There are a lot of things we deserve as people. A rational world in which killing civilians for amusement is not an acceptable instrument of foreign policy, as just one farfetched example. But for sports fans, "deserve" is one of those verbs that works way too hard for its weight class, an advert for entitlement based on the notion that the next thing you see must by definition be more spectacular than the last thing you saw. Five-year-olds spit on your shoes in revulsion.
Because, and this will surely surprise all of you who have ever used the phrase "in my lifetime" as a useful metric for any athletic achievement, "deserve" isn't a word that means anything around here. You get what you get, the way you get it, and there's no refund for dissatisfaction unless you decide to get off your collective hinder and stop watching, attending, and paying. Until that moment, well, the polite way to put it is "You bought it, so eat it. And on your way out, settle up your bill."
This brings us to the newest champions of boys’ basketball, the Oklahoma City Thunder, who had with the Indiana Pacers built a series to a potentially magnificent crescendo only to have it end with a slide whistle and a sad trombone. The moment Tyrese Haliburton gave us a voyeur's view of the way an Achilles tendon snaps, the big game with all its portent died, and a taut battle between precocious newbies ended like Wizards-Hornets on a Tuesday night in February. The most rewarding thing about the evening is that it ended, especially if it ended for you before ESPN analyzed it with its usual superficial, harebrained, and entirely performative bombast.
But none of this is Oklahoma City's fault. The idea that they somehow didn't properly "earn" its championship (and ESPN analyst Mickey Mouse's name has been invoked in this context a number of times) and that they are therefore not _gen-you-wine_ winners is so ridiculous that it sounds like it came out of Kendrick Perkins's mouth, which as far as we know it didn't even though we didn't watch so don't honestly know either way.
All the Thunder needed to do was have more points at the end. No style points, no elegance standard, no historical touchpoints. The Thunder were gifted an anticlimactic finish that worked to their benefit, they took it, and that's that. The NBA has promised much in its time, and the few times it has delivered the spectacular team are very much the exception—one per decade, if you're lucky. This just happens to be a decade that has not yet delivered that kind of champion, and in that way, the actual measurable way, the Thunder delivered exactly what you deserved, in the same way that the Raptors, Lakers, Bucks, Warriors, Nuggets, and Celtics have before them. One, and then done.
The only difference the Thunder offer is that their big moment is only hours old. They have a future that includes the possibility of more titles, which objectively would make them a relative rarity in a sport that leans heavily into dynasty talk because the measuring sticks are the eternal Lakers and Celtics—both of whom have recently been sold to megabillionaires in hopes of spending their way to updated dynasties.
The game itself did the best it could do for as long as it did, which is sports too. Most series don't build to a crescendo. Most series don't even reach seven games. The last time it happened, 2016, the Cavs and Warriors closed Game 7 with one field goal between them in the final 4:39, and that happened after six games with victory margins of 15, 33, 11, 30, 15 and 14 points. That series was defined by the Warriors canking up a 3-1 lead and Draymond Green trying to surface from a prone position through LeBron James's undercarriage. The games themselves were turbomeh, but nobody denied the Cavs their title. They did the thing. Case closed.
Even the Florida Panthers, who are now repeat Stanley Cup titleholders, did so not the way the series promised at the beginning—two high-paced overtime games that were eye candy from start to end. Florida then won its last three games by a combined 12 goals. People thought after 2024 that it would be a series for the ages, and it ended up a pedestrian yet very one-sided beatdown that established the Panthers as the next potential dynasty in a sport that hasn't had anyone win three consecutive Cups since the '80s. Even the WNBA, which began with four consecutive titles for the Houston Comets and two for the Sparks, has had only one repeat winner since then. Dynasties are hard, and great final games almost as rare.
But back to the Thunder and their championship, which for the moment is most memorable for a calf muscle rolling up on itself like a windowshade.
Haliburton's collapse gave us a new understanding of how the leg works when its most important tendon decides to leave the building, and it really was the story, as bummerific as it might have been. The fact that it was shown repeatedly might have upset some folks, but it was the central, defining, inescapable moment in a game that offered so many possibilities and then had those possibilities reduced in an instant to one eventuality.
That is the central truth of playoff brackets. There are 16 teams, all with dreams, and they are shoved into a funnel and pushed and extruded until only one comes out, and this one, the Thunder, was supposed to kick everyone's ass in the postseason the way they kicked everyone's ass in the regular season. Only they ran into a delightfully funky Pacers team who nobody ever paid attention to because they play in a flat state with a small TV market, and got all they wanted, right until the seven-minute mark of the first quarter Sunday night. So if you want to do this disappointment thing that way, the Thunder Mickeyed you twice—first, by not kicking the hell out of a team you thought unworthy, and then by not giving you a spectacular close with a team you then decided was their equal. This sounds, children and socially arrested adults, like a you problem.
The truth here is that we don't get enough seventh games to know how to deal with them properly. We overreact in advance, then get all pissy when they don't end with unicorns dunking over leprechauns in a shower of glitter and rhinestones and $500 bills and Taylor Swift in a suite. The series was riveting, Game 7 or no. That you didn't get the last 41 minutes is like whining that Santa tracked mud on the dog.
In sum, the Thunder won. That means they earned it. They fulfilled their brief, and if they weren't spectacular or dramatic enough for you, well, you can always watch CNN.