Hey, I hate the Oklahoma City Thunder.

I know as a Knicks fan, I am legally required to run my car into anyone I see wearing a Pacers jersey.

Reggie Miller mocked Spike Lee.

Roy Hibbert blocked Carmelo Anthony at the rim.

The Pacers have eliminated my favorite team from the playoffs in back-to-back seasons and yet,  I still lost my mind celebrating Tyrese Haliburton hitting a buzzer-beater to steal Game 1 of the NBA Finals from the OKC Thunder.

WHAT THE HALIBURTON AGAIN 😱

TYRESE WINS GAME 1 OF THE NBA FINALS FOR THE PACERS 🔥 pic.twitter.com/TLv6OtQyWV

— ESPN (@espn) June 6, 2025

The Pacers are a team of destiny

Since the beginning of the NBA play-by-play, teams have a 1-1,640 record in games in which they trailed by at least 7 points with less than a minute to play entering this postseason.

That’s 1 singular win in 1,641 chances over the last 27 years.

The Indiana Pacers have done it 3 TIMES in these playoffs.

Game 1 of the NBA Finals wasn’t that drastic of a comeback, but Indiana was still down 15 in the 4th quarter—giving them the biggest comeback in Finals history.

They also didn’t have the lead until there were 0.3 seconds left in the game. For 47:59 seconds, the Pacers were losing.

Now they’re up 1-0 in the NBA Finals.

Pacers biggest (and only) lead was by 1 point in final 0.3 seconds. Last team to win a playoff game when their only lead was by 1 point was Spurs vs Blazers in Game 2 of 1999 Western Conference finals when Sean Elliott hit a 3 with 9 seconds left for an 86-85 win

— Josh Dubow (@JoshDubowAP) June 6, 2025

Shout out to the Pacers but Tyrese Haliburton, specifically, just hit a game winner in the NBA Finals. That’s some Michael Jordan shit.

Let’s quickly look at all the big buzzer-beater Tyrese alone has hit so far this postseason:

• 2-pointer to take a 1-point lead with 0.3 left in Game 1 of the NBA Finals
• 2-pointer at the buzzer to tie and send Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals to OT
• 3-pointer to take 1-point lead with 1.1 left in Game 2 of the 2nd Round
• Dunk to take 1-point lead with 1.3 left in Game 5 of the 1st round

Tyrese Haliburton is 25 years old.

This is only the second postseason appearance of his career and he’s already made the 2nd most shots to tie or take the lead in the final 3 seconds of a playoff game—behind only LeBron James.

I have criticisms of Tyrese Haliburton’s game.

His confidence escapes him too quickly—turning him into a Ben Simmons-esque player, where looking at the rim is the equivalent of staring at the sun.

Defensively, he’s easily defeated by any screen—although in the modern NBA, he is one of many players who are basically done with a defensive possession once they face a pick. It’s why the great defenders stand out so much. It’s like “wow, Dyson Daniels didn’t immediately quit upon physical contact.”

I get it, guys.

Fuck the Pacers.

Hashtag KnicksTape.

I’m with all that.

But Tyrese Haliburton is the one man saving us from them…

The OKC Thunder welcome a NEW dog to their post game interview with @JaredSGreenberg 😂 pic.twitter.com/R2v3qj4mCm

— NBA on TNT (@NBAonTNT) October 25, 2024

The OKC Thunder are lame

Every night, someone goes viral by just saying Tyrese is “cringe”. He often gets compared to Steve Urkel. They make fun of his voice or the quality of the women he lies with. This is how children interact with the world. I’m in my 30’s. I have a weird voice and—despite being able to check off every box in the “tall, dark, and handsome” surveys they ask for those old 70’s VHS dating services—not every woman I’ve woken up next to is Zazie Beetz.

None of that shit matters after you

You know what I think is pretty dope? Hitting 4 fucking gamewinners on a legendary run to the NBA Finals.

You know what else I think is cool?

• Dogwalking Giannis—a Top 5 basketball player on planet Earth
• Sneaking past a Cleveland team that broke a franchise record by starting the year 15-0 and finished with the 2nd-best offensive rating in NBA history.
• Making Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns tap out in an MMA fight.

 

Before I shit on the Thunder, I have an important disclaimer to make: We are excluding Shai Gilgeous-Alexander from this conversation because he is an objectively cool player, surrounded by dorks. SGA is cold-blooded—maybe literally—the way he slithers with the ball, sending defenders to the desert, rolling up their sleeves as they try to pick up a rattlesnake—always biting them for a trip to the free throw line.

He moves like Randle from Monsters Inc.

But outside of SGA, the Thunder represent all my fears of what this country has become.

Capitalism has robbed us of individuality.

Every player on this team has the exact same style as everyone else on this team.

They play like they were trained to become professional basketball players since birth—whipped by nuns if their elbows were out of place on their jumpers—eliminating any idiosyncrasies in their games that would’ve deviated from maximizing their chances to become NBA players.

Their jumpers all look the same. They all have the same layup packages. They all play defense the same exact way.

The Thunder have a uniformity that erases the joy of watching basketball.

Anthony Edwards plays like he grew up playing on those outdoor double rims. Cason Wallace plays like he’s never a chain net.

I love the Knicks.

Mikal Bridges shoots over his head and kind of skips around the court.

OG’s jumper looks like it physically hurts him to take, like he’s in the midst of an Animorphs transformation.

Jalen Brunson is wildly unpredictable with the ball, capable of scoring off either foot, turning around over either shoulder, pivoting until he finds space.

Everyone on that roster is different from everyone else in the league.

Josh Hart has a weird hitch in his jumper.

When Cam Payne shoots, he holds the ball in front of his face like he’s holding a globe, looking for a small, uninhabited island in the Pacific.

The Oklahoma City Thunder all play the same.

Even Lu Dort—their least offensive-skilled player—still spent his high school years at a Canadian basketball academy.

The player most likely to have played on the blacktop in jeans was a fucking prep school geek.

American basketball becomes more and more professionalized at younger ages—stripping all personality and unique flare from these kids so they can become the perfect little NBA players who all have identical jump shot mechanics and all say the right things to the press and all go to bed on time—never strolling into the hotel at 4am with the Henny sweats and a woman on his arm that turns around smiling at the Hotel front desk guy like Michael Jackson at the end of the Thriller video, knowing she’s about to lie about being on birth control.

And if OKC wins the championship, they will become the new gold standard for how to run an NBA team. Only geeks with 4.0 GPAs and perfect posture and no swag and no hoes will be NBA-eligible.

We’re only a few years away from fans golf-clapping in the stands.

Tyrese Haliburton is the only person stopping the Thunder from turning the NBA into a boring league full of copy and paste, well-behaved, bible reading young men who call rich white men “sir”.

Pacers in 4.

 

 

 

 

 

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