Subscribe
Follow Us
The Indiana Pacers and the Oklahoma City Thunder are gearing up to go at it in the NBA Finals on Thursday night and the chatter is ramping up before the series gets going. Both teams are coming off of incredible runs to get to the championship series, though they got there in different ways.
The Thunder have been the favorites throughout the playoffs, rolling through series against the Memphis Grizzlies and the Minnesota Timberwolves with a tight seven-game battle with the Denver Nuggets in between. The Pacers have been somewhat of a Cinderella story, beating the Milwaukee Bucks, Cleveland Cavaliers and New York Knicks on their way to winning the Eastern Conference.
Despite the disparity in how they are perceived, the Pacers and Thunder are both teams with a lot of talent and depth up and down the roster. That is a far cry from some of the superteams that won championships back in the 2010s, and Pacers center Myles Turner has taken notice of the shift.
Article Continues Below
“I think it’s a new blueprint for the league,” Turner said, via Joe Vardon of The Athletic. “I think the years of the super teams and stacking, it’s just not as effective as it once was, you know what I mean? Since I’ve been in the league, the NBA has been very trendy; it just shifts. But the new trend now is just kind of what we’re doing. OKC does the same thing — young guys get out and run, defend and use the power of friendship.”
Turner has stuck it out with the Pacers for 10 years now, through both bad teams and teams that were early exits in the postseason. Now, he is into the NBA Finals for the first time with a team built both through the draft and through smart acquisitions such as Pascal Siakam and Aaron Nesmith.
It will be a tall task for Turner and company to knock off a Thunder team that won 68 games in the regular season and is widely regarded as the best team in basketball. However, the Pacers have made a living knocking off giants in this postseason, and are capable of slaying the biggest one of all.
