The Oklahoma City Thunder host the Indiana Pacers on Thursday night for Game 1 of this year’s NBA Finals. It should be a fun matchup. Tyrese Haliburton and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander are two wondrous talents at the point guard position. Both stars are flanked with great supporting casts featuring unique styles of play. Both teams can put on a great show on the right nights.
The Thunder appear to have the edge on paper as the 68-win juggernaut that employs the league MVP. But that’s the beauty of it all—they have to play the games. Nothing can be determined, truly, until the ball is tipped, as it will be at 8:30 p.m. ET on Thursday.
Until then, there’s plenty to be gleaned about this matchup from a statistical standpoint. The trends that suggest one team should have an edge in a key area over another, beyond the eye test and surface-level numbers. Will the Pacers’ midrange wizardry carry over to the Finals, and how much of an advantage could it give? Can OKC finally make a mark on Haliburton’s immaculate assist-to-turnover ratio? These are the sorts of storylines that make up the game within the game, percentages that help inform what we watch as it unfolds in front of us.
In the pursuit of knowledge, understanding and a better idea of exactly what will go on during these NBA Finals, here are five stats that help preview the Pacers-Thunder matchup that will grace our television screens for the next few weeks.
5.03—Tyrese Haliburton’s assist-to-turnover ratio
Haliburton is not a perfect player, but his best skill is going to be absolutely crucial in the NBA Finals—his aversion to turnovers. In the playoffs, Haliburton is dishing over five dimes for every turnover. In eight of Indiana’s 16 playoff games, he’s recorded one or fewer turnovers. Those are ridiculous numbers for a player who has the ball as often as Haliburton; he averages 95.6 touches per game these playoffs, behind only Cade Cunningham and Nikola Jokic. He is not a one-to-one replacement for Chris Paul in the point guard rankings department, but it is no great sin to believe he’s the point god’s heir apparent when it comes to avoiding mistakes while handling the ball.
That mastery is going to come in handy against a Thunder team that feasts on turnovers. OKC is very dangerous in transition and led the league in steals per game during the regular season by a wide margin. It’s been the same story in the playoffs, with the Thunder averaging 10.8 steals and 23.8 points off turnovers per contest. It is how the roster makes up for a relative lack of creation outside Gilgeous-Alexander and Jalen Williams. Who needs to break down a half-court defense when every Thunder defender is keyed in on swiping at the ball whenever the opportunity arises, then breaking out into fast break opportunities?
It is always true in postseason basketball that teams who take care of the ball win the day. It’s especially true in this matchup. The Thunder are basically unbeatable when their opponents are sloppy, and the Pacers have a much better chance to come away victorious when they’re taking care of the ball. Indiana has averaged over 15 turnovers per game in their playoff losses this postseason compared to 11.8 per game in wins. That number starts and ends with Haliburton, who is the maestro of Rick Carlisle’s offense.
The star point guard will face the most difficult test of his career in the NBA Finals as an efficient playmaker. If he can limit mistakes and keep Indiana’s offense on schedule, the Thunder will lose a big source of their offensive output. Alternatively, if OKC can harass Haliburton into a few bad turnover games, a huge advantage will present itself. The Finals are often about taking away what the opponent does best and living with everything else; for the Thunder, that will be ensuring Haliburton doesn’t meticulously pick apart their defense without making many mistakes.
53.3%—Jalen Williams’s clutch shooting percentage
Williams has been up and down this playoff run, but his clutch play has been undeniably excellent. The UCLA product has recorded more “clutch” playing time, according to NBA.com’s tracking, than any of his teammates, playing 27.1 clutch minutes during the Thunder’s playoff run so far. In those clutch minutes, Williams has shot 8 for 15 from the floor, leading his team in shooting percentage and trailing only MVP running mate Gilgeous-Alexander in made shots. Most impressively, Williams is hitting a whopping 57.1% of his three-point tries in the clutch this postseason.
The importance of Williams’s success in those situations goes beyond the obvious. He is clearly capable of capitalizing on how defenses choose to defend the Thunder when the game is on the line, and his team needs every bit of his contributions in those spots. But Williams has managed to put up these numbers without playing terribly well this postseason. On the whole, he’s averaging fewer points per game on worse efficiency than he did in his career-best 2024–25 regular season; the low mark came against the Denver Nuggets, when Williams averaged 17.6 points per game on 37.5% shooting from the floor across seven games. But even then, he came up big when the Thunder found themselves in a tight situation, shooting 4 of 10 in 16.5 conference semifinals clutch minutes.
OKC will need Williams at his best to hold the Pacers at bay in the NBA Finals. But if he struggles to the degree he did earlier in the playoffs, the clutch play will prove crucial. Williams has been nails with the game on the line so far; let’s see if he can keep it up under the brightest spotlight in basketball.
1.029—Pacers’ points per paint touch in the ECF
A pillar of the Thunder’s defensive identity is that they’re happy to allow opposing offenses to get into the paint. Which seems counterintuitive to what our vision of an elite defense looks like. Teams with OKC’s incredible, near-historic defensive numbers have a reputation for not letting anyone get past them, impenetrable at every level. But the Thunder, while they do not let anyone get by them easily, don’t sell out to ensure opposing ballhandlers never step foot in the paint. They have allowed more shots in the paint (non-restricted area) than any other team this postseason and have allowed the fourth-most attempts in the restricted area. And they’re comfortable doing so because opponents are shooting 40.7% on attempts from the first category and 62.2% in the second, which are elite marks.
