Learning from the 2025 Finals

This isn't a sly way to present takes, rather genuine things we've picked up on while driving to and covering three NBA Finals contests so far.

Things like,

WHO WEARS A MARK JACKSON JERSEY

Who wears that. Seriously, who would wear that.

Reggie Miller would. We learned this. Shoulda known it, learned it.

Learned other things.

SHAI IS READY FOR ALL THIS

The idea that Kobe Bryant sat and watched tapes of Michael Jordan speaking and this was why Bryant spoke and acted and gazed like Michael Jordan, sure, Kobe did that, but everyone did that. There is Jordan influence in early Dirk Nowitzki interviews, early Dwyane Wade, everyone of us bit our inner lip while anticipating questions, everyone watched Mike.

Everyone picks up on things they consume. The reason I don't listen to Bill Burr's podcast? Because after 14 seconds of it I'll be influenced to emote like Burr for the next 14 days, not a great sound. Shai sounds like Mike, he sounds like Kobe, he also sounds like LeBron James at the podium.

He sounds like a guy who spent his life watching and listening to players at the microphone, and not just the podium trips from the billion buck-brands like Mike and Kobe and Wade and LeBron. Shai made it to the NBA and then watched Lou Williams and Patrick Beverley:

Shai managed a Finals 9-20 on national TV in Game 3 and made no bones. He'd taken enough time from work to podium to pause, possibly forget preconceived prattling points. The ones every person is ready with when someone asks them to talk about themselves. By the time the podium hit, he throws away his speech, the prepared notes, the armor.

It is still a pitch, a sell, same as the brand names listed above. But he's comfortable rolling with whatever the questions are because he's taken so much time after the game. Because he's seen Andrew Nembhard and fresh-legged Ben Sheppard and long-armed Myles Turner, he can handle us and our laptops (and this isn't in reference to anything specific in Shai's borderline boilerplate addresses during the Finals, any media member or any of the MVP's personal media interactions).

I don't bring a laptop to games, and it is true I lost my pen on the way down to the media area. My pockets don't matter, what counts is Shai Gilgeous-Alexander's free and natural way when the cameras are on, and how we won't become bored with it.

FREE T-SHIRTS

Very, very few Oklahoma City fans in visible attendance in Game 3, maybe a dozen wearing the team colors. Game 3 was a sellout and every t-shirt was worn or taken home or both and yet, there were still boxes and boxes to give out:

I'll try to take more interesting pictures at Game 4. Cold drinks available, though.

Shed Pacer playoff t-shirts sold to local resell shops were a staple of my leisurewear for much of the last decade.

DID IT FEEL LIKE A NEW SERIES?

Maybe it was the space between games. Felt like a new series at Game 3's tip, even when the Thunder took off to that early lead. Like a strange, summertime, best-of four.

A one-off, made for TV. Perhaps this is the novelty of the participants, a fourth-seed against a group of neophytes. It ain't like Indiana changed its uniform between Game 1 and 2 and 3.

We are so deep into the season that no team knows what is going on out there, where there is evidence of some Finals signage but not much, rumors of intangible images, only seen on TV. The players on the court don't know what day it is, only that this feels like heaven, some strange ascendency, a rapture where everyone leaves but the Thunder and Pacers.

TYRESE HALIBURTON, NEXT GEN INTERACTION

Literally.

So calm and appropriate that it inspired the lone zinger I can remember in however many years Grant Hill's been on TV.

(Oh, so we're going after Grant Hill now?)

No. And I'm glad he's out there! It's just, I can't name a favorite Late Night with Seth Meyers desk segment either. It's all pretty good.

This is the year Gen Z took over the NBA Finals and frankly I cannot be happier. We had our run.

"Our?" Am I millennial now? My wife and I shared an elevator with MGMT once.

THE BUILDINGS CAN HANDLE IT

The way production gear shrunk between the last time I covered the Finals (2010, months after replacing my flip phone with a Blackberry) and 2025 (I can't find my pen) astounds. Astounds me, and nobody else.

