One game to win it all: Thunder host Pacers in NBA Finals game 7
Myles Turner of the Indiana Pacers drives to the basket against Chet Holmgren of the Oklahoma City Thunder in game six of the NBA Finals (Maddie Meyer)
The Oklahoma City Thunder and Indiana Pacers are poised for an epic championship showdown on Sunday, the Thunder seeking to crown an historic season with a victory over a tenacious Pacers team that has stunningly forced a rare NBA Finals game seven.
"We've got one game," Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton said. "One game. Nothing that has happened before matters and nothing that's going to happen after matters. It's all about that one game."
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The Thunder certainly know it too.
"One game for everything you ever dreamed of," Oklahoma City's newly minted NBA Most Valuable Player Shai Gilgeous-Alexander said after the Thunder slumped to a blowout loss in game six.
"If you win it, you get everything. If you lose it, you get nothing."
The Thunder remain heavy favorites. A victory on their home floor on Sunday would crown a dazzling campaign in which they led the league with 68 regular-season wins and set a league record for average scoring margin.
Gilgeous-Alexander led the NBA in scoring with 32.7 points per game and could become the first player since Golden State's Stephen Curry in 2015 to win the MVP award and the title in the same season.
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In addition, home teams are 15-4 in Finals game sevens.
But the last time the championship series went the distance, in 2016, LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers completed a stunning triumph over the Golden State Warriors in Oakland.
And the Pacers have proven repeatedly this season, and in this series, that they can't be counted out.
The Pacers opened their season with four straight defeats and at 10-15 were languishing in 10th place in the East with almost a third of the campaign gone.
But with a raft of injuries behind them, the Pacers had the best record in the East from New Year's Day to the end of the regular season.
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Seeded fourth in the East, the Pacers beat the Giannis Antetokounmpo-led Milwaukee Bucks, the top-seeded Cleveland Cavaliers and the third-seeded New York Knicks to reach the Finals.
Haliburton, inexplicably voted the "most overrated" player in the league in an anonymous player poll this season, has had the last laugh with a string of clutch performances -- including the last-gasp game-winner in the Pacers' 111-110 game-one triumph.
The Pacers won two of the first three games of the series before the Thunder won two straight to give themselves a first chance to clinch in game six -- when Haliburton shook off a right calf strain to inspire his teammates to a lopsided victory that knotted the series at three games apiece.
Now Indiana have a chance to claim a first NBA championship for a franchise that won three American Basketball Association titles but struggled so much financially after joining the NBA in 1976 that their future was in doubt.
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"I think the expectations for this group from an external viewpoint coming into the year weren't very high," Haliburton said. "They weren't very high coming into the playoffs. They weren't very high going into the second round of the playoffs. They weren't very high going into the third round. They weren't very high now.
"I think we just have done a great job of just staying together. There's not a group of guys I'd rather go to war with."
- Use the muscles -
The top-seeded Thunder swept the Memphis Grizzlies, then beat Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets in seven games before ousting the Minnesota Timberwolves to become the youngest team to reach the Finals since 1977.
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They can claim the franchise's first title since a controversial move to Oklahoma City in 2008, having won it all in 1979 as the Seattle SuperSonics.
Gilgeous-Alexander says the Thunder have what it takes to win if they play to their potential.
"I don't think I have to do anything special because of the stage," he said. "We just have to be who we've been all year and then use the muscles that we've trained all year."
Both teams stressed the importance of setting aside the emotion of the moment, but Gilgeous-Alexander said the Thunder must play with a sense of urgency against the relentless Pacers.
"It has to be an emphasis," he said. "It has to be the top of our mind. It has to be all we care about, and above all, we just have to want to do it."
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