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The upside down NBA Finals
00:22:04
How we got to this year’s surprising NBA Finals and what this season can tell us about the future of the NBA.
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- [00:00]
Ava Wallace
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Ben Golliver
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Ben Golliver
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- [00:28]
Ava Wallace
What are the flights like? Because I know Oklahoma City is an American hub and I know Indianapolis is an American hub, so it can't be that bad, right?
- [00:36]
Ben Golliver
Well, I don't fly American. I fly Delta and United in emergencies only.
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Ava Wallace
And you know, it's been, my God, that is such a West Coast NBA reporter thing of you to do.
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Ben Golliver
I mean, I, yeah, you could stereotype it how you want it. I just think it's by far the best airline we could. We could throw stats at each other all day long.
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Ava Wallace
It's definitely the best airline. But that's like so like anytime I'm with like a Western Conference NBA reporter, they're like, oh, it's Delta all day. The flights are so good. Everything's nice. And I'm like, yes, I'm stuck on American all the time in the Eastern Conference. From the newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post reports. It is Wednesday, June 4th, and I'm Ava Wallace, a sports reporter from the Washington Post. Today I'm joined by Ben Gulliver. We're going to talk a little NBA Finals. Ben is our national basketball reporter for the Post, a certified ball knower, and he's going to break down why you should fall in love with both the Thunder and the Pacers.
- [01:28]
Ben Golliver
You can.
- [01:29]
Ava Wallace
You don't have to choose. You can do both. The NBA Finals begin this week between the Indiana Pacers and the Oklahoma City Thunder, two kind of smaller market teams. It's a really interesting time to be watching the NBA. It's a really interesting NBA Finals. There are no legacy stars. You're not going to be watching LeBron James and Steph Curry. Ben, I want to start with that idea. What does this Finals matchup say about where the league is right now?
- [01:55]
Ben Golliver
I like to call this the upside down NBA Finals, you know, because like you mentioned, none of the coastal powerhouse teams that we're used to seeing on this stage, whether it's the Lakers or the Boston Celtics, they're not involved. The big names like Steph Curry, LeBron James, they've been home now for weeks, if not months. And what you have here is a product of the NBA's drive for parity. You know, a few years ago, the NBA and the owners decided, we want, as Adam Silver, the commissioner, likes to call it, parity of opportunity. Every team should have a chance. And Ava, I know you covered the Wizards for a couple of years. Would it be going too far to say that it maybe felt hopeless at times, like there wasn't an opportunity to win a championship for that organization? Is that fair?
- [02:34]
Ava Wallace
Yeah, I think the organization certainly felt like that, like they couldn't attract free agent talent. It was. It was hard to build organically.
- [02:40]
Ben Golliver
And so what the NBA said is we can't have teams like the Wizards or other smaller market teams getting left behind, feeling like they don't have any way to make a great team. And so in this year's final of the matchup, you have the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Indiana Pacers, obviously two of the smallest 10 markets in the NBA, and two teams who just three years ago were some of the worst teams in the league. But, you know, you get a little luck, you get some good players in the draft, you make some amazing trades, and boom, here they are, both very, very deserving conference champions kind of facing off for a championship. The Indiana Pacers have never won a championship since joining the NBA and in the 1970s. And the Thunder, who relocated to Oklahoma City in 2008, they have never won a championship while they've been in Oklahoma City. So we're getting some history. No matter who wins. We're making some new legacies as opposed to, you know, living in the past of the glory days of, you know, the Bill Russell Celtics or the Kobe Bryant Lakers.
- [03:35]
Ava Wallace
So what does this drive for parody meant for players as teams are kind of trying to build their rosters in this current era?
- [03:42]
Ben Golliver
Well, we're definitely in a different era. People used to call it the player empowerment era. The idea that LeBron James could go have the decision and he would team up with other superstars for the Miami Heat and they would make a super team, or Kevin Durant would leave and go join Steph Curry for the Golden State warriors. And now all of a sudden, they're this undefeatable team. And it goes back to this idea of, you know, parity of opportunity. There's no parity if you have teams like the Miami Heat and the Golden State warriors accumulating all of the star power. That's not really fair. Right. And so what the NBA did and the owners decided to do is essentially implement a harder salary cap, which includes bigger penalties on the highest spending teams, and it also includes restrictions on how those teams can add talent. So if you do run up this huge payroll, paying all of your stars, it's going to be very difficult for you to have enough depth to keep up with the other teams. And so they're copying this a little bit from the NFL, which has a hard salary cap, as opposed to, say, baseball, where it's just the Dodgers can spend whatever they possibly want and spend.
