Sunday, June 22 was one of the wildest and most consequential days in recent NBA history. The day started with two-time NBA Finals MVP Kevin Durant, one of the greatest players of a generation, getting traded from the Phoenix Suns to the Houston Rockets, forming a new potential Western Conference powerhouse.
And then Game 7 of this year's NBA Finals happened — and just a handful of minutes in, after already knocking down three triples, Indiana Pacers superstar Tyrese Haliburton went down with what looked like a torn Achilles.
Haliburton's team, resilient as ever, never backed down against the 68-win Oklahoma City Thunder, but ultimately MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander became Finals MVP as the Thunder pulled away.
There is a whole lot to break down, some of which can be viewed through a Sixers-centric lens. Let's do just that to kick off a critical week...
Oklahoma City Thunder win NBA Finals
There were some significant bumps along the way, but the Thunder were the best team in the NBA from wire to wire this season, spending much of it in a league of their own. They won 84 games between a dominant regular season and their run to the mountaintop, a number only eclipsed by two teams in the history of the league. With the NBA's new salary cap environment, dynastic runs will be nearly impossible to achieve. But Oklahoma City has a real shot at pulling it off.
Of course, it starts with their youth: Gilgeous-Alexander is 26 years old; co-stars Jalen Williams (24) and Chet Holmgren (23) are even younger. Williams has become one of the most well-rounded players in the NBA, but still has significant room for growth. Holmgren has far more offensive ability than he has been able to utilize so far, but is already an elite defensive player with only 114 NBA regular season games under his belt.
Meanwhile, Cason Wallace is a 21-year-old perimeter defensive savant; Lu Dort remains only 26 in his on right. Aaron Wiggins, 26, and Isaiah Joe, 25, are quality bench contributors on extremely team-friendly, long-term contracts. Next year, 2024 lottery pick Nikola Topić will join the mix; he garnered serious top-five consideration before suffering an injury that caused him to miss this entire season.Even head coach Mark Daigneault is only 40 years old.
But it goes beyond pure youth. Oklahoma City's cap sheet was carefully crafted to maximize the time Williams and Holmgren had left on their rookie contracts and enable the Thunder to remain at the top once those players are getting paid like stars in 2026-27. Sam Presti, the architect of this team, received plenty of mainstream pushback at various points for refusing to dip into his absurd collection of draft capital to upgrade a stellar team. But "hoarding" as many of those first-round picks as humanly possible is what will enable Oklahoma City to remain a championship favorite year after year after year.
Speaking of first-round picks... in two days the Thunder will pick at No. 15 overall and No. 24 overall. The only problem: their entire championship team is already under contract for the 2025-26 season. With the entire team signed and two first-round picks, Oklahoma City still projects to stay below the luxury tax threshold for next year before trimming two players from their roster.
What Presti and Oklahoma City have pulled off here is quite possibly the single greatest combination of present-day talent, long-term potential and financial flexibility in the history of salary cap sports.
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Tyrese Haliburton goes down
It is not fair to anyone that this is the case, but Sunday night's Game 7 will always be remembered first and foremost for Haliburton falling to the ground, writhing in pain and agony — physical and emotional — just minutes into the game. Playing through a calf strain causes massive risks, and nobody will blame Haliburton for trying to push through in the two biggest games of his life. Yet his magical run — one of the most remarkable individual playoff runs of all time when considering his unprecedented volume of clutch shot-making and how close he was to spearheading an all-time-shocking championship team — ended in the most heartbreaking way possible.
If Haliburton's injury is what it looked like and he misses all or most of next year, the barren 2025 Eastern Conference has just gotten considerably weaker. First the Boston Celtics were forced into a gap year when Jayson Tatum ruptured his Achilles, and now Indiana appears to have suffered the same fate.
The 64-win Cleveland Cavaliers, ambushed in round two by Haliburton and the Pacers, should be an elite regular season team again. The New York Knicks and Orlando Magic represent their closest competition as things stand now. But there is a massive opening for teams like the Sixers to emerge as the beneficiaries of this, perhaps returning to contention far earlier than they would have in a more competitive conference.
T.J. McConnell has a Game 7 moment
With Haliburton down, the Pacers largely handed the keys to T.J. McConnell in Game 7 of the NBA Finals, and it is just absurd to think about how far the former Process Sixer has come. Now a 10-year NBA veteran, McConnell is far more of a Pacers legend than a Sixers legend. But the fact that he left Philadelphia six years ago and still had Sixers fans rooting for the Pacers during the home stretch of Indiana's playoff run speaks volumes about the impression he left here.
McConnell is an elite backup point guard for a reason, and Oklahoma City's dominant group of perimeter defenders prevented him from dominating the game and dragging Indiana to victory. But there was always going to be a McConnell flurry in this game. While he did not pitch a perfect game, as McConnell had a rough start and committed seven turnovers, he did nearly drag the Pacers back in the third quarter before Oklahoma City landed a 16-minute knockout blow. One of the best defenses in NBA history had no answers for him for much of the third quarter, when he was the only Pacers player capable of generating offense:
Even the most fanatical McConnell supporters during his time in Philadelphia could never have imagined his unique brand of basketball working on the scale and stage it has over the last two years in Indiana. He is truly a one-of-a-kind player, a guard with a shot chart unlike any other. It should not work... and yet it does.
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Kevin Durant traded to Houston Rockets
Other than Oklahoma City, the biggest winners of Sunday were the Rockets, who added an all-time great to mollify their biggest weakness while paying 40 cents on the dollar.
The price for Houston to acquire Durant was almost comically light: Jalen Green, Dillon Brooks, the No. 10 overall pick on Wednesday and five second-round picks. Green has three years and $100 million left on his contract, and by just about any measure the ascendant Rockets were better with him on the bench in 2024-25. He is a talented scorer with great athleticism, but in four years has done very little contributing to winning. Brooks is the far more significant loss when it comes to Houston's chances of contending next season. But using a first-round pick and Green — arguably a player the Rockets should have been looking to move regardless — to upgrade from Brooks to Durant is a massive boon for the Rockets.
For the Suns, it is not only a horrifying return on investment given what they traded for Durant just over two years ago, but a trade that does not meaningfully improve their long-term outlook at all while also making them worse right now. The market was clearly not where they hoped it would be, but unless Phoenix's new-look front office can find a new home for Green and get some value for him, their roster is going to be full of ball-dominant shooting guards. Devin Booker is the best version of this archetype and can be the go-to scorer for an NBA Finals team (as he has been before). He needs versatile players around him, not much worse versions of himself.
Phoenix still owes two unprotected first-rounders to the Rockets in 2027 and 2029. Their inability to get either of them back in this deal illustrates just how underwhelming the market for Durant was. Meanwhile, Houston just swung a deal that makes Phoenix worse now with an even more confusing roster than they already had — and the value of those picks just skyrocketed.
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Justin Edwards appears set for Summer League
And, in actual Sixers news: it sounds as if Justin Edwards is planning to join the Sixers' Summer League team in Salt Lake City and Las Vegas.
Edwards does not need to go to Summer League after what he accomplished as a rookie, but there is not much downside to getting more reps in. Edwards could follow in the footsteps of Tyrese Maxey and many other young players who have gone to Summer League as second-year professionals, dominated immediately and been pulled for the remainder of the event.
Jared McCain returning from his torn meniscus in Summer League seems far-fetched; the most interesting potential option is Adem Bona. Bona also does not need Summer League, but he probably would benefit from getting those minutes in more than Edwards.
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