The trucks and power supply accommodations are still out in full force, sockets and prongs everywhere, but the weight and bulk and space obligation diminished significantly.

CAMOUFLAGE TANK COUNT

Indianapolis – none that I could spot.

Oklahoma City – two. Two tanks. For an NBA game.

Two tanks and at least two-dozen undercover police SUVs.

DARNELL HILLMAN NEARLY SENT TO WAR BECAUSE BASKETBALL

Drafted to serve in Vietnam simply to get his rebounding prowess out of Santa Clara's conference:

Hillman said former U.S. Army officer and Medal of Honor winner Carlos Ogden Sr. was overheard by “some alumni” from San Jose State that night saying he was going to get Hillman drafted into the military to keep him from playing against Santa Clara again. Ogden was the father of then-Santa Clara star forwards Bud and Ralph Ogden, who both later played in the NBA.

Hillman said he didn’t think it was a coincidence that he was drafted into the Army in 1969 during the Vietnam War and didn’t play at San Jose State again. San Jose State would later retire Hillman’s No. 45 jersey in 2012.

“The father of the Ogden brothers pointed right at me and said, ‘My sons aren’t going to play against him again,’ ” Hillman said. “He was the head of the California Draft Court. [Media] claim the story is that I dropped out of school to go join the Army. No, they took me out of school."

Thank you for visiting Broad Ripple for this, Marc Spears.

Darnell Hillman spent two years in the Army and luckily did not see Vietnam before being drafted by the NBA and ABA.

NOBODY READ THE WAYNE EMBRY BOOK

I love Nellie. We share a birthday, other interests.

He also Al Campanis'ed Wayne Embry out of Milwaukee.

THE THUNDER REALLY WANT TO GET JALEN WILLIAMS GOING

Can you blame them?

Early interest in Game 3, repeated interest down the stretch, sometimes it paid off, sometimes it didn't. Oklahoma City expects a long series, fumbles in its first week to pay off in the second.

Game 6 will take place two months after Jalen began our postseason dominating the Memphis Grizzlies. Williams turned 24 on April 14 and 24 has been a haul: Memphis, Denver and Minnesota are some stuff. Indiana is full of players with size and speed enough to give Jalen fits, while he's trying to play nice alongside an MVP, while he's trying to set up OKC's famed group of role players, work around Chet Holmgren's fits and spurts.

Thunder fans should be beside themselves at the learning experience Oklahoma City's players and coaching staff are in the middle of. These are lessons to build a dynasty off.

And the Thunder don't have to worry about Josh Giddey gunking up the works, what'd they end up doing with that guy?

I ROUTINELY ADD YEARS TO BENNEDICT MATHURIN'S AGE

He is 22 for another week and I know this, I don't think he's 25, but I treat him that way. He blew defensive possessions in Game 2, doesn't contribute in every contest, is yet to find a repeatable groove to sync into off Indiana's bench. His best bet, as exemplified in Game 3, is T.J. McConnell finding him a random, surprise bucket to settle Mathurin's mind.

Mathurin overthinks because he has thoughts enough for 40 points. There aren't a lot of those players in the NBA. Mathurin will not battle Tatum and Brown for Eastern swingman supremacy for the next decade, but he is very good, and improving on the best possible team.

He doesn't want to do too much, and doesn't grow too petulant when he isn't allowed to do much at all. Confidence will encourage comfort as he walks that fine line, minding his spots off the bench.

STILL NOT AS LOUD

The 2009 WNBA Finals were the loudest sporting event I've ever covered, my lone visit to Chicago Stadium the loudest experience I've felt inside a stadium.

Game 3 wasn't there yet, maybe Game 4 will be. Loud as Oklahoma City, but not as loud as Fever fans some 16 years ago.

Nothing will be louder than the Link Wray show I went to in 2002.

THE NBA GAVE JIMMY GOLDSTEIN AN ULTIMATUM

Said, we'll get you into these games but you've got to lose those teenage models, you are creeping everybody out.

Goldstein sports a hunky male chaperone this postseason, instead of grossing us out with female dates younger than NBA rookies.