- [04:40]
Ava Wallace
As much as you want.
- [04:41]
Ben Golliver
Yeah, get every single star, and then you kind of know who's going to win before the season even starts. Right. So the NBA has been in a transition phase with that. It takes a few years for all the different penalties to kick in. But what we've seen is a number of the biggest spending teams. You know, you think about Golden State, they lose Klay Thompson last summer. You know, you think about the Los Angeles Clippers, a notoriously high spending team, they lose Paul George last summer. So some of the talent has been spread around a little bit more flatly around the league, and it kind of give everyone a chance. Now what the Pacers and the Thunder have both done is made really, really smart trades. And so that's become the new opportunity. Rather than superstars saying, I want to go play with this player, the power is shifting back towards the teams and the executives who are saying, well, now we have the opportunity to trade for Ashe Gilgeous Alexander like the Thunder did when he was very young, or the Indiana Pacers, they made a trade for their star, Tyrese Halliburton, when he was still very early in his career. And so those trades have set up these teams now, a few years later, to, you know, assemble enough talent around them and to really grow together.
- [05:44]
Ava Wallace
Okay, so let's talk about those teams playing in the finals. The Oklahoma City Thunder were so dominant this season. They won 68 games of 82 in a season. They have the league MVP right now. Talk to me about that dominance and just really how suffocating this team can be.
- [05:59]
Ben Golliver
Well, Oklahoma City, they have prized themselves on attracting players who are the most hardworking, the most dedicated. And so their best player is Shay Goethis Alexander. He really carries the offense. And, you know, he's a Canadian guard who essentially has just devoted himself to the sport. He's become this small market star almost in silence in Oklahoma City. Overlooked, really, until these last couple of years. But he's incredibly precise. You could tell he spends hours and hours in the gym working on his ball handling, working on his shooting. And he's gotten so good as a scorer that he just leaves whiners in his wake. Every team he plays against, the fans of the opposing team say, well, why does he get so many foul calls? Why is this guy living on the free throw line? And. And the answer is because he's just that creative and he's just that hard to defend. So he carries the offense. But the star of the Oklahoma City team is really their team defense. It was number one all season long. It's been number one in the playoffs. They force a ton of turnovers. A lot of people I've heard compare them to like different attack pack animals, right? Like their Kilo orcas. And it's so fascinating because this is the NBA's like, you know, offensive explosion era. This is where everyone's hitting three pointers and scores are going up and. And all these stars are getting 50 point games. And yet the Thunder have kind of gone the other way and they've won it with defense. And so it's a very deep team. It's a very young team, you know, pretty inexperienced until they came into this playoffs. And so there was a lot of doubt around this group and they've just been smoking everybody.
- [07:27]
Ava Wallace
And what about the Indiana Pacers? They're so often overlooked, kind of just the subject of everyone's disrespect around the league, really. But I think they could surprise a lot of people who maybe don't know how complete they are.
- [07:39]
Ben Golliver
Yeah, I would actually describe them maybe as the most cohesive team. Right. The idea is that nobody dominates the ball. Everybody gets to be a part of it. And it's always fun to play basketball that way. And there's a lot of parallels, actually, between the way Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever play and the way that the Pacers play because they want to get up and down the court, they want to score a lot of points, they want to shoot a lot of three pointers. Right. And they have. It's one of those teams where every night a different player can beat you. For example, if you. In game six of the Eastern Conference finals against the Knicks, one of the key players was Thomas Bryant, who had been a backup center and he had barely played for long stretches of this series.
- [08:15]
Ava Wallace
Like former Wizard Thomas Bryant, right?
- [08:18]
Ben Golliver
Yeah. Not exactly Wizards legend, but maybe if he wins a championship, he'll get that title. Right. But it's. They're built on really depth and a lot of hardworking players who are, you know, willing to make the sacrifices for the betterment of the team rather than their own statistics. And the Pacers also have this incredible ability where they never say die. They're sort of like the zombie. You can't kill them, right. They might get down 10 points with a couple minutes left, but they'll have a huge comeback late in the game. You know, the Pacers will be the underdogs in this series. The Thunder, no question about it, are going to be the favorites because they have been so dominant all season long. But the Pacers are just perfect underdogs. That's what really makes them an exciting team.
