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NBA Finals Game 7 Picks: Will the Thunder Save Their Season, or Will the Indiana Pacers Complete the NBA’s All-Time Underdog Run?

Photo of Scott Kacsmar Scott Kacsmar21/06/2025 - 09:43 am
(Photo by Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)

For only the 20th time in history and the first since 2016, the NBA Finals are going to Game 7. It seems the Oklahoma City Thunder forgot they could win the title Thursday night after they turned in one of their worst performances this season, and now the Indiana Pacers are one road win away this Sunday night from completing the most improbable championship run in NBA history.

Remember, the Pacers were +5000 to +6600 to win the championship before the 2024-25 season started. They were +8000 before the first round of the playoffs. They were +500 before Game 1 of this series. All of these odds would be the new standard for an underdog winning it all, and it looks even more shocking when you consider how the 68-win Thunder have been so heavily favored throughout this season.

Even for Sunday night, they are a 7.5-point favorite with -290 odds, implying a 74.4% chance of winning. But if they don’t, there’s never been an upset this big in the Finals. One of the closest was the last Finals to reach Game 7, and at least the 2016 Cavaliers had LeBron James to balance things out from how unbelievable that was.

Tyrese Haliburton’s calf seemed just fine in Game 6, so we can downplay that storyline for this one. With the way series like to fluctuate from game to game, the Thunder playing so poorly isn’t that much of a concern as they could easily bounce back at home. However, it’s not like Indiana shot lights out in Game 6 (.413 FG%, .357 3P%), and it’s not like they haven’t shown the ability to pull off improbable comebacks and win big road games.

In fact, in Game 7 of the semifinals last year against the Knicks at Madison Square Garden, the Pacers shot 53-of-79 (.671) from the field, the highest FG% in any playoff game in NBA history. That was the same top eight players the team has this year with their starting five, T.J. McConnell, Ben Sheppard, and Obi Toppin. This is their second Game 7 together and they were historically great in the first one on the road.

On the other hand, the Thunder have been here before too just two rounds ago against the Denver Nuggets. As we showed in our Game 5 preview, this Finals has largely mirrored the semifinals series between the Thunder and Nuggets:

  • The Thunder lost Game 1 at home in improbable fashion to last-second shots by Aaron Gordon and Tyrese Haliburton.
  • The Thunder comfortably won Game 2 in a blowout.
  • The Thunder were outplayed in the fourth quarter and lost Game 3 by 9 points to fall behind 2-1 in both series.
  • The Thunder had to rally in the fourth quarter to avoid a 3-1 hole in both series.
  • The Thunder again showed their dominance in the fourth quarter of Game  5 to take a 3-2 lead both times.
  • The Thunder were far less competitive in Game 6 in Indiana than they were in Denver, but they lost both games by 12+ points when they had their first chance to clinch the series.

However, if this trend continues, then the Thunder could be cruising to a Game 7 victory, because after trailing Denver by double digits early, the Thunder blew them out 125-93 to win the series.

But even as the favorite, you never want things to come down to a Game 7 where anything can happen, especially against a team that’s had devil luck like the 2024-25 Pacers, possibly a team of destiny.

Before our final NBA picks of the season, let’s look at some of the history in Game 7s and how that could help us predict what may happen Sunday night.

NBA Finals: The History of Game 7s and the Impact on Pacers-Thunder

There’s nothing sports fans like to hear more than “Game 7” in a playoff series, and we haven’t had too many of these in the NBA in recent time. This is only the fifth time the Finals will reach Game 7 since 1995.

Again, from our Game 6 research, teams down 3-2 have only won the Finals in 9-of-49 instances (18.4%), but the Pacers are built for history. They’ve already ahead of the pack by getting this to Game 7 as 30 of the 49 teams couldn’t do that.

