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Find your frequency hereThunder crush Pacers to level NBA Finals
Tim Reynolds, AAP •  June 9th, 2025 3:30 pm
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander | Photo: AP
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has scored 34 points, Alex Caruso added 20 off the bench and Oklahoma City beat Indiana 123-107 to tie the NBA Finals at one game apiece.
Jalen Williams scored 19, Aaron Wiggins had 18 and Chet Holmgren finished with 15 for the Thunder. It was the franchise's first finals game win since the opener of the 2012 series against Miami.
Tyrese Haliburton scored 17 for the Pacers, who erased a 15-point, fourth-quarter deficit in Game 1 but never made a push on Monday (NZ time).
Myles Turner scored 16 and Pascal Siakam added 15 for the visitors, the first team since Miami in 2013 to not have a 20-point scorer in the first two games of the finals.
"We did some things good tonight. We did some things bad," Gilgeous-Alexander said.
"We've got to be able to get better and be ready for Game 3."
Chet Holmgren | Photo: AP
That will take place on Thursday at Indianapolis, in what will be the first finals game in that city in 25 years.
Gilgeous-Alexander's first basket of the night was a history-maker. It gave him 3000 points on the season, including the regular season and playoffs. And later in Game 2, he passed New York's Jalen Brunson (514) as the leading overall scorer in these playoffs.
But the real milestone for the MVP came a couple hours later, when he and most everybody else on the Thunder got a finals win for the first time.
A 19-2 run in the second quarter turned what was a six-point game into a 23-point OKC lead. It might have seemed wobbly a couple of times — an immediate 10-0 rebuttal by Indiana made it 52-39, and the Pacers were within 13 again after Andrew Nembhard's layup with 7:09 left in the third — but the Thunder lead was never in serious doubt.
Oklahoma City did what they've done pretty much all season. They came off a loss, this time a 111-110 defeat in Game 1, and blew somebody out as their response.
Including the NBA Cup title game, which doesn't count in any standings, the Thunder are now 18-2 this season when coming off a loss. Of those 18 wins, 12 have been by double digits.
