The Oklahoma City Thunder capitalised on an early injury to Indiana Pacers stalwart Tyrese Haliburton to clinch a historic NBA Championship title in Game Seven of the 2025 NBA Finals.
Following the Pacers' success in game six - which saw an NBA Finals series taken to the distance for the first time since 2016 - the Thunder made the most of home-court advantage when it mattered most in the winner-takes-all seventh showdown.
Mark Daigneault's men ran out 103-91 winners at Paycom Center to end a 46-year NBA title drought, having won their first and only previous Championship in 1979, when they were known as the Seattle SuperSonics.
With a maiden crown since relocating to Oklahoma, the Thunder's triumph marked the state's first-ever major championship win in a professional sport, while the Pacers were left to rue a crushing Haliburton blow in the opening exchanges.
The two-time All-Star had initially exacerbated a leg problem in Game Five, and his calf troubled him again in the last knockings of the first quarter, causing him to be ruled out of the remainder of the match.
The Haliburton-less Pacers nevertheless led by a single point at the halfway mark, but the Thunder's 34-point surge in the third quarter turned Game Seven on its head, as Finals and regular-season MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander bagged 29 points en route to stardom.
With two MVP trophies to his name, Gilgeous-Alexander is the first man to win both the regular-season and Finals prizes since LeBron James in 2013, and the Thunder's average age of 24.7 makes them the youngest champions since the 1977 Portland Trail Blazers (24.5).
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