This series is great for people who love round numbers as it’s the 50th NBA Finals with a Game 6 and the 20th NBA Finals with a Game 7. Here’s the breakdown of Game 7s by decade:

  • 1950s – 5
  • 1960s – 4
  • 1970s – 3
  • 1980s – 2
  • 1990s – 1
  • 2000s – 1
  • 2010s – 3
  • 2020s – 1

A stat to like is that Game 7 of the NBA Finals is usually competitive with 15 of the 19 games decided by 1-to-9 points.

The last time it was decided by double digits was the biggest margin of victory ever by the road team in a Finals Game 7 when the 1974 Celtics won 102-87 in Milwaukee. However, even that was a 5-point game going into the fourth quarter.

There hasn’t been a true “blowout” in Game 7 of the NBA Finals since 1970 when the Knicks beat the Lakers. The Knicks led 38-24 after one quarter, 69-42 at halftime, and they were still up 25 going to the fourth quarter before they won 113-99.

Still, that means none of the 19 games were decided by 20-plus points, or the kind of comfortable rout the Thunder will hope to have. However, a sample size of 19 games isn’t good to begin with for statistical analysis. Then when you consider half of the games occurred by 1970, that may not be relatable at all to this unique era of NBA basketball where the volatile 3-point shot leads to more comebacks/blown leads and ultimately upsets.

But there are some interesting trends from these 19 games worth noting for Sunday night:

  • The home team is 15-4 (.789) in Game 7 of the NBA Finals.
  • The last road winner was the 2016 Cavaliers in the last Game 7 in the NBA Finals, which has seemingly started a trend where road teams are doing better than ever in Game 7 in the NBA (any round).
  • Since Cleveland’s comeback win, the home team has a losing record at 10-14 (.417) in Game 7s (8-12 if we ignore the 2020 bubble).
  • Home court used to mean everything in Game 7 as the home teams were 19-5 (.792) in the 24 games from 2011-16, 18-6 (.750) in 2003-10, and 67-15 (.817) before 2003.

For the first time in NBA history, home teams have lost five straight Game 7s in the Conference Finals or NBA Finals:

  • 2016 NBA Finals: Cavaliers 93, Warriors 89
  • 2018 ECF: Cavaliers 87, Celtics 79
  • 2018 WCF: Warriors 101, Rockets 92
  • 2022 ECF: Celtics 100, Heat 96
  • 2023 ECF: Heat 103, Celtics 84

No longer can you pencil in the home team to win Game 7 in the NBA, and that’s a very good thing as it was too predictable for too long. It’s also good to see that home court should mean even less once you advance to this late stage of the playoffs after these teams have both won 15 playoff games and are battling for No. 16 and the championship. No pretenders make it this far.

Another trend to note from those scores above and the 19 Game 7s in the Finals is that these games tend to be low scoring.

It’s Game 7, players get tight, they’re nervous/antsy, they make mistakes, and sloppy basketball leads to fewer points scored. Notice how the last five road winners in Game 7 didn’t even need to score many points as none of those games made it to 200 total points. Note that all five Game 7s in the NBA Finals since 1994 had a team win without scoring more than 95 points.

In fact, 19 of the last 20 Game 7s in the Conference Finals and NBA Finals failed to reach 200 total points, and the only one that did, 2002 Lakers-Kings, was 100-100 going into overtime.

You usually don’t need to score many points to win these games. The over/under for this Game 7 is 215 points, which is about 10-to-15 points lower than the rest of the series, so the sportsbooks know this too. Under 215 would have hit in 16-of-19 Game 7s in the NBA Finals, and twice when it didn’t it was because those games went to overtime (or double overtime in 1957 Celtics-Hawks).

So, yeah, I think our first pick this weekend is for the under, especially after the way the last game ended. This one should be a grind for both sides.

NBA Pick: Under 215 Points (-110) at FanDuel

Before you assume a lower-scoring game favors the No. 1 defense in the Thunder, not so fast.

