NBA Finals Preview

 And the matchup is set! This is always a bittersweet 2 weeks in the basketball season. We get to watch the NBA finals which is fun and exciting, but soon it will be over and we'll be left with just baseball until football starts in September. It will be interesting to see if I can come up with something to write about every day during the dog days of summer, my first dog days as a blog owner who writes for fun. Anyway, before we dwell on that we have an NBA finals to preview! I wanted to get my preview and prediction out today then spend tomorrow and maybe Wednesday going over the season and some of my past predictions that have been cemented on this blog. I think I've had some pretty good takes, also some pretty bad ones. I distinctly remember picking the Pacers to miss the playoffs at the start of the season, oops! Lets get into this matchup. 

Why Indiana has a Chance

Most people I've spoken to about this series is predicting a short one, 4-5 games at most with OKC being crowned champions without even breaking a sweat. The way OKC dominated Minnesota for all but 1 game should give OKC fans confidence that might be the case. I am here to tell you that the Pacers are not like the Timberwolves at all. OKC's bread and butter throughout the playoffs and regular season has been scoring in transition. I've said many times their defense is like a pack of piranhas that swarms you in the post forcing turnovers and fueling the fast break. OKC scored the second most points in transition this playoffs with 25.3 per game. Indiana, led by elite point guard Tyrese Haliburton, do not turn the ball over. In the playoffs they finished 3rd last in points given up in transition per game with just 17.2. I predicted the Timberwolves offense would struggle mightily against the OKC defense because of their style of play. They have Anthony Edwards who relies on his athleticism and burst and Julius Randle who wants to post up and bully ball his way to the rim. OKC forces you to either make a quick, smart decision or get stripped. Too many times Julius Randle would stop with the ball, try to post up, then find Cason Wallace or Lu Dort or Alex Caruso right on top of him with the basketball. Indiana doesn't do that. In fact, I'd argue that the Pacers offense thrives when you try to blitz them. With Tyrese Haliburton, the Pacers value ball movement and getting everyone involved. They may not have the 1 on 1 scoring power that the Timberwolves had, but they play more together and on a string on offense which I think OKC will have a harder time capitalizing against. The Pacers also just don't play anyone that you can leave alone on offense. In the Wolves series the Thunder would have Chet rove off of Rudy Gobert or Jaden McDaniels and just dare those guys to beat them with their offense, a chance any team would be willing to take. While Indiana may not have big names at every position, they rarely play a guy who's not at least an average shooter which will make it harder to double and shut off the paint like OKC likes to do. OKC still has an incredible defense and I will get to that in the next segment, but I don't think the Pacers are going to struggle to score as much as the masses think they will. 

Defensively, I think the Pacers might have a tough time. While I do have faith that the Pacers can limit transition opportunities, I think they have a lot of holes for Shai to poke at. I'll be the first one to say how much I appreciate Andrew Nembhard and what he brings on both ends of the court, but I think he's got his work cut out for him in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. I'm not sure what their listed heights are, and I could certainly check, but just off the eye test Shai has a solid 5 inches on Nembhard and with the way he was getting shots off over Jaden McDaniels and Anthony Edwards, I don't think he'll have much trouble getting to his spots against Andrew Nembhard. They'll throw Aaron Nesmith at Shai as well and he might do an OK job, but again I just saw Shai get whatever he wanted against better defenders than Nesmith and that should be cause for concern. The thing is though, Shai was going to go off regardless, it's more about how the Pacers can stack up against the rest of the Thunder. I think unfortunately for the Pacers, their team composition plays right into OKC's best lineup. Myles Turner isn't exactly a big threat down low, the Thunder can certainly get away with playing Chet at the 5 and having Caruso out there instead of Hartenstein. The Pacers can counter this by going to Pascal in the post, but we just saw in the Minnesota and Denver series, posting up against the Thunder is certain death. When the Thunder go big with Chet and Hartenstein, Siakam probably will need to be occupied by guarding Chet, leaving either Nesmith on JDub and Shai on a much shorter defender or leaving JDub to feast against whichever non-Nesmith defender is on him. Fortunately for the Pacers I think the Thunder play a few guys that you can reasonably hide Tyrese Haliburton on in Lu Dort, Alex Caruso and Cason Wallace. I think by virtue of making the series a half court game, the Thunder's offense won't be as easy as they've had it. If the Pacers can keep their offense going and catch a couple of cold shooting nights from the Thunder, then they have a chance to make this a series. 

Why OKC Likely Wins

Funny, I couldn't even get through my Indiana has a chance segment without talking about how hopeless they are against Shai in this series. I think game 4 of the Timberwolves series shows exactly what I mean by hopeless. Every time the Wolves went on a run and got the crowd into it, Shai would just calmly get to his spot in the mid range and knock down a tough jumper to stop the run and silence the crowd. This happened all game long. He had a big scoring night but it wasn't just the quantity of scoring, it was when he chose his spots. I don't foresee Shai struggling at all in this series unless the Pacers come up with some crazy defensive scheme to go all out on stopping him. I spoke a lot about how the Pacers are one of the only teams that can limit turnovers against OKC limiting their transition opportunities, but there is a flip side to this as well. The only team to score more of their points in transition in the playoffs is the Indiana Pacers, scoring 25.8 points per game in transition this post season. One of only 2 teams to allow fewer transition opportunities than the Pacers is the OKC Thunder who allowed just 17.2 points per game in transition for the playoffs. So essentially as much as the Pacers can shut the tap on the best looks for OKC, OKC will do the same against the Thunder forcing this to be a half court series. In the halfcourt, the Pacers are so dynamic and selfless that I don't think the Thunder can stop them completely, but if any team has the guys to match up 1 on 1, it's the OKC Thunder. Haliburton is going to be guarded by Shai, Dort, Wallace, Caruso and JDub at times in this series, all of whom are better than any defender he's faced in the playoffs so far. The goal with Hali is to play him straight up and try to force him into being a 1 on 1 scorer. If the Thunder can do that, Hali isn't going to have an easy task against any of these OKC defenders. Siakam, who won the ECF MVP, is going to have a much harder time finding his offense in this series than he did in the last. We just saw with Julius Randle if you're slow and deliberate with the ball, it's going to get stripped. Siakam is a smarter decision maker than Randle, but he'll still pose those same problems. When he is going quick, I can't think of better defenders to throw at spicy P than JDub and Chet who both offer either strength or length to disrupt what Pascal does best. 

Where the Pacers fans can see some hope here is that OKC doesn't really like to play straight up 1 on 1 defense. Their whole strategy has been built on using their athletes to swarm the paint and force turnovers. If the Pacers are quick enough at processing, they can find the kickout passes to open shooters, which is how they want to play. I suspect that early in the series OKC will play the way they've been playing and the Pacers will punish them by playing the way they want to play. Unfortunately for Pacers fans, I think as the series goes on the Thunder defense will get less aggressive relying on their great 1 on 1 defenders to force the Pacers into 1 on 1 opportunities. If both teams devolve into isolation scoring in the half court, the Thunder have a massive advantage with Shai and I think that ultimately ends up being the difference. I think the Thunder take this one and Shai wins his first finals MVP. It wouldn't surprise me if the Pacers pull some more tricks out of their hats to make it interesting, but I don't think they have enough to overcome the talent deficit. 

Prediction: OKC in 6

And that's that! Maybe I'm just hoping for a fun series so picking a 6 gamer is putting that energy out in the universe. Maybe I'm just delusional enough to believe the team of destiny BS run the Pacers have been on this post season. The more I thought about this series and the more I put it into writing, the less of a shot I imagined the Pacers having, but hey you never know right?