There may be a video circling around showing Tyrese Haliburton expecting himself to be the recipient of the Eastern Conference Finals MVP honors (and not winning after the award was given to Pascal Siakam), but make no mistake about it, the Indiana Pacers have as harmonious of a locker room as it can get. It's this unselfishness that has powered them all the way to the 2025 NBA Finals, where they look to continue their miracle run by defeating an Oklahoma City Thunder squad that has 80 wins to its name this season.

Haliburton is the kind of player who celebrates his teammates' accomplishments as his own, living up to his goal of being a “good mom” for the Pacers, and he showed this by giving Siakam the opportunity to pose for a photo while holding both the ECF MVP and the ECF championship trophy.

“Come on, P. Here. Yeah, you gotta hold both,” Haliburton told Siakam in the locker room, via footage from the official NBA account on X (formerly Twitter).

But beyond giving Siakam the ECF trophy as well for him to hold, Haliburton was one of his biggest hype men; Haliburton was giving Siakam “MVP” chants, which was well-deserved for the way the latter stabilized a lot of things for the Pacers in their ECF triumph over the New York Knicks.

There is very little ego in this Pacers team, and this has powered them to play at a level better than the sum of their parts. It's this immaculate locker room chemistry that they have that gives them a shot against the Thunder in the NBA Finals even if the odds are stacked against them.

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Pacers look to continue being the team of destiny

Trevor Ruszkowski-Imagn Images

All playoffs long, it seems like the Pacers are being chosen by the basketball gods to go all the way and reach the mountaintop of the NBA. In three of the playoff series they've won thus far this year, they made one miracle comeback in each — overturning a seven-point deficit in the final few seconds of the game against the Milwaukee Bucks and Cleveland Cavaliers while stunning the Knicks with a comeback from 15 down with less than two minutes to go in Game 1 of the ECF.

Now, the Thunder will pose a different challenge; OKC has almost no weak spots defensively for Haliburton and Siakam to exploit, while they also have the pace to stymie the Pacers' run and gun approach. But the Pacers have faced long odds in the past and have triumphed, so they should not be counted out in any capacity in this year's Finals.