- [08:59]
Ava Wallace
I wanted to talk a little bit about the Thunders fan base, too, because the first time I went to Oklahoma City as an NBA beat writer, I really didn't know what to expect. But my job was, like, on the floor going into that arena because you land in Oklahoma City. I really liked going to Oklahoma City. There's a lot of cool areas of the city. There's a lot of really interesting history. Like, I like the vibes, but when I went to the arena, saw how packed it was, just seeing everyone go absolutely nuts. Tell me about what their home game setup is like.
- [09:26]
Ben Golliver
So, you know, my first experience there, I went to the Banjo Museum straight away because I was like, look this. You know, how many places have a banjo museum that rocks? There was a boot barn right next to my hotel, and I didn't buy any boots, but I, you know, I did some window shopping. But this city is obsessed with the Thunder right now. If you walk around downtown Oklahoma City, on every storefront, you will see Thunder up, which is with their big slogans or like, mvp Shea, because he was just named mvp. Their best player, Shay Gilgeous Alexander. As soon as they had advanced to the Finals, I walked out of the arena and there was already a signup that said, you know, Thunder going to the Finals. Like an electronic sign. And there's one giant, you know, skyscraper, the Devon Tower in Oakland, Oklahoma City. And so if you see the landscape, you know, you'll see that one tower, and that's kind of the one big building. And they beam the Thunder logo at the top of the building after wins. So they are completely behind this team. There's no question about it. And they can kind of taste it. They feel like they've passed through some real tests here in the Western Conference. And I think that they're feeling like this is their year after three years ago. They were one of the NBA's worst teams. And they had some heartbreaking moments in their recent history. I mean, they went to the 2012 Finals and they lost to LeBron in 2016. Kevin Durant left for the Golden State Warriors. Russell Westbrook was their icon player. And they wound up, you know, trading him because they didn't have a good team around him. They had a number of other stars. Paul, George, Chris, Paul, James Harden all sort of came and went. And so, you know, this organization has seen a lot in a short period of time and now they're back in position to potentially win their first championship.
- [10:59]
Ava Wallace
So, Ben, for casual NBA fans, this is going to be, I think, a really interesting test of who wants to pay attention. I think we're going to, we're going to see maybe some low ratings. I don't know that the, that the league is so happy that two small market teams are in the finals. But for people who are still interested in really good basketball and kind of want to latch onto a couple of these guys, who are the star players that fans should be latching on to right now?
- [11:20]
Ben Golliver
Oh, it's a really fair point on the television ratings aspect. I mean, there probably should be some concern if you're the broadcast partners or the league because, you know, NBA commissioner David Stern, the past commissioner, his, his favorite line was the dream finals matchup is the Lakers versus the Lakers because that's the glamour team. The Pacers versus the Thunder is almost as far away from Lakers versus Lakers as you can get. But again, this is Adam Silver's NBA who, you know, he succeeded David Stern as commissioner and this is his idea of, the idea of parity of opportunity and let's cultivate a whole new generation of stars who could be anywhere across the map and you know, they could become global icons if they win enough and obviously have the success on the court. Right. So for Oklahoma City, Shay Gilgeous Alexander is the MVP this year. He's very tricky and slippery on the ball, hard to defend, and also just a great, I would say, level headed leader after losses. You know, he's kind of the old man of the team, honestly, Even though he's 26 years old, you know, which is young by NBA standards, but he's got a real wisdom to, you know, how he leads. Now his co stars are Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren. They're both recent draft lottery picks. In other words, they were very highly coveted players coming out of college, but they're very young by NBA star standards. And so they, they've been in a few commercials like an AT&T commercial with Shai, but they're still at that stage of their careers where they have to Be in the commercial with the star. They're not the star themselves quite yet, but these three guys, they complement each other very well positionally. So they do different things. There's not a lot of overlap. There's not a lot of redundancy in how they play. And so this is a team, really, where their three best players creates a dynamic where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
- [13:01]
Ava Wallace
So that's who we're going to be watching on the Thunder. But the Pacers have a star player, too. His name is Tyrese Halliburton. What do people need to know about him? I think if anybody knows about him, I'm always like, he was the guy who went to the Paris Olympics with Team usa. Never played at the end. Posted a great selfie with his gold medal where he's just like smiling in it. Great sense of humor about it. I loved that from Halliburton. It was really fun.
