As the Celtics prepare to watch the 2025 NBA Finals from their couches, here are five Boston-centric thoughts on the matchup between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Indiana Pacers:
1. Maybe we should have seen Pacers run coming
Last year’s Celtics postseason is primarily remembered as a dominant, 16-wins-in-19-games march to a championship. But it’s easy to forget just how close the 2024 Eastern Conference finals between Boston and Indiana were.
That was a four-game Celtics sweep, yes, but a highly competitive one. The Pacers led in the final minute of regulation in Games 1 and 3 and were tied with less than a minute to play in Game 4. Had Boston not made the succession of clutch plays that it did (Jaylen Brown’s 3-pointer to force overtime in Game 1; Jrue Holiday’s and-one layup and steal in Game 3; and Brown’s block that set up Derrick White’s game-winning three in Game 4, to name a few), Indiana easily could have seized control of that series.
The Pacers also played the final two games without point guard Tyrese Haliburton, who’s asserted himself as a bona fide superstar during Indiana’s sprint to its first NBA Finals since 2000.
“Last year in the Indiana series, they could have easily been up 3-1 on us,” Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens said last month in his end-of-season news conference, referencing the similarly narrow margins that doomed Boston in its six-game second-round flop against New York. “I think that that’s just kind of these series. You get these opportunities, and one team takes advantage of them, and that team usually moves on.”
Though their run did not feature a rematch with the reigning champs, the path the Pacers took to the Finals was undeniably impressive. Entering as 28-1 longshots to win the East, they knocked off the Milwaukee Bucks in five games, clobbered the 64-win Cleveland Cavaliers in five in the conference semis and then handled a fully healthy Knicks team in six. Those opponents boasted five players who made All-NBA this season, including first-teamers Giannis Antetokounmpo and Donovan Mitchell.
2. Aaron Nesmith, difference-maker
Three of Indiana’s most dramatic playoff victories featured standout performances from a Celtics draft pick.
Aaron Nesmith turned in the first postseason double-double of his career in the Game 5 clincher against Milwaukee. Two games later, he helped spark a furious last-minute rally against Cleveland by slamming home a putback dunk off a missed free throw. In Game 1 against the Knicks, he scored 20 points in the fourth quarter and went 6-for-7 from three as the Pacers erased a 14-point deficit in the final three minutes and won in overtime.
Drafted 14th overall by Boston in 2020 (12 spots ahead of Payton Pritchard) and flipped to Indiana in the 2022 trade for Malcolm Brogdon, Nesmith has settled into a starting role with the Pacers – and emerged as much more of an offensive threat than he was during his tenure as a Celtics reserve. Though he’s known more for his talents as a dirty-work defender, his 17.3 points per 36 minutes this season was the best mark of his career, and he’s upped it to 17.6 in these playoffs.
The Pacers are 11-1 this postseason when Nesmith scores in double figures and 1-3 when he doesn’t.
3. Thunder chasing history
Despite the Pacers’ emphatic conquering of the Eastern Conference, they head into the NBA Finals as heavy +500 underdogs against a Thunder team that, if it can avoid an upset, would go down as one of the greats in NBA history. They’re one of just seven teams to win 68-plus games in a season, and only the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls posted a better regular-season net rating than Oklahoma City’s 12.7.
OKC’s 12.9-point average margin of victory set an NBA record, comfortably surpassing the previous mark set by the 1971-72 Los Angeles Lakers.
The 2023-24 Celtics also ranked among the best statistical squads in league history (64 wins, 11.7 net rating, 11.3-point margin of victory), but the Thunder were markedly better in all three categories – all while playing in a much more formidable Western Conference.
4. Pace, pace, pace
Though their overall play styles are distinct, one common trait that OKC and Indiana share is speed. These teams like to play fast. Both rank in the top three in fast-break points per game, points off turnovers and pace this postseason, per NBA.com. They were fifth and seventh, respectively, in pace during the regular season.
Fast-paced teams aren’t always good teams – several highly ranked teams in pace this season missed the playoffs, and the rest of the top five this postseason all lost in the opening round – but the Thunder and Pacers are adept at quickly flipping the floor without sacrificing ball security, unlike many other clubs whose pace stats were inflated by high turnover totals. Both ranked in the top three in turnover percentage and assist/turnover ratio during the regular season and postseason.
Their style is a stark contrast to that of the Celtics, who faced criticism during their abbreviated playoff run for their deliberate offense and reliance on 3-pointers. Boston ranked second-to-last in pace this postseason, ahead of only Orlando. Having to face the Magic’s rock-fight defense in the first round might have contributed to that, but the Celtics also were the second-slowest-paced team during the regular season, again leading only Orlando.
5. OKC’s window
The CBA sledgehammer will come for this Thunder roster eventually, as it has for the defending champion Celtics, who almost certainly will be forced to ship out players from their title-winning core this offseason to avoid onerous luxury-tax penalties. But the short-term outlook for Oklahoma City is overwhelmingly positive.
Outside of 30-year-old defensive maven Alex Caruso, every member of OKC’s core playoff rotation is 26 or younger, and all are under team control for at least one more season. That includes NBA MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who has two years left on a contract that’s below market for a star of his caliber ($38.3 million in 2025-26, $40.8 million in 2027-28).
The Thunder will soon need to hand out big-money deals to second and third bananas Jalen Williams (24) and Chet Holmgren (23), but they’re set to earn just $20.3 million combined next season on rookie-contract team options. They’re also adding another potential asset in Nikola Topic, a promising 19-year-old from Serbia who missed this season with a torn ACL, and own a whopping 10 first-round picks in the next six NBA drafts thanks to smart trades made before and during their post-COVID bottom-out rebuild.
Celtics fans will spot a few familiar names on the roster of the 2020-21 Thunder team that went 22-50: 35 games of Mike Muscala, 30 of Svi Mykhailiuk and 28 of Al Horford.