OKC WINS, HALIBURTON FALLS, AND IN THE END, THE NBA IS ALL ABOUT EQUALITY
This is what Adam Silver wanted, a Game 7 in the middle of nowhere, and if he could have 29 more champions over the next 29 seasons, the commissioner would be thrilled as major cities keep aching
Is there a lasso in the air? Did they party on a denim carpet and smoke cigarettes as they do at the National Cowboy Museum? For now, toast the new NBA champions, which I happened to suggest strongly in this space on April 16, two months and seven days ago on Adam Silver’s monopolistic playoff calendar: “STOP AT THIS NBA ACRONYM — SGA = OKC — AND YOU MIGHT HAVE A NEW CHAMPION.”
We saw this in the humidity. We saw this in the glare of America’s 47th-largest media market. Sam Presti is the master rebuilder. Mark Daigneault is a championship coach in ways Tom Thibodeau never will feel. The blue shirts in the crowd will spank dreams in cities that fall short. Did you ever think people in New York or Los Angeles or Chicago would like to hang out in Oklahoma City?
“It doesn’t feel real,” said Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the Finals MVP. “So many hours. So many moments. So many emotions. So many nights of disbelief. So many nights of belief. It’s crazy to know that we’re all here, but this group worked for it.”
“They behave like champions. They compete like champions,” Daigneault said. “They root for each other’s success, which is rare in professional sports. I’ve said it many times and now I’m going to say it one more time: They are an uncommon team and now they are champions.”
Do remember this about the Thunder: They left Seattle, the nightmare of any sports fan. And for all the worthy praise regarding Presti, they tanked, losing 108 games in two seasons. “In saying goodbye to the past, we have begun to chart our future," the general manager instructed fans in a 2019 letter in the local newspaper. “The next great Thunder team is out there somewhere, but it will take time to seize and discipline to ultimately sustain.” We’ll also never know if the shrieks of Tyrese Haliburton — “No, no, no, no!” he grieved when his Achilles tension snapped — ended what might have been a titanic upset in sports history by the Indiana Pacers. He looked good in the first quarter, like the man who dropped four shots in the final five seconds of the fourth quarter or overtime.
“What happened with Tyrese, all of our hearts dropped,” coach Rick Carlisle said. “He authored one of the great individual playoff runs in the history of the NBA with dramatic play after dramatic play. It was just something that no one's ever seen.”
Yet Presti was dead-on correct as Mark Walter considers him — you think? — as the next architect of the Lakers. The next great team was out there, six years later, in the form of Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Williams, Chet Holmgren, Alex Caruso and Lu Dort. They played with uncustomary patience and chill for such a fresh team, the second-youngest Finals group in 48 years, at an average age of 25.56 years. “Honestly, I never really play for records. Us winning is forever,” Holmgren said. “It's immortal. I'm just so happy we were able to do that together as a team.”
The curious circumstances — a Game 7, on the third night of summer — were planned precisely by Silver. He wants the same parity in Oklahoma City and Indianapolis that they have in major coastal cities. The people snoot at the Thunder in Madison Square Garden, Chase Center and Crypto.com Arena. Yet the commissioner was praising OKC like it was the French Riviera. It is his Green Bay, see, inside his version of the NFL. He and his predecessor, David Stern, wanted competition between 30 teams. The Thunder are the seventh champion in seven years, with 11 teams reaching the Finals since 2019.
“It was very intentional,” Silver said. “It didn’t begin with me. It began with David and successive collective bargaining agreements that we set out to create a system that allowed for more competition in the league, with the goal being having 30 teams all in position, if well-managed, to compete for championships. That’s what we’re seeing here. The goal is that market size essentially becomes irrelevant.”
Next year, we’ll probably have an eighth champion in eight years. A dynasty? Achilles injuries to Haliburton and Jayson Tatum put brakes on power discussions. Haliburton cheered for the team as T.J. McConnell — undrafted, no NBA dunks in a 10-year career — kept the Pacers in the game. “That's just who Ty is,” McConnell said. “To go down like that, be selfless and just continuing to cheer for us. Even though he can't play, I think that just speaks volumes to who Tyrese Haliburton is, one of the greatest human beings I've come in contact with.”
“I’m proud of that kid,” teammate Pascal Siakam said. “He went through so much during the year. A lot of criticism. It's a lot for a young kid to go through, and he had a lot of stress. And he just kept fighting. He kept fighting every single day. He did some incredible things, this whole playoff run and this year. I'm just super proud of him. Obviously, it hurts because we couldn't get it done, and I wanted it so bad for him just because I know that he gave us everything — everything he had. It just hurts that he couldn't see it through with us.”
The Eastern Conference is so wide open, it’s scary. Indiana has no Haliburton. The Knicks need a head coach to replace Thibodeau. Boston will make trades and wait for Tatum. Cleveland? Would LeBron James consider a deal — or would the Cavaliers even want him? The Orlando Magic?
But the West remains hellish. OKC. Houston with Kevin Durant. Minnesota. Denver. Golden State. Dallas with Cooper Flagg. The Lakers with Walter.
Just remember SGA, please. How can we forget? You didn’t know him. Now you do. “As a kid, you dream. Every kid dreams,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “But you don’t ever really know if it’s going to come true.”
In the next few days, more trades will be made. In a matter of weeks, another season will be upon us. The National Basketball Association never leaves our hearts, it seems, even with lassos and denim.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.