Game 7 offers perfect coda to riveting 2025 NBA playoffs, all-time classic NBA Finals
OKLAHOMA CITY — Nobody wants to know the ending of a story before it begins.
When you really crystallize the question of why the NBA playoffs have been so great, with two months of high-level hoops drama that will crescendo with Sunday's Game 7 between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Indiana Pacers on Sunday night, it's because that truth has been honored in a way that has made the whole experience wildly entertaining.
Ratings be damned (more on that later).
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The finale alone is enough to deem this postseason special, as it's the first Finals Game 7 since the Cleveland Cavaliers' historic upset of the Golden State Warriors in 2016, the fifth since 1994 and the 20th in the league's 79-year history. Add in the fact that this Game 7 pits this historically dominant Thunder team against a relentless Pacers squad that no one outside of their locker room thought would be here, and the element-of-surprise theme that has been there since the beginning will officially carry through until the end.
Now, if you take a broader look at this postseason, reflecting on the 15 series that unfolded from the first round through the end, you'll come to this informal conclusion: Seven were of the up-for-grabs variety, ending in six or seven games, and we never had to suffer through a round that was void of suspense (there was at least one up-for-grabs series in all four rounds). There were four seven-game series in all, one shy of the league record of five (which happened in 1994, 2014 and 2016).
All of which is to say that the good times rolled all the way through.
Who can forget that '80s-style matchup between Golden State and the Houston Rockets in the first round, when the Steph Curry-Jimmy Butler-Draymond Green Warriors survived the Rockets' physicality and brashness of youth by winning Game 7 on their Toyota Center floor? Or the New York Knicks' magical run that had the Garden popping until, well, the Pacers came along and burst their bubble in the East finals? The Cavs — that East-leading team that won 64 games in the regular season but fell to Indiana in just five games in the East semifinals — knew that painful feeling well.
There was the magnificent Nikola Jokić and his 'We Believe' Denver Nuggets, fresh off the stunning firing of general manager Calvin Booth and coach Michael Malone with just three games left in the regular season, coming back from a 2-1 series deficit to down the Los Angeles Clippers in the first round, only to fall to the Thunder in seven games. (In retrospect, Denver can feel pretty good about its current place in the league's hierarchy.) Anthony Edwards and his Minnesota Timberwolves made franchise history by getting to the West finals for the second consecutive season — taking out the LeBron James-Luka Dončić Los Angeles Lakers and the Warriors along the way — but were simply outclassed by Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and his rolling Thunder.
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Between the blend of old and young star power, the return of gritty, defense-first basketball that has been a focal point of the NBA's in these past few seasons and the absurd number of (mostly Tyrese Haliburton) game winners, a level of quality and excellence was on display that should make the league's new media rights partners ecstatic about the product it paid such a pretty penny for last summer. Even if it takes a while for the 'casuals' to catch up.
As you've likely heard by now, national television network ratings were down 2 percent in the regular season. It will be interesting to see where the postseason ratings land — there was an early spike followed by a dip in the conference finals — but this Game 7 alone is likely to give the league a big-time bump.
But the luxury of the league being on the front end of its 11-year, $75 billion deal with NBC, ESPN and Amazon is that there's no better time to grow the game holistically than right now. With the LeBron and Steph era nearing its end and players such as SGA, Haliburton, Edwards and others making their playoff mark, these are the kind of getting-to-know-you playoffs that should pay off in the form of increased profiles for the younger superstars and, in turn, more connectivity with the fans who come to appreciate their games.
The league should lean into this parity era, with Sunday's winner marking the seventh consecutive season in which a new champion has been crowned. This finals matchup is a perfect promotional ending, with this 68-win Thunder squad showing dominance is still possible in the second-apron era and the plucky Pacers (who started the season 10-15 before finishing 50-32) reminding the masses underdog tales are still in play, too. It's the best of both worlds in that regard.
As NBA commissioner Adam Silver discussed with reporters before Game 1, and as USA Today's Jeff Zillgitt detailed recently in this on-point column, the days of ratings being the be-all and end-all measure of business success are no more.
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'The whole way media works and television works has changed so dramatically,' Silver said. 'Just by way of example, all of us of a certain age know it used to be the case that new programs launched in the fall. There were never new programs in the summer. Nobody thinks that way anymore. New programs are launching all the time on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Peacock, whatever service you use. We don't think that way.
'Ratings have changed from what they used to be. Netflix is the most valuable pure play media company out there. Nobody in this room knows what their ratings are. We don't even think in terms of ratings. We think maybe in terms of popularity, buzz around a program. We're going through a transition, and we're going to work through that.'
To that point, the Netflix folks are positively ecstatic about how their second season of 'Starting 5' is shaping up. As luck would have it, two of the five stars it decided to profile behind the scenes were Gilgeous-Alexander and Haliburton. And no matter what happens next, it's guaranteed to have a riveting finale episode.
Much like the playoffs themselves.
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