  • The Pacers are 15-1 this postseason when they score at least 108 points and 0-6 when they finish under that number.
  • But the Pacers are also 9-1 this postseason when they don’t allow more than 110 points and still a respectable 6-6 when they do.
  • Meanwhile, the Thunder are 14-1 this postseason when they score at least 111 points and 1-6 when they don’t, which is a slightly higher minimum number to hit than the Pacers.
  • The Thunder are 11-0 when not allowing more than 107 points but 4-7 when they do.

So, it would seem that Indiana needs to get to 108 here while the Thunder might need to get to 111. Fittingly, 108 + 107 = 215, so the game could finish right on the line if Indiana won by the lowest score and margin possible that they’ve been winning with this postseason.

But let’s also just think about this logically. While pace and tempo are important for the Pacers, we’ve seen them play so-so basketball for three quarters before turning it on late. For that matter, they played poorly in Game 5 on Monday night, and still were down just 2 points at one point in the fourth quarter even with Haliburton unable to make a field goal. They hang around, and the Thunder know what that’s like from Game 1 when they blew a 15-point lead in the fourth quarter to this team.

So, if you’re the Pacers, would you rather hang around and need Haliburton to hit another clutch shot like he’s done all year to win a 98-96 game, or would you rather see better offense and the Pacers have to win a 111-110 type of game again?

The fact is as long as it’s close late, the Pacers have an incredible shot to win this thing with the way they’ve played in the clutch all season. I think a lower score helps them keep it close for as long as possible so that they don’t fall into Denver’s Game 7 position two rounds ago when the Nuggets were down 25+ points for the entire fourth quarter in OKC.

But the overall trend of Game 7 in the NBA has been closer, lower-scoring games, and the road teams are thriving. This will hopefully not be a repeat of Nuggets-Thunder Game 7 where you know who is going to win at halftime. For that matter, we need a much more competitive game than Game 6 was on Thursday night in Indiana, though there is always something more amusing about the underdog waxing the favorite like the Pacers did.

But let’s hope this is another grind and memorable finish.

2025 NBA Finals Game 7 Betting Picks

If we review our NBA Game 6 betting picks, it obviously was a weird game with the Thunder getting blown out, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander turning it over 8 times, Haliburton hitting a trio of 3s, and Alex Caruso was scoreless.

But some of our picks weren’t that bad with Andrew Nembhard quickly getting multiple steals (+205), T.J. McConnell went over in points, Haliburton had a single rebound as I predicted he wouldn’t do much on the boards, and the under was a good call. Just have to ignore the Thunder moneyline part of it all, or how Myles Turner really struggled to shoot in his final home game this year.

For the last time this season, let’s do some player props and make our Game 7 final score prediction. I already said that under 215 points is a good pick.

1. Tyrese Haliburton: The Rollercoaster Ends One Way or Another

No matter what happens Sunday night, much will be written about Tyrese Haliburton this offseason. Is he a top-tier guard? Is he not aggressive or consistent enough as a scorer? How healthy was he in the playoffs?

But with one game left, he just has to deliver one more time and he’s an Indiana legend forever. We saw it in Game 1 where he didn’t do much scoring, but he again made the clutch shot to win the game. If there was a sportsbook offering Haliburton to score the game-winning field goal in the last minute, I’d be all over that for this Game 7.

But I’m just going to take an alternate points line approach and go with him to score over 15.5 points. He’s had at least one 24-point game in his first seven playoff series and I am tempted to go up to 25+ points (+800 at FanDuel) for him in this game, but it just hasn’t been there for him.

Still, the extra day off between games should help with the calf. I’d be looking elsewhere if this game was played with one day between Games 6 and 7, but he gets that extra day again and that should serve him well.

Now we’ll see if he can deliver one more clutch shot for NBA lore.

NBA Pick: Tyrese Haliburton Over 15.5 Points (-102) at FanDuel

2. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander Would Appreciate His Teammates’ Assistance

The Thunder are known in the mainstream media as “Free Throw Merchants” but the real data to hold up from their historic season is the proof that they’re “Turnover Merchants” as they dominate turnovers on both ends of the court.

