Congrats Thunder, well deserved champions. Have been the best team all year with superstar talent, depth and good coaching.
Fair to say they did stutter a little bit in the finals though, and maybe that was their youth showing. I feel like there were chances for the Pacers to get back into that today even with all that had gone wrong, but they just didnt have the horses or the legs.
Really sad to see Haliburton go out early. They did absolutely amazing to hang in there with him out for so long, but once things got tight, they just had no answer without his creative play.
Again Siakam is a good second option (though at this stage, should likely be a #3) but jsut doesn't have the gravity that Haliburton does. Mathurin, TJ all did all they could but its tough without your #1 guy.
OKC can run it back again next year and I kinda expect that they might. I would expect teams will chase guys like Wiggins and Joe next season as they're likely to slip further down the pecking order with Cason Wallace and Caruso as their clear two best wings off the bench. Incredibly, the Thunder could move them for picks and simply re stock for the future and not really suffer much with guys like Topic, Mitchell and jones waiting it the wings.
The Pacers should be pretty stable too, assuming they can bring back Turner. He had a rough finals offensively, but they can't really replace him so they're going to have to give him whatever he wants. They'll need some internal growth from guys like Walker and a leap from Mathurin to get any better.