- [13:23]
Ben Golliver
Well, I think he had the caption, what was it? That, like, this is what happens when you get an A, but you don't do any work in the group project. Right? Yeah, he was the tag along guy. Well, and that tells you something, you know, of how quickly he's improved here because he didn't even barely play at the Olympics last year. And now he's about to be on center stage and really leading this organization, this Pacers team, to the finals. Incredibly unselfish. He loves to get up and down the court at a very fast pace. Fearless. And he's not afraid to be annoying. I've actually seen some videos that compare him. Do you remember Urkel from the television show from the 90s? I remember there was one episode where Urkel was incredible at basketball and he is like doing all these great highlight moves. Well, there was a highlight video out there that compares Tyrese Halliburton to Urkel in terms of how they play. And they're like identical mirror images. Right. And so that, that makes him a little endearing in my mind because he's not the biggest, he's not the strongest, he's not the fastest, and he has a very goofy looking shot. And yet he's so smart and he has such an intuitive feel for how the game should be played and how to make his teammates better, that it just works when the ball is in his hands, you just really trust him.
- [14:35]
Ava Wallace
That sounds like a good place to leave it for now. We're going to take a quick break and after that we're going to talk more about what these finals say about the future of the NBA.
- [14:52]
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- [16:55]
Ava Wallace
So Ben, you mentioned that the NBA is borrowing a lot from the NFL here and trying to kind of even competitive advantage out across the country. Make sure there are stars dotted in different places. What's the point of parody? Basically, I know plenty of people who would be happy year over year to watch The Finals be Lakers, Celtics, Knicks, Lakers. You know, just. I don't think that is necessarily something that casual fans are turned off by. So why is that a concern of Commissioner Adam Silver?
- [17:23]
Ben Golliver
Well, remember, he's working for the owners. And the owners are spending billions of dollars to buy these franchises. And they want to have a chance. They don't want to just be also rants. Right. So if we go back to that Wizards example, you know, it's tough to be a writer covering a team that feels hopeless. It's also tough to be player on a team that feels hopeless. But if you're the owner and you spend all this money and you've got to invest in a building and you don't have a chance, you know, it's sort of like, what's the appeal? And so the owners are the ones who set the rules here. They're the ones who want to have at least a shot. Right. And so that's the idea behind parody. But you raise a great point. This is not what fans have been conditioned to expect. The fans have been conditioned that the very best players are going to get a lot of chances to win championships. And so we could argue about, well, who's better, Michael Jordan or LeBron James? Because Jordan's won six and LeBron's won four. Well, it's going to be harder going forward in a parody era to win four championships, let alone six championships like Jordan. And if the rules are designed to weaken the best teams or the highest spending teams and to give everybody else an opportunity. So one downside we could look at is players like Nikola Jokic and Giannis Antetokounmpo. Both those guys right now are in their prime. They're basically 30 years old, which is typically when NBA players peak. But because it's been difficult for their teams to keep quality teams around them together, they are now losing earlier in the playoffs than they expected. They're not getting the chance to win more championships. And so, you know, Giannis won his first in 2021, Jokic won his first in 2023, but they haven't really seriously competed for another one since then. And as we look forward, we're not sure exactly when they might be able to do that. And so Giannis might need to change teams. There might be a trade this summer to give him another opportunity to do that, because everyone's getting a, you know, a chance every single year. The very best players are getting to ride the wave at the top as long as they used to. And that can be tricky because you know, it takes a while to build up house names, right? Everyone knows LeBron James, Steph Curry and Kevin Durant because those guys all had tons and tons of chances to play in the Finals to be on the biggest stage. This next generation of stars, though, whether it's Giannis or whether it's even Luka Doncic with the Lakers, unless they get the chance to be in the Finals and win championships repeatedly, they're going to have a hard time pulling in as many fans as that previous generation did. So I think it's a real concern for the league. We'll see how it plays out. But this is a big change for fans.
- [19:46]
Ava Wallace
Is it just something that players are going to have to get used to also? Like, okay, I'm now in this league where superstars are so spread out throughout the country that maybe, maybe the goal, instead of winning six rings, should be, no, I want to be there in the playoffs at the end of every season, competing against the best. Whether that's like, you know, this one guy on one team who doesn't have big names around him. Like, is that something that we should be expecting of the athletes? Like, well, athletes have to adapt as well.
