The NBA Finals are set in stone. The Oklahoma City Thunder will be taking on the Indiana Pacers with the Larry O’Brien Trophy on the line.

There are plenty of interesting storylines to consider when taking a look at how this series will play out. The Thunder have the current MVP. The Pacers have a budding superstar in Tyrese Haliburton. On top of that, both franchises (in their current iteration) are striving for their first championship.

These teams are both elite and are deserving of a spot in the NBA Finals! So, if that’s the case, why does it feel like nobody is interested in actually watching the games?

What could have been

There is no denying that the Pacers and Thunder represent two of the smaller markets in the National Basketball Association. Out of 28 markets, the Pacers’ TV market is ranked 22nd in terms of size, while the Thunder’s TV market is ranked 26th. By comparison, the other participants in the Conference Finals were 1st (New York) and 13th (Minnesota) when it comes to television market size.

Both the Knicks and Timberwolves have big followings and star power to draw in casual viewers. The New York Knicks have Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns, as well as the support of the biggest television market in the United States. Meanwhile, the Timberwolves have a future face of the league in Anthony Edwards, who hasn’t even begun to scratch the surface of what he can do on a basketball court.

Check out the full official schedule of the #NBAFinals presented by @YouTubeTV before the action gets underway tomorrow! 🍿

Pacers/Thunder Game 1: Thursday, June 5th at 8:30pm/et on ABC pic.twitter.com/r5wY3Y3y3y

— NBA (@NBA) June 4, 2025

The Knicks also encourage casual NBA fans to participate in the ever-classic “hate-watch.” Hate-watching is when a sports fan watches a specific team play solely in the hopes of seeing them lose. Hate-watching isn’t limited to just teams. Fans can hate-watch individuals, too, and a polarizing player like Anthony Edwards brings in a lot of hate-watchers.

I do not mean any offense to Pacers and Thunder fans. I genuinely believe this will be a better on-court product than Knicks vs. Timberwolves. However, the Thunder-Pacers series lacks that over-the-top star and the visceral hate that people love to tune in for.

Neither the Thunder nor the Pacers have superstars

A superstar is an individual who is an attraction. Fans will fly from all over the world just to get a chance to watch them play. LeBron is a superstar. Steph Curry is a superstar. Nikola Jokić, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Jayson Tatum are all superstars. Each one of the people I just mentioned is a superstar because they have had a lot of success in the NBA for a long period of time. Jokić, Tatum, and Antetokounmpo have all been elite players for at least the last four years. LeBron has been a superstar for 20+ years. Curry has been an attraction for a decade.

I don’t think we can call the best players in this series superstars. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is a budding superstar, but he’s not there yet. He just won the MVP award, but he has only been on people’s radars for like three years. He hasn’t had a polarizing moment yet in his young career.

EASTERN CONFERENCE CHAMPIONS. pic.twitter.com/rboJa8yYv8

— Indiana Pacers (@Pacers) June 1, 2025

Tyrese Haliburton is in the same boat. In fact, he’s a notch lower than SGA because he doesn’t have an MVP on his résumé. All he has is two NBA All-Star Game appearances. And while he might have had some clutch moments this postseason, he didn’t even play well enough in the Eastern Conference Finals to be named the MVP. That honor went to power forward Pascal Siakam, who is not a superstar either.

Anthony Edwards is a former number-one overall pick who has already been elected to three All-Star games before turning 24. Meanwhile, the Knicks had Towns (another former number-one overall pick) and Brunson (a former college superstar who was named the Clutch Player of the Year). SGA, Haliburton, and Siakam have the potential to reach those levels of success, but right now, they’re not there, so I can’t honestly call them superstars. Can you name a single person who would fly across the world to watch Tyrese Haliburton or Shai Gilgeous-Alexander play in a regular-season game? I can’t.

There’s still hope

Despite all of the points I just laid out, I actually have more hope for the 2025 NBA Finals than I do for last year’s or the year before. The 2023 and 2024 NBA Finals were terrible. They both ended in five games, and the average margin of victory across those series was 13.5 points per game. We were basically watching one team dominate another in the last two NBA Finals.

That will not be the case this year. Everybody is favoring the Thunder heavily, which makes me that much more fearful of the Pacers. They hear all the noise going on around the league and in the media. That’s just giving them bulletin board material to use in this series. Anybody who thinks the 2025 NBA Finals will be lopsided is in for a rude awakening.

On a whole new level 📈 pic.twitter.com/ma9gc093Af

— OKC THUNDER (@okcthunder) May 29, 2025

Also, these teams are perfect complements to one another. The Pacers are the second-ranked scoring team in the playoffs, while the Thunder are ranked fourth in scoring defense. Indy might not be a great defensive team, but OKC is ranked third in scoring this postseason, so there will be plenty of fireworks when the Thunder have the ball in their hands.

It’s about the actual gameplay

At the end of the day, the storylines surrounding this series don’t matter that much. Fans just want to see competitive basketball games.

Think about it this way: would you rather watch a non-competitive Finals between the Timberwolves and the Knicks or a competitive series between the Thunder and Pacers? Unless you’re from Minnesota or New York, you’re probably going to end up picking the latter of those two options.

Call me an optimist, but I think this will be an intense series, unlike the last two NBA Finals. The league may have dealt with a ratings problem this year, but if the 2025 NBA Finals is decided in a Game Seven, then I am sure those issues will quickly be forgotten. Adam Silver and the rest of the league just need to hope that this is a back-and-forth series.