It would be hyperbolic to suggest that Tyrese Haliburton single-handedly silenced the NBA’s loudest arena Thursday night, sucked the air out of 18,000 fans, and knocked the swagger right out of the league’s deepest, boldest, swaggiest young powerhouse. Hyperbolic, but not entirely wrong.
The decibel meters were deep in the red for all of Game 1 at Oklahoma City’s downtown arena, where every Thunder fan dutifully wore their branded white T-shirts and roared to excruciating levels as Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and his pals methodically built a double-digit lead over the Indiana Pacers in the opener of the 2025 NBA Finals. And then, in an instant, the place went … well, whatever is just short of silent, by OKC standards. It was suddenly, shockingly quiet-ish. The decibel meters sputtered.
For weeks, the entire NBA watched in awe as Haliburton—the Pacers’ clutch-shooting, choke-mimicking, aura-farming star—slayed one opponent after another on a stunning march through the Eastern Conference playoffs. Now, it was supposed to be the Thunder’s turn, as Haliburton rose and launched from 21 feet with the final seconds ticking down, his shot swishing with three-tenths of a second remaining, completing a furious fourth-quarter comeback and delivering a 111-110 victory.
It looked and felt like so many other spectacular Haliburton moments this spring, in Milwaukee and Cleveland and New York. When it happens to someone else, it’s entrancing, entertaining, scintillating, even. When it happens to you?
“I mean, it sucks,” said Thunder star Jalen Williams. “I don't know.”
There was a lot that Thunder players and coaches found hard to articulate late Thursday—like how they could let a 15-point fourth-quarter lead evaporate, or lose a game in which they’d forced 25 turnovers (including a staggering 18 in the first half), or surrender the opener of the Finals after being hailed for days as not just the overwhelming favorites in this series, but potentially the next great NBA power.
Instead, they are down 0-1 and grasping for reassuring clichés.
“The series isn't first to one; it's first to four,” said Gilgeous-Alexander, who scored 38 points in his Finals debut. “We have four more games to get; they have three.”
The Thunder, with an average age of 24.7 among their core, might be the youngest team to make the Finals this millennium, but from SGA on down, they exude the calm and confidence of a seasoned contender. There was hardly a glimmer of panic or even mild concern in anyone’s voice as the Thunder players took turns at the postgame podium. They have the confidence of a team that’s survived a few heartbreaks and heart attacks on their way here.
More on Game 1
It was just four weeks ago that the Thunder were stunned by the Denver Nuggets in the opener of their second-round series, on a late 3-pointer by Aaron Gordon. They fell behind 2-1 in the series and then won three of the final four games, capped by a 32-point blowout victory in Game 7. There was much less stress against the Minnesota Timberwolves in the Western Conference finals, but the Thunder did absorb a shocking 42-point loss in Game 3 of that series before winning the next two games to close it out.
When a team wins 68 games in the regular season, sweeps its first-round series, and loses just four times before the Finals, it starts to appear invincible. They might even believe it themselves, until someone proves otherwise. It’s easy to lose sight of the details.
That’s the thing with young teams on the rise, no matter how talented and steady and mature they might seem: They still have lessons to learn along the way. The main one on this night? You have to finish what you started. Aside from a brief tie at 10-10 in the first quarter, the Thunder led all night, until, of course, they didn’t at the final second.
“It is a 48-minute game,” Gilgeous-Alexander said from behind a pair of dark sunglasses. “They teach you that lesson, more than [anything] else in the league, the hard way. But I thought we came out with the right intentions, energy. The crowd was amazing, obviously. Just got to do a better job of closing.”
It looked like the Thunder were going to cruise through when Williams threw down a breakaway dunk for a 94-79 lead with 9:42 left to play. It surely looked like their night when Alex Caruso somehow converted a wild running layup after bouncing off Obi Toppin and falling sideways as he launched. But the Pacers, who have become one of the greatest comeback teams of all time, stubbornly kept coming. Toppin and Myles Turner hit back-to-back 3s to cut the lead to eight while Gilgeous-Alexander, Lu Dort, and Chet Holmgren were still on the bench.
“It was kind of like we were trying to keep the lead instead of trying to extend it, keep being aggressive,” Williams said.
Should Thunder coach Mark Daigneault have gone back to his starters sooner? Perhaps, but the fact is that the Thunder absorbed the Pacers’ charge and extended the lead to double digits again when those three returned midway through the fourth. They should have had enough of a cushion, if they had just converted makeable shots down the stretch. Gilgeous-Alexander missed a driving layup. Williams missed a tough bank shot. And SGA clanged a 15-foot fadeaway. If any one of those had hit, maybe Haliburton never would have gotten his latest heroic moment.
Then again, this is just what the Pacers do. This was their fifth comeback victory from at least 15 down in these playoffs—the most by a team in a single postseason in the play-by-play era (since 1998). Indiana is unflappable. Haliburton is uncanny. The Thunder had seen it all as spectators, on film. It all looked familiar, but it felt much worse up close.
“The common denominator,” Daigneault said of the comebacks, “is them.”
