entire season right um this is not a surprise champion they won 68 games like I’m already seeing ridiculous hot takes on the timeline even before the game was over about it being the worst champion and if you don’t like the team that’s that’s fine that’s fair everybody has their preferences on the the styles that they want to watch as a basketball fan but the team just won 68 it ain’t like they were a 41 team that went on a run this team has been this good this entire time and for them to win this championship I think they mentioned when they were doing the the whole ceremony it being the second youngest team to ever win this is really special stuff and Sam Prey I think you got to start off there right sam Prey had an opportunity um over a decade ago to build a team that we thought would be in CH championship after championship final series after final series they got one final series and one bad decision well one of the biggest bad decision ended that as a potential dynasty i think Sam Prey learned his lesson after last year right it would have been very easy to try to mortgage some of these younger dudes to go be big seller or big buyers after losing to the Dallas Mavericks last season he stayed put he got a guy like Isaiah Hardenstein who was able to impact these games and just watch the team grow around like a team that basically went from what 19 wins to NBA champions in three seasons that sound like a KOT for a Q video it happened in real life it just happened in real life and I don’t know if I expected at 2:00 in the morning when the Paul George trade broke that eventually that would lead to OKC winning the championship if anything I thought that that I’m not trying to rub it in Clippers fans i promise you I’m not uh I thought if anything that trade was setting the Clippers up to go on multiple runs and instead it sets OKC up for their first championship in 2025 and who the hell knows what happens after this right even though they were this juggernaut 68 win team it ain’t like we can guarantee that they’re going to go back so the fact that you get one like so many people have talked about this whether it be Steve Kerr or these people that won multiple championships always talk about how tough just getting that first one is and OKC can say confidently that we got it and we deserve it and I respect the hell out of that i want to talk about Tyres Hallebertton though i want to talk about Tyres Hallebertton because like I mentioned when you think about the game seven I think that the Hallebertton injury might pop off more um than anything else that happened in this game as y’all know Tyrus Hallebertton is my dog he’s one of my favorite players in all of basketball it’s rare that I feel as devastated as I did when that injury happened it’s rare um I’ve had it a few different times in my life right you think about my first year of high school when Vro Rose goes down against the 76ers obviously that’s the moment there but I feel like if you are a fan of sports and you grew up wanting to make it to the league this is the type of game you you you shoot in a driveway about game seven of the NBA finals my team needs me right you’ve you’ve done that before right game on the line i got a ball right here game on the line kenny Beats takes a shot and he misses oh there was four more seconds added to the shot like that you live for game sevens so when he goes down even before they showed the injury like a replay and you you see the the pop oh my god i can’t I can’t stop thinking about or visualize because they played on broadcast 100 times when he went down the emotion that he had i haven’t talked to him i’m sure that emotion is not about oh I’m in pain i’m sure that emotion is about damn this is game seven and I can’t be there to potentially win this game for my guys and I feel so bad for him i feel so bad for Pacer fans and I’m sick to my stomach over some of the conversations that have happened over the last I don’t know five days or so when it comes to this this this calf strain i I hate I hate the way it it is talked about at times a player plays through an injury and struggles from the field when he ain’t giving enough a player decides to not play and now he don’t care about the team skip Bless had tweets before Terry Salmer goes down with his injury making fun of the idea that he was faking an injury and that his Achilles popped and the medical professionals that do sports injuries on Twitter are saying “Yeah a calf strain can lead to that.” I just I don’t know what people want i just don’t know because if he would have went down with that injury like he did in the game and decided not to come back he would have been called soft and not been called a bad leader because he wasn’t there for his guys and he was there for his guys in game seven he had three threes in the first quarter and it’s Achilles snap and it’s like well come on man i I just I feel so bad this organization has never been this close to winning and they lost and they haven’t officially called it a Achilles tear but we saw that they said a lower leg injury an Achilles injury we saw that so not only was he not able to to be there for his guys for game seven on court he may not be able to play at all next season dame Tatum Hallebertton Kyrie Irving towards ACL uh before the postseason last year we’re about to go and I feel like I’m missing somebody off the top of my head we’re about to go into a 2025 2026 season without some of the best players in the league and you know some of these are like the Damen Lillard one and in the um and the Tyres Hallebert one feels pretty similar i’m injured but it’s the playoffs baby i I got to do something i got to go out there and try to help my team i think it was Gilbert Arenus that said he texted or talked to uh um Tatum and Dame about their injuries and he said that both of them said that they had calf strains before it happened so how about this now and I’m sure everybody’s going to forget about this next year and somebody else is going to be going through an injury and we going to make fun of them for not not playing when you see somebody’s out with an injury or playing through an injury accept it at face value these dudes are so hyper competitive nobody is out there especially not the the cream of the crop the AllNBA players are not about to fake an injury y’all come on man it’s so frustrating the way our game is covered i hate so much about it um but I was I was genuinely emotional i ain’t afraid to say it i was genuinely emotional man i was genuinely emotional when it happened because win or lose I don’t know what happens in this game if he plays but he has the opportunity to lay it all on the court and say that if we lost we lost because well you lost with me instead of without me and when they show them walking off the court the camera is following T.J mcconnell who is extremely emotional with with someone i don’t know if that was a relative or whatever and the relative tells the camera “Get out of here then it cuts to the other camera and it’s got Reese on the crutches and he’s he’s hugging TJ McConnell who’s man i don’t know getting to the finals is really hard so to be this close I can understand the the emotion i can understand the emotion i am extremely proud and happy for the OKC Thunder i am extremely proud and happy for the fight that the Pacers gave us this was a seven game series a series that the Pacers were I’m sorry the OKC Thunder were a minus 700 favorite in this one this series should not have gone seven carile even though Pasc should have Whoa siri is Whoa uh Pasc probably played a little bit more regardless it was a great series it was a great series a great season and now we point our attention to the NBA draft in free agency

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