Bold Predictions for OKC Thunder vs. Indiana Pacers NBA Finals Game 2 and Beyond
Game 1 of the 2025 NBA Finals is officially done. First of all: Holy crap. Second of all: It's time to look ahead to Game 2—as well as the rest of this series between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Indiana Pacers.
Bold predictions will be the vessel through which we reflect on Thursday night, mull over Sunday's forthcoming matchup and project forward from there. While the Pacers have the 1-0 edge following their (highly improbable) 111-110 victory in Game 1, the Thunder remain ultra-heavy favorites to win it all. But there's a lot of basketball left to play, and if this postseason has taught us anything, it's that chalk outcomes are hardly assured.
Standard bold-prediction rules apply. We are attempting to step out on a limb and journey beyond the obvious without veering too far into the Land of First Take-isms or getting ourselves aggregated—without attribution, naturally—by the engagement farmers of the world.
Our crystal ball is spit-polished and already whirring. So let's ride.
Somebody on the Thunder Sets Single-Game Finals Record for Steals
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Robert Horry holds the NBA Finals record for steals in a single game with seven, which he picked up as a member of the Houston Rockets in 1995.
Somebody from the Thunder is totally going to surpass that.
Three of Oklahoma City's players finished with at least three steals in Game 1: Lu Dort (four), Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (three) and Alex Caruso (three). Those are, in fact, the correct names to zero in on for the rest of this series.
Go with Caruso if you have to pick one. Dort isn't much of a counting-stats defender because he shoulders the hardest on-ball workload. SGA is forever floating around waiting to bust up possessions, but he's not what you'd consider a classic pick-pocket threat.
Caruso is both. He is everything. On the ball, away from the ball, at home in his bed sleeping—it doesn't matter. He generates steals. The aggression with which he plays in all contexts bodes well for him.
If it's not him, it can be someone else. That's just how the Thunder are built. It doesn't matter that the Pacers are typically a low-turnover team. Oklahoma City's ball-pressure, rotations, closeouts and relentless lurking are inevitable.
The Thunder will Force Turnovers More Than Any Other Finals Team Ever
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Let's stick with the turnover-generating machine for a second.
The 1974-75 Washington Bullets currently hold the record for the highest opponent cough-up percentage during the Finals. During their four-game sweep of the Golden State Warriors, they forced turnovers on 21.8 percent of their defensive possessions.
Oklahoma City is coming for that mark.
This is again somewhat counter-intuitive. The Pacers are among the league's lowest-mistake squads. Across both the regular season and playoffs, they have committed turnovers on more than 20 percent of their offensive possessions exactly twice.
And yet, one of those occasions was Thursday night against the Thunder. Kudos to the Pacers for proving resilient anyway. They won't routinely vomit up the ball on basically one-quarter of their touches, as they did Game 1. But this Thunder defense is unlike any other we've seen. At the end of this series, Indiana's turnover rate will reflect as much.
Lu Dort or Obi Toppin Will Receive Multiple Votes for Finals MVP
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Lu Dort spent a lion's share of Game 1 raining threes the Pacers were happy to concede, going 5-of-9 from distance while delivering his usual dose of exhaustive defense.
Obi Toppin used the bulk of his 25-plus minutes to administer unceasing shots of adrenaline, punctuated by his own 5-of-8 barrage from beyond the arc, along with his typical number of hustle plays that often end with him tobogganing across the hardwood.
One of them is going to finish with multiple Finals MVP votes.
Choosing between the two isn't a matter of taste. It's an issue of whose team gets crowned champion. Regardless of who it is, though, earning multiple votes would be a caps-lock FEAT.
This isn't the regular-season MVP race, folks. Only 11 media members vote on this honor. I'm not jacked-up enough off the Game 1 bedlam to predict Dort or Toppin wins the Bill Russell Trophy outright, but their opening-night impacts validate their top-tier X-factor mettle enough to declare both of them dark-horse options.
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THIS SERIES IS GOING 7 GAMES (AND, YES, I AM YELLING!)
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Predicting even a six-game series would have been considered outlandish entering Thursday night.
Virtually nobody had the Pacers winning it all. The Thunder opened as the heaviest favorite to win the Finals since the Kevin Durant-era Warriors faced off against the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2017.
That overarching sentiment isn't going to change based on one game. But just as Oklahoma City's offense can score more efficiently, Indiana has somewhat low-hanging fruit of its own to gobble up. (Taking better care of the ball is one example.)
The Pacers are also starting to give off "Team of destiny vibes." Their capacity to pull off upsets in crunch time when the outcome seems a foregone conclusion is bonkers. The Thunder had a 99 percent probability of winning with 2:52 remaining in the fourth quarter of Game 1. Tyrese Haliburton and the Pacers eked out a victory anyway.
There is a profound lesson in all of this. I won't pretend to know what it is. But all of us now have enough evidence, dating back prior to the Finals, to count on the Pacers defying expectations and, at the very least, taking this series to more games than anticipated.
Both the Pacers and Thunder are Going to Start a Leaguewide Trend
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"Depth" was already becoming a buzzword during these playoffs. It will continue to crescendo throughout this series, before reaching a previously unexplored apex by the end of it.
Shortened rotations are supposed to be a postseason rite of passage. Indiana and Oklahoma City are spitting in the face of that preconception. Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle rolled 10 deep in Game 1, with eight players totaling more than 15 minutes apiece. Thunder head honcho Mark Daigneault stretched his rotation to 11 bodies, with seven of them clearing the 15-minute threshold.
Not a single player, meanwhile, hit the 40-minute benchmark. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander came closest, finishing 26 seconds shy. That is a wild development when you consider the stakes and that this ended up being a one-point game.
Expect other teams moving forward to strive for rotations that aren't just regular-season deep, but postseason deep. The NBA remains a copycat league, and the Era of Aprons has only increased the importance of having functional and cost-controlled depth over star power.
To be sure, both Indiana and Oklahoma City have plenty of the latter. But their depth separates them from the rest just as much. Squint hard enough, and you can already see the outlines of similar models in places such as Houston and Cleveland. That approach will catch on this summer, harder and faster than before, no matter who wins this series.
Dan Favale is a National NBA Writer for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Bluesky (@danfavale), and subscribe to the Hardwood Knocks podcast, co-hosted by Bleacher Report's Grant Hughes.
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