Berry Tramel
INDIANAPOLIS — Mike Andrews has been trying to get his wife, Cassy, to name their soon-to-be-born son “Tyrese.”
Cassy, eight months pregnant, has been holding out. But if the excitement of the Indiana Pacers’ first NBA Finals home game in 25 years caused Cassy to go into labor Wednesday night, welcome to the world, Tyrese Andrews.
And don’t dismiss it. This city, as good a pick as any for the basketball capital of the world, is ablaze with excitement over the Pacers and their clutch-time star, Tyrese Haliburton.
“It’s amazing; I’m jacked,” said Pacers fan Chris Kost of suburban McCordsville. “We’re excited we’ve got another small-market team (the Thunder) in the Finals. Their fan base is great.
“It’s a long time coming. To finally be here, it’s all we’re talking about.”
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The Thunder fans in Paycom Center have set a standard for atmosphere and noise, so much so that Indiana coach Rick Carlisle challenged his fans to match the Oklahomans. Mission accomplished, if Game 3 was any indication.
Gainbridge Fieldhouse, perhaps the NBA’s best arena, was roaring from the opening tip, and downtown Indy was buzzing hours before the game.
“Very cool vibe,” said Keith Lipinski, who drove down from Park Ridge, Illinois. “Just walking around the streets, there’s definitely a mood of excitement.”
The Thursday ScissorTales explain how former Tulsa great Paul Pressey ties in to the Thunder, check in on the Finals television ratings and list the most geographic-close Finals ever. But we start with how the Pacers are tapping into Indiana’s basketball tradition.
The Pacer fans poured into Gainbridge on Wednesday night and donned gold t-shirts, with the message “In 49 states, it’s just basketball. But this is Indiana.”
That’s the motto of the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame over in New Castle, and it’s true. From the traditions of Indiana high school hoops — immortalized by “Hoosiers” — to the Indiana and Purdue rivalry in the college game to the Pacers’ NBA consistency and now to the WNBA’s phenomenon with Caitlin Clark of the Indiana Fever, basketball indeed reigns in the state.
A sign of that kind of pedigree? Oscar Robertson, the 1950s star at Indy’s Crispus Attacks High School, sat courtside Wednesday night. Next to Reggie Miller. Basketball royalty in a basketball kingdom.
“We Grow Basketball Here,” says the slogan the Pacers coined to celebrate the state’s basketball heritage and culture.
But it’s even more than that.
“Everywhere you go, everyone has a basketball goal,” said Mike Andrews. “Even if it’s rickety in the street. You can’t go four or five houses in a row without seeing a basketball goal.”
The Pacers won three American Basketball Association (ABA) championships in the 1970s, but this is just their second NBA Finals since joining the league in the 1976 merger.
“I’m super excited,” Andrews said, with Cassy alongside, having a snack in the upper deck 90 minutes before tipoff. “Last time we had the Finals here, I was in high school. Now I’m 39, almost 40 years old. I haven’t been this excited about the Pacers since Reggie Miller.”
Miller was an 18-year Pacer, 1987-05. The Pacers made the Eastern Conference Finals in 2013, 2014 and 2024, but Indiana’s NBA passion waned some after Miller’s departure. Now it’s back, led by Haliburton.
“During Reggie’s great years, it was all everybody cared about,” Andrews said. But Peyton Manning was quarterbacking the Colts to football greatness when Miller retired, and “a lot of people switched to being Colts fans. Tyrese and the group have brought a lot of people back.”
This is Indiana, a place that deserves an NBA finalist more than once every 25 years.
Television ratings slack
The NBA Finals have not been a television hit. Game 2 Sunday night averaged 8.76 million viewers on ABC; Game 2 a year ago, the Mavericks-Celtics series, drew 12.31 million.
Thunder-Pacers was the least-watched Game 2 since the 2020 Orlando bubble series drew 6.78 million. That was the night President Trump was hospitalized with Covid. Otherwise, OKC-Indy was the least-watched since 2007 Spurs-Cavaliers. That game went up against the series finale of “The Sopranos.”
Game 1 last Thursday drew an average of 8.91 million viewers.
But NBA commissioner Adam Silver already had warned critics that television ratings aren’t as important as they once were.
“It seems a little unusual how much discussion there is around ratings in this league,” Silver said last week in OKC.
Silver said Joe Dumars, who just left the NBA office to run the New Orleans Pelicans, said, “it’s part of the culture in the NBA that we’re self-critical, that our fans, it’s part of the culture around the league to be looking at what’s bad as opposed to what’s good. I think it seeps into our coverage, quite honestly, sometimes.”
Silver said the league could “maybe find better ways that we can be marketing our sport.”
A Celtics-Warriors or Lakers-Knickerbockers Finals obviously would lift ratings, but Silver said he loves the parity that has come into the league.
