After six fiercely contested NBA Finals games, the truth remains: It's hard to win an NBA title
INDIANAPOLIS — Among the truest things ever said was spoken, one night, at a group dinner. Among the dinner guests was an NBA champion. His team won multiple titles, actually. And as he regaled his fellow diners with tales from his career, he said, declaratively, and from hard-earned experience.
'Going for that ring takes you to some dark places,' he said.
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This s— is hard.
It is hard as hell to win an NBA championship. No matter your pedigree, or your talent, or your will. Or the ability and dedication of your coaches. Or the amount of money your owner has at their disposal. Winning 16 games — four series, four games per series — against the best teams and players on Earth, is a crucible. A kiln of physical and mental fatigue. Not only are your hopes and dreams at stake; so are those of your teammates, your families, your city. You drag the ghosts of your franchise's previous failures on your back. You get the fiercest opponents, their own dreams front of mind and stirring their hearts.
The Oklahoma City Thunder went 68-14 in the regular season. They were, and are, a devastating team, led by league MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and a powerful supporting cast that bludgeoned opponents all year. They were 15-6 in the postseason coming into play Thursday, having taken out Nikola Jokić and the Denver Nuggets, followed by Anthony Edwards and the Minnesota Timberwolves during their postseason run. With one more win, they'd be anointed as one of the greatest single-season teams in history.
That coronation got smacked in the mouth on Thursday by the Indiana Pacers, and their wounded star, Tyrese Haliburton, who Willis Reeded his way through 23 minutes on his strained calf, his example lifting the Pacers in a 108-91 rout that forced Game 7 in Oklahoma City Sunday.
The Thunder may well win on their home court Sunday. They are ferocious there. But other than Alex Caruso, who won a championship with the Los Angeles Lakers in the Orlando Bubble in 2020, no one else on OKC's roster has been at this level before. You can't possibly know what this is like until you go through it, all the way. Oklahoma City, the overwhelming favorite coming into these finals, has been shoved up against a wall by the underdog Pacers.
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'It was hard tonight,' Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. 'Indiana was great and we were not. We have the same opportunity Indiana does on Sunday. Score will be 0-0 when the ball goes up in the air. It's a privilege to play in Game 7s. It's a privilege to play in the finals. As disappointing as tonight was, we're grateful for the opportunity.'
I know that anything that happened more than 20 minutes ago is the province of the olds and the no-longer relevant. But most teams in the history of this league have been denied championships, year after year, career after career. Not because they weren't worthy. But because their opponents were.
'I have a new respect for the guys, the Steph Currys, the LeBrons, that do this year after year after year, and then go play USA Basketball, and do whatever they do,' said Pacers forward Myles Turner, a decade into his own career.
'It is the most mentally grueling, just like, mentally taxing, but most rewarding feeling, going through this grind,' he said. 'It's a 19-day process, is how we look at it. And there's nights you don't sleep. I've been trying to grow my hair out for the longest time, and it's started falling out a little bit from the stress. It's what it is. But again, it's the most rewarding thing, being able to play as long as possible, and get here.'
It is hard to win 16 postseason games and carry the Larry O'Brien Trophy around for the next year. The Larry was in an undisclosed location somewhere in Gainbridge Fieldhouse Thursday, and would only come out after the Thunder finished off the Pacers in Game 6.
They did not.
In that futility, at least for now, they have company.
The team with the greatest single-season record in NBA history, the 2015-16 Golden State Warriors, didn't do it either. They went 73-9 that season, a win percentage of .890. Their victory over the '16 Thunder, in an epic seven-game Western Conference finals, permanently shattered that Oklahoma City team. Kevin Durant left OKC after those playoffs … to join the Dubs! And yet, that Golden State team, the best in the history of the league, doesn't have a ring. LeBron James, at one end of the floor at Oracle Arena, followed by Kyrie Irving, at the other, didn't allow it, in the last two minutes of Game 7.
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The pursuit of a ring almost broke the late Jerry West, one of the greatest players of all time. He never got over losing six times in the finals to the Boston Celtics. Ever.
Boston's Kevin McHale played on what became a ruined ankle, for two months, during the 1987 playoffs. Scottie Pippen's back tortured him during Game 6 of the 1998 finals, when he went back to the locker room, again and again, to be able to squeeze out four or five minutes on the court. Isiah Thomas turned his ankle gruesomely early in the third quarter of Game 6 of the '88 finals, went to the bench for a minute, came back out, and scored a finals single-quarter record 25 points in the period, gimping up the floor in pursuit of the play. The Pistons lost.
After the game, Thomas was on crutches. Somebody asked him how his ankle was.
'It's pretty f—ed up, I can tell you that,' he said.
The aforementioned Mr. Reed tore his thigh in Game 5 of the 1970 finals, against West, Wilt Chamberlain and the Lakers. He missed Game 6. But, of course, he played in Game 7. He scored exactly four points. It didn't matter. Walt Frazier had the greatest Game 7 in finals history that almost no one remembers because of Reed's example. The New York Knicks won their first championship that night. They won a second in 1973.
Fifty-two years later, they're still seeking their third.
'Chuck Daly once said, if people had any idea how difficult it was to win one game in the NBA, in the regular season, one game, they would have — you know, they would be shocked,' Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. 'There's so many things coming at you, and you're swimming upstream, you're going against great coaching, you're going against high-, high-, high-level players, and guys that go hard and are super skilled and all that kind of stuff. This time of year, not everybody's been deep in the playoffs or to the finals, but I guarantee you that people have a very good idea what goes on and how difficult it is to get here and how challenging it is. I do believe that.'
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Playing through a strained calf is no joke. It usually puts a player out a week or two, sometimes longer. Guys playing on strained calves can find themselves dealing with much more serious injuries soon after.
Haliburton was a shell of himself in Game 5 Monday night. He didn't make a single field goal. He only scored four points. He dragged his leg around like it was packed with wet leaves and gravel from the driveway. That he would play Thursday was no secret. That he would play as well as he did — 14 points, five assists, one turnover, for a plus-25 — was, of course, inspiring.
But what he had to do to get on the floor!
'After (Game 5) I went to sleep, woke up,' he began.
'Went to the hyperbaric chamber (Tuesday morning). Got an MRI. Had a meeting with a couple of specialists, and my agents, and the organization. And then, the next day, more treatment at the gym, more stuff at the gym. I tried to get some shots (up). And then, just round-the-clock (treatment). Hyperbaric again. Carl (Eaton, Indiana's associate head athletic trainer) and Justin (Tallard, one of the Pacers' physical therapists) have been at my house, came in, put H-Wave (electrical stimulation) on me, and doing a bunch of treatment that way. And then (Thursday) morning, hyperbaric again. I'm usually not a game-day hyperbaric person, but I was just trying to give myself the best shot that I could. … and then, more H-Wave, more treatment at the house.'
Haliburton said he won't listen to the 'poison' narratives that will permeate the sports talkosphere between now and Game 7 Sunday night. He wouldn't be able to, anyway. He will spend much of the next 48 hours the same way he spent the previous 48 before Thursday. Trying to coax one more night, one more special moment, out of his barking calf. One more.
Because winning this thing is hard. Really hard.
(Photo of Tyrese Haliburton: Matthew Stockman / Getty Images)
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