- [20:09]
Ben Golliver
Well, we're going to have a good idea how the athletes feel this summer, because there's already been some percolating talk that this could be a really crazy NBA summ where a lot of stars change teams and maybe try to find a better path towards a championship. Because I think some of these best players are starting to realize, like, reality is sinking in. Like Giannis, he's in Milwaukee. Well, one of his key teammates got injured. He's going to be out for all of next season. There is no opportunity for Milwaukee to win a championship next year. That's just going to be a wasted year for Giannis if he stays there. Right. You know, a similar thing in Denver, where they've lost a number of players in recent years. There's not really a clear path for how does Denver get more good talent around Jokic? And so now he has to ask the question, do I want to stay here, or do I want to figure out, you know, another pathway, you know, back towards the championship? So I do think what you're going to see is an adjustment of player attitudes. You know, if you find a market that you like, a fan base that you like, a home city that you like, you're probably going to see guys just try to stick it out there in the hope that eventually they're going to get a chance for it, rather than being, you know, quite as obsessed with chasing the rings as guys like LeBron James and Kevin Durant were during their primes.
- [21:18]
Ava Wallace
Okay, Ben, for someone who maybe is a more casual fan just tuning in for the finals, or someone who really like yourself, is a ball knower, what's one matchup, one stat, one whatever that you're going to be looking for as you watch the finals that you think is going to tilt whichever way the finals goes?
- [21:32]
Ben Golliver
You know, turnovers, I think, is going to be the big buzzword. Tyrese Halliburton and the Pacers do a very good job of protecting the basketball, even though they play fast and even though they play this exciting style. So that's very hard to do. Usually, the faster you play, the more mistakes that could come up. Now, Oklahoma City, you know, they are so good at forcing turnovers and then, you know, taking those turnovers back for easy dunks and, you know, plays in transition. Right. So who wins the turnover battle? Can Indiana continue to play very clean basketball? If so, that will give them a chance. If Oklahoma City's defense can, you know, screw up the Indiana offense, for lack of a better word, that's going to be obviously in the Thunder's favor, and they're likely going to win this series. So I think ball control, taking care of the basketball, the stuff that every youth basketball coach would yell at their players about, I think that's really going to be the central focus of this series.
- [22:23]
Ava Wallace
Okay, Ben, let's wrap up. But before we go, one last question for you. If you could change one thing about sports, what would you change?
- [22:32]
Ben Golliver
Just the volume of hateration on social media is what I would change. Because what I worry about with this final is because it's so different in the many ways that we've described. I'm worried that the. The general fan base is not going to rally around either one of these teams, and they're just going to spend the entire series, you know, being negative. Oh, I don't like Tyrese Halliburton. He's too goofy. Or, oh, I don't like the Thunder. They win by too many points or they get too many foul calls or whatever it might be. I am very much an appreciator of greatness when it comes to sports. I like to call myself a win connoisseur as opposed to a wine connoisseur. And I think you've got two really deserving teams in this finals who are very well coached, they've worked really hard, likable star players, and I just hope people can appreciate them. And I hope it just doesn't turn into a complaint fest for the next two weeks because I saw a lot of that in the conference finals, unfortunately, and I felt like the tone of the commentary about the sport just didn't match what I was watching on the court. So obviously it's easy for me to fix that. You just close the social media apps and you don't have to see it. But a lot of people have trouble doing that, and I think a lot of people, their opinions are shaped by the masses, and I just wish the masses had a little bit more appreciation for these two teams.
- [23:46]
Ava Wallace
That's a great wish, both for basketball and for life. Just let's turn down the hateration. Thank you so much, Ben. Thanks very much for informing me, educating me all that stuff about the NBA Finals.
- [23:57]
Ben Golliver
Oh, it's my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
- [24:01]
Ava Wallace
Ben Golliver is a Wynn connoisseur and also the Post's national basketball writer. That's it today for Post Reports. Today's episode was produced by Lucas Trevor, Josh Carroll and Janelle lafoucaud. It was mixed and edited by Ted Muldoon. I'm Eva Wallace. We'll be back tomorrow with more stories from the Washington Post. Did you know that parents rank financial literacy as the number one most difficult life skill to teach? Meet Greenlight, the debit card and money app for families. With Greenlight, you can set up Chores, Automate allowance and keep an eye on your kids spending with real time notifications, kids learn to earn, save and spend wisely. And parents can rest easy knowing their kids are learning about money with guardrails in place. Sign up for Greenlight today@Greenlight.com podcast.