Silver touted the NBA’s “enormous presence” on social media. The NBA also has a new television contract that kicks in next season, with NBC/Peacock, Amazon and ESPN/ABC. That 11-year contract goes through summer 2036, so the ratings of Thunder-Pacers will be but a blip when it comes to the next TV negotiations.
But the NBA still rules June television. The first two games of Thunder-Pacers were the most-watched television programs since the first week of May, and Game 2 had 50 percent higher viewership than the weekend’s next-most-watched program, according to Sports Media Watch.
Don Nelson hails Paul Pressey
Mark Daigneault’s preference for a small starting lineup against Indiana — and staying small extensively — can be debated. But it has its roots in solid basketball history. Part of that history was in Oklahoma City for Game 2. And it includes Pressey, a University of Tulsa icon.
Prior to Game 2, Don Nelson was awarded the Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award, given annually by the National Basketball Coaches Association to a longtime NBA coach for his life in basketball and “standard of integrity, competitive excellence and tireless promotion of the game.”
Nelson was a 30-year NBA head coach, with the Bucks, Warriors, Knicks and Mavericks. His record was 1,335-1,063. Only Gregg Popovich has more NBA coaching victories.
And Nelson told a great story of why small ball works and how it shaped his coaching philosophy. Nelson said that when he played for the great Boston teams in the 1960s, the Celtics routinely would scrimmage bigs against smalls. The tallest players against the shortest players.
“And in the full-court game, bigs never won,” Nelson said. “Smalls always won. You play a half-court game, bigs always won. But you get them in a full court, they didn’t dribble, can’t pass, make plays. So the small teams always won.
“I always thought in a full-court game, if you made it a fast game, not a slow game, you could beat the bigger teams. I also figured out that there are hundreds of small guards who can just shoot the (crap) out of the ball. Not necessarily can be point guards. They maybe can’t make plays, but they could all shoot.”
In Milwaukee, Nelson coached Pressey, a 6-foot-5 hybrid who was a defensive whiz and playmaker.
“If I had a forward that was an average shooter, like a Paul Pressey,” Nelson said, “and I ran my offense through him, I could run picks with these small guards, get them open in the corner pretty easy because they are all quick and they could all shoot, and I think that helped me beat a lot of bigger teams I was playing against.
“I was never blessed with having talented big people. I finally got Bob Lanier for a couple years at the end of his career, and that was the most talented big man I had ever coached, and still is today. But I only had him for a few years. So I had to figure out ways to stay competitive with smaller teams. Because the hardest guy to find is the big man in the league. The easiest guy to find is a small guy who can shoot. So that was part of my philosophy, those two things.”
Daigneault, of course, is blessed with skilled big men in Chet Holmgren and Isaiah Hartenstein. But the Thunder also has a battalion of guards and wings that can run and shoot and defend. Don Nelson should love the Thunder.
The List: Final cities distance
Oklahoma City is 740 miles from Indianapolis. That makes the Thunder-Pacers series one of the most geographical-close in NBA Finals history. OKC-Indy harkens back to the NBA’s early days, when the league was mostly tucked into the northeast corner of the country. Here are the five matchups with the closest cities:
1. 1948: Baltimore-Philadelphia, 106 miles. Yes, the eight-team league had four cities (Philly, New York, Boston, Providence) east of Baltimore.
2. 1951: Rochester-New York, 201 miles. Rochester, New York, was in the West Division, along with Minneapolis; Fort Wayne, Indiana; Indianapolis (the Olympians were in existence for four seasons in the 1950s); and Moline, Illinois, home of the Tri-Cities Blackhawks (now the Atlanta Hawks).
3. 1955: Syracuse-Fort Wayne, 538 miles. The original 76ers versus the original Pistons.
4. 1956: Philadelphia-Fort Wayne, 616 miles. This was the Philadelphia Warriors, before they moved to San Francisco.
5. 2025: Oklahoma City-Indianapolis, 740 miles. The only closer possibility in the modern NBA would have to include Atlanta from the Eastern Conference (against New Orleans or Memphis) and/or Minnesota from the Western Conference (against Chicago, Milwaukee, Indy or Detroit.
Mailbag: Boxing out
One reader believes he’s found the secret to winning in the NBA.
Nick: “Basically, box out properly first, then going for the ball still works for winning games. Control the boards is the mantra. Boxing out is still needed. NBA players seem to forget the basics. Get the rebound, then everything will fall into place.”
Berry: I agree that rebounding is critical. However, I disagree about boxing out. Boxing out is dicey. Referees call more fouls on the rebounder with inside position than on the rebounder being boxed out.
I know, sounds kooky. But it’s true. Going over the back is a great play in the NBA, because officials often call players for backing into rebounders on a block-out. I don’t like it, but that’s the way it is. I wouldn’t block out. I’d go after the ball.
berry.tramel@tulsaworld.com
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