Of course, Jimmy still grosses us out with the fact that he looks like Tom Petty (but right now).

Jimmy Goldstein is a shitty person. I don't like him.

T.J. MCCONNELL DOESN'T MIND SINGING 'STAIRWAY'

The American Broadcasting Corporation brought its yellow jackets to town and T.J. McConnell played the hits, two in-bound steals!

Hasn't been in the setlist for years, everyone knows it is coming so the mood is never right, and T.J. McConnell is all about the mood.

After a season spent watching opponents triple-team Payton Pritchard with two seconds left in the quarter, it was nice to see an NBA player's widely-reported cool gimmick see the light of day. Like Luis Tiant throwing an eephus pitch for a strike in the World Series.

McConnell's ceiling, if not his orthodoxy, is probably closest to Bill Lee's, but the arc remains. Word got out, teams haven't been fooled by T.J. for years, yet he sneaks two steals during the brightest moment of his career.

WHAT I LEARNED FROM THE PROTESTS

Wasn't surprised to see ICE protests outside Game 3, Indy always shows up. Was not surprised when a protesting gentleman and his sign-carrying partner effusively complimented my blazer and "fit" on my way into the building. I know what's up.

What was surprising was the flock in full. A bunch of Pacer fans, with money enough to buy tickets to an NBA Finals game, walking past the protesters and giving every indication that, yeah, these kids are probably right.

Not an easy admission, for bejeweled wine moms atop heels and BMW Beard dads in tiny, white socks. But it was all over their faces. I didn't see anyone upset to be upset by anything, rather a recognition of what we're in for, a summer America deserves.

American wants to survive. The two lines zipper-merged before Game 3, air thick with either the cable TV rebroadcasts of What's Going On and also the nerves inherent in staring down a Goliath. We're all sweating through the same thing(s).

Finding common ground in shared anxiety, the crowds churned along nicely. Indianapolis renamed every street after Pacer players in advance of these Finals, so the Pacers play on "Furphy Avenue" at the moment. Maybe everyone was smiling at that.

Why the city could not change Pennsylvania Ave. (where the Pacers play) to Haliburton Ave. and save Furphy Ave. for, say, the Arby's lot I paid $50 to park in, that's up to Indianapolis.

THAT ARBY'S LOT

Six years ago this time I was sitting in that carpark midweek in the summertime, waiting for people to click on my hatchback and ask for an inexpensive rideshare between Indianapolis nightspots. There weren't that many takers.

None of this was lost on me Wednesday night. Thank you for your support through these Finals, the many months before them.

THE PACERS ARE GOOD ENOUGH TO WIN

I need to consistently remind myself that the Pacers are a recent iteration, still growing and improving. Cannot underestimate that. This team spots surmountable slips and does what it can to amend its mitigating factors. Seeks to control only what it can.

OKLAHOMA CITY MAKES JUST ENOUGH MISTAKES TO LOSE

I picked the Pacers to win twice because I thought basketball would happen. Two teams play hard and one team makes more baskets.

What I did not expect was passive defense from the MVP, and Thunder content with letting the underdog manage the contest's flow and narrative. This was supposed to be Oklahoma City's story, and it won't finish if they keep letting someone else write the most important words to "2024-25."

I DON'T KNOW IF I WANT COACHES IN SUITS ANYMORE

I realized the coaches will just wear suits with those stupid sneakers anyway. Like a SportsCenter host, standing up to introduce an NFL draft segment, shoe logo in full view of the cameras.

Oh, wow, more Jordans. This time they're purple.

I don't know if I want to see coaches wearing too-tight suits from the Greg Olsen collection. Dancing around on those same three pairs of Jordans that everyone wears under slacks now, the local weatherman, the morning news host, the sportswriter, all the cool professions.

WHEN THOMAS BRYANT ENTERS I SAY THE SAME THING

"TB Sheeeeeeets!"

(Complimentary.)

ENDLESSLY

What she said.

I also wrote about Indiana for SB Nation.

Thank you for reading! Tell your friends about the guy driving to every NBA Finals game! He just passed 2000 miles.