With a chance to win the NBA Finals, the Oklahoma City Thunder laid an absolute egg against the Indiana Pacers with a 108-91 loss, forcing the first NBA Finals Game Seven since 2016. While speaking to the media after the game, Thunder head coach Mark Daigneault agreed with a reporter who called the loss uncharacteristic.
“I think that’s the word from our standpoint. First of all, credit Indiana. I thought they obviously earned the win. They outplayed us for most of the 48 minutes, and that’s the story of the game,” he said. “From our standpoint, it was uncharacteristic. It was disappointing, but it was collective. It wasn’t one guy. We were not where we needed to be on either end of the floor for much of the game. We have to be a lot better before game seven.”
Oklahoma City guard and league MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander had one of the worst games of his career. He finished the evening with eight turnovers, tied for the most in a single NBA Finals game over the last 40 years, according to ESPN.
“I don’t even know. They just turned us over a bunch,” Gilgeous-Alexander told reporters in a postgame press conference. “They didn’t pressure full court, which led to more turnovers. I didn’t expect that. But whatever it is, they did it right, and if we want to win on Sunday, we got to take care of the ball.”
Even though the Pacers won by 18, the final score was not indicative of how one-sided this game was. There was a moment in the fourth quarter when the Thunder trailed by 31 points.
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“The way I see it is we sucked tonight,” said Gilgeous-Alexander. “We need to learn the lessons, and we have one game for everything we worked for, and so do they. The better team Sunday will win.”
“Obviously, it was a very poor performance by us,” said Daigneault. “But there’s two teams out there, and I want to give Indiana credit for the way they defended, the way they competed in the game, the way they played all around. They had a lot to do with it. And there was stuff that I thought we could have controlled that could have been better, so we have to own that.”
OKC forward Jalen Williams was not able to replicate the 40-point outing he had in Game Five. Not only did he finish the night with 16 points, but his -40 rating was the worst of any player on Oklahoma City.
“It just got sticky, I feel like,” he said after the loss. “Our defense wasn’t very good. When you’re constantly taking the ball out, and you’re playing against a set defense over and over again, that’s part of it. Other part, we didn’t do a good job trusting each other to make the next play like we did Game Five… A lot of it was just not trusting each other to make the right plays, and that starts with me being better [and] figuring out different ways to get my teammates involved.”
Even though Williams had an underwhelming offensive performance, he was much better than former number-two overall pick Chet Holmgren, who was held to just four points, his lowest-scoring performance of the 2025 NBA Playoffs.
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“I don’t think it was one factor,” Holmgren said during the postgame press conference. “But, no matter what it is, we have to be better at kind of course-correcting [and] getting ourselves back on the right track. I personally myself could be better [at] trying to help us get things going in the right way. So we’re going to watch the film and see where we can be better.”
Even though OKC put up an absolute stinker, they are just one win away from a championship. And thankfully for the Thunder, Game Seven will be played in Oklahoma City.
“It’s a great opportunity,” Holmgren said. “You could ask every team in the NBA, every team would take this opportunity, take this chance, and we’re no different. It’s on us to go out there and make the most of it.”
“Obviously, [we’re] disappointed tonight,” Daigneault said. “But, we’ll regroup, get back to zero, learn from it with clear eyes, like we always do, [and] get ourselves as ready as we can be to play Game Seven.”
Game Seven of the NBA Finals will take place at 8:00 p.m. EDT on Sunday.
