2025 NBA Finals Biggest Winners and Losers So Far
Following the Oklahoma City Thunder's 111-104 victory over the Indiana Pacers on Friday night, the 2025 NBA Finals are tied at two games apiece.
The series will now shift back to Oklahoma City, where either team can move to within a win of their respective organizations' first NBA championship.
To this point, the basketball has been spectacular. Both teams are constantly engaged on both ends of the floor. The stars have played well. And despite the result in Friday's Game 4, it's starting to feel like the Pacers have a real shot at pulling off the upset.
To recap all the action thus far—and maybe look forward a bit, too—we'll examine the series through the lens of "winners and losers." The biggest ones on either side of that ledger can be found below.
Winner: Star Guards
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In some ways, Tyrese Haliburton had a tough night on Friday, going 7-of-15 from the field and coughing up an uncharacteristic five turnovers.
But on balance, this series has proven what the rest of the playoffs already suggested: Haliburton is a star worthy of this stage.
When he's made a concerted effort to get to the paint, whether as a scorer or distributor, Indiana's offense has generally been solid against this season's best defense.
For the series, he's averaging 17.8 points and 7.5 assists. And he's plus-nine through four games.
Of course, his counterpart on the Thunder has been even more explosive, particularly down the stretch of Game 4.
With his team down double digits toward the end of the third quarter, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander locked in and took over. His trademark mid-range game and ability to draw fouls completely swung the momentum to OKC, which erased that deficit and then some.
SGA had 14 of his 35 in the fourth and is now averaging 32.8 for the series.
Whoever ultimately prevails in this series will get a massive legacy checkmark, but even the loser's run could be remembered for a while.
Loser: Conventional Wisdom
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The Oklahoma City Thunder won 68 games in the regular season, broke the all-time records for single-season point differential, total double-digit wins and total 15-point wins.
Outside of a little stress test from the Denver Nuggets, they mostly cruised through the superior Western Conference side of the bracket.
And they entered the Finals as overwhelming minus-750 favorites (which implies an 88 percent chance to win the series).
So, it wasn't all that surprising to hear seemingly every NBA analyst, fan and their family pets outside of Indiana pick the Thunder in five games. And even in a lot of the explanations of those picks, the prognosticators said something like, "I want to pick the sweep, but out of respect to the Pacers, I'll give them one."
Well, Indiana has already pushed this juggernaut farther than many expected. And three of the four games being as close as they were suggests the last two or three games should be competitive, too.
And that's good for everyone, especially the fans. One of the more beautiful things in sports is watching competitors crush conventional wisdom.
Winner: The NBA
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Much has been made of the dreadful TV ratings of this series, the fact that both teams come from smaller media markets than the league might like and the idea that neither has a very well-known star.
But the actual basketball being played by the Pacers and Thunder should ultimately overshadow all of the above.
After all, the league is already locked into an 11-year media rights deal worth nearly $80 billion that hasn't even kicked in yet. Now is as good a time as any to "test" the market with some lesser-known entities.
Ultimately, more teams like Indiana and OKC need this kind of national spotlight. There is plenty of fun basketball and entertaining stars outside the glamour franchises. This series is proving that.
Indiana plays a well-balanced, improvisational style that encourages ball and player movement. Their role players are constantly giving maximum effort.
Ditto on that last point for OKC, which has an offense designed more around the gravitational force that is league MVP SGA.
There is something for just about any fan here.
And if the league can figure out how to demonstrate that over the life of this new media deal, it'll be in better shape.
These two teams meeting in the Finals is a good start.
Loser: Myles Turner
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For the most part, it's hard to find real "losers" in this 2-2 series. To this point, it's been such a highly competitive and well-fought battle that it almost feels wrong to point the L at an any individual player.
Even Myles Turner, listed here, has gotten the better of his matchup with Chet Holmgren in a lot of ways.
But if the Pacers are going to complete the monumental upset they're chasing, they'll almost certainly need more from Turner on the offensive end of the floor.
After going 3-of-10 from the field and 0-of-6 from three on Friday, he's now averaging 13.0 points, while shooting 39.5 percent from the field and just 20.0 percent from deep.
And a lot of those outside looks he's getting are open, thanks to the shot creation of Haliburton and Andrew Nembhard, as well as Indiana's general knack for moving the ball.
Over the last three regular seasons, Turner has hit 37.7 percent of his threes, so a regression to the mean could be on the way. If it comes, Indiana has a good shot at securing two more wins. If not, it's hard to imagine the Pacers overcoming OKC's homecourt advantage in this new three-game series.
Winner: Depth
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In terms of team-building, the NBA is cyclical. There are times when everyone is chasing a "Big Three." Outside shooting big men were all the rage after Dirk Nowitzki broke out. Playmaking 5s are hot right now, in the wake of Nikola Jokić's dominance.
And the two teams still standing this season could be at the forefront of a new trend, necessitated in large part by the new collective bargaining agreement.
The penalties that come from being over the first or second aprons are crippling. And having multiple max-contract players on your roster makes it pretty hard to stay under those lines.
So, teams may now start to more aggressively pursue builds that feature two (or maybe even one star) and several helpful role players.
Indiana has that with Haliburton and Pascal Siakam surrounded by eight or nine players who can be trusted in big playoff spots. The Thunder's spot may be harder to replicate, since some of their best players are still on rookie contracts, but depth is an obvious strength for them, too.
Surviving the playoffs in today's NBA means having plenty of fodder for the war of attrition and few (if any) weak links to attack.
