Include the playoffs as a whole and it's not that many I doubt. Indiana will have to play like they did tonight to win that game. This was their best game of the playoffs.
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CycloneErik
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8 (9 if you add a year and count 1974).
I got this here: https://www.nba.com/news/all-time-nba-finals-game-7s
Another context note I didn't look into just yet would be which teams did win on the road, or how dominant a home team was compared to the road opponent.
But 2 times out of 8, context notwithstanding. It doesn't seem out of line in this series to think the Pacers can do it.
EDIT: Looks like one of the 2 was the year the Cavs won it and Kyrie went insane. I think the other was the Bullets in 1978 in that two-year span where they traded titles with the SuperSonics. I guess, in a way, the Thunder have lost a Game 7 like this before, but there's no way that's actually relevant.
Since they switched the playoff scheduling format. The team down 3-2 that forced a game 7 has won the finals both times. 1 home 1 away
They can do it but Hali needs to have the best game of his life. That OKC crowd will be the craziest and loudest in the history of game 7s.
NBA playoffs are amazing, and this year has been great. Capped off with an incredible finals and game 7!
One more game for the Championship!
I wouldn't count the Pacers out. Everybody is going to again favor the Thunder and they will have the home advantage, but...
Go Pacers!
Reading through the in game posts. Jesus, do some of you even enjoy the game or do you just ***** and moan about the refs all game long? Complaining about every call is lame as hell, I could swear some of you have never watched basketball at any level before and don’t realize there are tons of close calls that can go either way.
Take a break from complaining, pour a drink and kick back and watch the game. I guarantee you’ll be happier.
Take a break from complaining, pour a drink and kick back and watch the game. I guarantee you’ll be happier.
And it goes to show you don't need to have a team from New York, LA, or Chicago to have a great series. I think it's the 1 and 3rd smallest markets in the league(correct me if I'm wrong). I think only Milwaukee is a smaller market than Indy in the East.
Indy was on fire tonight, but that was not the performance of a champion by the Thunder. They had a chance to win the series tonight and they just let themselves get rolled. I give the Pacers a really good shot in Game 7.
People can say what they want about the West vs East in terms of quality, but it's pretty obvious at this point Indy really is a top two team in basketball at the worst. They've been on fire since the new year after a bad start and just destroyed the East playoffs despite only having home court in first series.
I'd add that "throw Jokic on any team" still seems like that team might automatically be a top 3 team still too.
I'd add that "throw Jokic on any team" still seems like that team might automatically be a top 3 team still too.
It's still two really young teams and OKC's coach is a pretty young coach too. I'd say it's coin flip zone given how well Pacers have played on road at times.
Wonder if any site has published what you would have if you put $1000 on Indy money line since the playoffs have started. Not sure I have seen a betting underdog perform so well.
They were 29-1 to win the east (not title, just east) at the beginning of the year which is an ABSURD value for an ECF team that returned the whole team and didn't even finish the ECF healthy last year. I keep going back to that one as the kick myself had I seen it or thought of it. Yeah they got swept in ECF but all 4 games were close and Tyrese was seriously injured (could barely even shoot) and Mathurin didn't play a minute.
about 50% of experts were 3 games or more wrong picking them to lose in 4, the other half of experts were at least 2 games wrong picking them to lose in 5.
Fun stuff.
Nobody should count Indy out based on the fact that they've won in OKC. Its not a series where necessarily the home team has dominated. I'd say just based on odds you'd have to say the Thunder have a 60% chance of winning but there's only a 20% chance of that
This is only the 20th Game 7 ever though. Not sure how many are last 50 years, but I'm sure a decent few are before 1975 too.
The prognosticators were radically wrong to look at a team on fire like Indiana and predict they'd lose in 4 or 5. The people paid to analyze basketball who thought this team was getting swept should be fired on the spot. Nobody was beating this team 4 times in a row since January this year.
Why not Tyrese? Look what happens when he plays well, and look what happens when he doesn't. He's pretty damn valuable IMO......
He's an elite player. He isn't consistent enough yet to be the type of NBA player most ISU fans want him to be. I mean stats would tell you he probably won't show up for game 7. You want to be in the elite category you show up every night. Bad games need to be 18 pts 5 reb. 6 asst. Let's be real, him only scoring 4 the other night is why they didn't win the trophy tonight. Hes gotta figure out how to be thsy guy.
Dort is a horrible matchup for him, especially when they let him play linebacker. It's probably why he got hurt and after he was hurt it's game over. If Dort was on the Pacers and they let him play like that you'd see some horrific lines from SGA too who while stronger than Tyrese is not as physically dominant as prime MJ or Kobe, at least not yet.
Not every team has that, some might and I'm not saying Dort is the only guy like that.
If Tyrese is not "the guy" only about 3-5 players in the world are. Maybe that's what you're saying and I'd agree with you if that's how exclusive you're talking. If you're saying he's not as valuable as Siakam I think that's pretty absurd (maybe I misunderstood the exchange).
I'd say Tyrese has had a few stretches where he looks like a top 6-15 range player, a lot of other stretches where he looks like a top 10-25 player. But very few where he looked like a top 3-5 player because that might take more than just being the best passer in the game. When he runs an offense that offense is almost always a top 3 efficiency offense and there are not many players you can say that about.
Magic Johnson only averaged 18ppg in NBA Finals for his career in a high scoring era so I don't think an 18 point game is remotely "bad" for a Kidd or Nash or Tyrese or Magic type of plyer. If Tyrese has 10+ assists in Game 7 I'll feel good about Indiana's chances regardless of how much he scores. If he has 25 and 3 assists I'd probably assume they lost.
Magic also has 4 of the top 5 assist games in the NBA Finals with 19, 20, 20, and 21 assists. Hali's only had one in double digits at 11.
I think he's making a strong case for recognition though, and a lot are noticing.