The Pacers present an interesting challenge, then, because they don’t really prioritize paint touches as an offense. Carlisle’s system has everybody moving all the time but unlike, say, the Boston Celtics, there isn’t a reliance on getting the ball inside before pinging it back outside to get everything going. If a path opens through the defense right into the painted area, then the Pacers will seize it. But it isn’t a core principle of the system.
They are, however, very dangerous when they do get into the paint. For the playoffs, the Pacers are averaging .900 points per paint touch, second among all postseason teams (and by far the highest mark among teams that made it past the first round). Indiana ranked fifth in this category during the regular season, so it wasn’t an unusually efficient series of games in that regard, but the Pacers really cranked it up a notch in the Eastern Conference finals. Against the New York Knicks’ vulnerable perimeter defense, Indy scored an absurd 1.029 points per paint touch, which far exceeds the Nuggets’ regular-season best average of .960 points per paint touch. In other words, during the Eastern Conference finals, the Pacers guaranteed themselves points every single time they drove into the paint.
Life will not be so easy against the Thunder, but the opportunities to get into the teeth of the defense will be there. It’s part of OKC’s entire program. If the Pacers can keep up their efficiency on those possessions, the offense will hum and Indiana will look as dangerous as it has all postseason.
9.2—Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s playoff free throw attempts per game
Gilgeous-Alexander is quite skilled at getting to the free throw line, in case you hadn’t heard, and the Pacers are about to find out for themselves. The league MVP ranked second in the league in free throw attempts per game in the regular season and hasn’t suffered from a tightened whistle in the playoffs. In fact, he’s gotten to the charity stripe more, averaging 9.2 attempts from the line this postseason as opposed to his 8.8 mark in the regular season. It is basically impossible to completely stop Gilgeous-Alexander from getting to the line over a 48-minute game, but limiting his attempts is one of the few ways the Thunder can be slowed down.
During the regular season, Gilgeous-Alexander attempted six or fewer free throws in nearly half of the 13 Thunder losses he was in the lineup for. That rate has carried over into the postseason, with Gilgeous-Alexander failing to reach double-digit free throw attempts in four of OKC’s five defeats in these playoffs. All told, Gilgeous-Alexander is averaging 9.8 free throw attempts per game in wins and 7.3 in losses.
It marks one of the few tangible weaknesses in OKC’s team construction—if Gilgeous-Alexander isn’t getting easy points as an 85% free throw shooter, offense is a lot harder to come by. And when the Thunder aren’t scoring, they are suddenly vulnerable.
The Pacers are not terribly equipped to take advantage of that weakness, however, even coming off a series featuring another serial foul baiter in Jalen Brunson. Indy ranks last among all playoff teams with 23.2 personal fouls per game this postseason. Critical rotation pieces like Pascal Siakam and Myles Turner are averaging three fouls a game each (unsurprisingly, Aaron Nesmith leads the roster at 3.9 personal fouls per contest). The one reason for hope is that all these numbers mark a backslide from the regular season, where the Pacers were in the top half of the league in fouls committed per game.
There is a clear opportunity here for Gilgeous-Alexander to take advantage of an undisciplined defense. It might result in an endless march to the charity stripe, which wouldn’t be a very fun viewing experience, but would give the Thunder a bailout button for when the offense hits one of its many dry spells. But officials may be watching closer than ever to start the Finals and that would give Indy an opportunity to limit the easy source of points, which would go a long way towards keeping it competitive.
11.6—Percent of Pacers’ points from midrange shots
The midrange shot, famously, has died a slow death in the NBA over the last decade as teams leaned into the mathematical advantage of hucking up threes in volume instead of taking two-point jump shots that fall at a lesser clip than layups and dunks. It also, famously, reemerges during the postseason, when defenses take away the easy shots and force opponents into uncomfortable field goal attempts. Capable midrange shooting is not a requirement to win a title (the Celtics won last year by recording only 6.7% of their points from that area) but it sure is useful as a safety valve against excellent defenses. It is also not usually a sustainable strategy unless the roster in question boasts a true midrange artist.
Which makes the Pacers’ mark of earning 11.6% of their total points this postseason from the midrange so intriguing. On the one hand, they are clearly comfortable operating in the area (in part evidenced by the paint touch stats above) and employ several players who have a reputation for cashing in from there—think Siakam’s baseline fallaways, Turner’s floaters from just inside the free throw line or T.J. McConnell’s entire shot profile. It’s not just a playoff trend, either. Indiana ranked fourth in the NBA in percentage of points scored from the midrange during the regular season, clocking in at 8.3% over 82 games. In other words, the Pacers are not fraudulent in this department and it’s reasonable to believe they can rely on some production from the toughest shot in basketball against the toughest defense in basketball.
On the other hand, the make percentages can fluctuate quite a bit. For the playoffs, Indiana is shooting 48.7% from the midrange, a full five percentage points higher than the team’s regular-season mark. But in the second round against the Cleveland Cavaliers, the shot went away and the team made only 42.4% of its midrange tries. It didn’t make a difference in the grand scheme, of course, and the Pacers’ overall output did not suffer. Given they shot 51.9% from midrange in the first round and a clean 50% in the conference finals, though, it’s a good reminder of how shaky those numbers can be.
To make this long story short, the Pacers have made a living out of converting tough shots these playoffs. They earn over 10% of their points that way. The team now runs up against a defense that guards those tough shots well; the Thunder have forced opponents into making 41.6% of attempts from the midrange so far in the playoffs. Finals games are often won on the margins, and whether the Pacers convert half their midrange shots or end up closer to the league average of 41.3% will go a long way in defining just how wide those margins are.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as NBA Finals: Five Key Stats That Could Decide Thunder-Pacers Series.