But something strange has happened in this series where the Pacers have almost been invulnerable to OKC’s turnover mastery. Even in Game 1, the Pacers were -18 in turnover differential (OKC’s second-highest game this season) and still won thanks in large part to the way they stopped turning it over in the second half. They also play great transition defense and usually limit points on turnovers except for Andrew Nembhard’s birdbrain mistakes in Game 5.

But in Game 6, the Thunder just had a season-worst -10 turnover differential. They’ve had four games all season where they were minus-5 or worse and half of them were against these Pacers in the Finals.

The other way the Pacers have forced this to Game 7 is they don’t give up many assists to the Thunder, who have their four worst games of the season in assists against the Pacers now.

Incredibly, they still won Game 4 with a season-low 11 assists, but they lost the other three games where they couldn’t get more than 16 assists. But including the regular season, the Thunder haven’t been able to get more than 26 team assists in 8 games against the Pacers.

This is the long way of saying I think they force SGA to shoot the ball a lot in isolated possessions, the game is a defensive grind without much pretty passing from OKC, shooting fouls will be called, and he’ll finish under 5.5 assists for the fifth time in seven games in this series. He had no assists in Game 4’s win.

Give me the under 5.5 assists with the juice.

NBA Pick: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander Under 5.5 Assists (+116) at FanDuel

3. Jalen Williams: One More Time

Jalen Williams has shown himself this postseason to be a young Scottie Pippen (1991 Bulls) or Kobe Bryant (2000 Lakers) type of sidekick to SGA who can help elevate the Thunder to this championship and maybe more down the road.

But for the last time this season, I am betting on him to get two steals and show off those defensive skills in the biggest game of his career. This series has been an absolute gold mine for steals for so many players on both teams… except for Jalen Williams:

  • Through six games, 11 unique players have recorded 2+ steals a combined 30 times in this series, including 14 games with 3+ steals, and 8 games with 4+ steals.
  • But Williams is not one of the 11 players to do it yet.
  • Williams had 2+ steals in 36-of-69 games in the regular season this year.
  • He did it 7 times in 16 playoff games before this series started.
  • He’s gone 1-1-1-0-1-0 in steals this series.
  • Williams has gone 7 straight games without multiple steals, his longest since a 10-game streak in January-February 2024.

With a slim shot of still winning Finals MVP in this series, let’s see him get a few steals for his defense.

NBA Pick: Jalen Williams to Record 2+ Steals (+148) at FanDuel

4. Pascal Siakam: Finals MVP Dark Horse

Pascal Siakam was my favorite value pick at +2000 odds for Finals MVP, and he’s up to +300 odds for it now, trailing only SGA (-240) and eclipsing Wiliams (+1200) and Haliburton (+1600), the only four people who realistically can win it.

I think if the Thunder win, they’ll give it to SGA unless he has a surprisingly bad shooting night and Williams is the star like he was in Game 5. But if the Pacers win, it should be Siakam for his solid consistency while Haliburton had that truly awful Game 5 and he was also pretty soft in Game 2 when he waited until the fourth quarter to try scoring. Siakam will be awarded for his consistency unless Haliburton pulls a 30 points, 12 assists, 0 turnover game out of his arse.

But in a game where I’m expecting bad offense/good defense, I think Siakam can record a double-double with 10+ rebounds again as he did in Game 1 and Game 6. I’d say bet on him to record a double-double, but the FanDuel odds are +250 for that and +250 for him to get 10+ rebounds. Sure, he should score 10 points, but that’s never 100% guaranteed, so I’d just bet on the +250 for 10 rebounds.

I think he’ll play like a man possessed (again) Sunday night.

NBA Pick: Pascal Siakam to Record 10+ Rebounds (+250) at FanDuel

5. Alex Caruso: Scrappy Until the End

Scrappy Alex Caruso has been a menace to bet on in this series as he’s had two games with 20 points and he’s scored 2 points in Games 5-6 combined. Average that out and that’s 11 points, so let’s play up his alternate line of over 9.5 points as he’ll finish in double digits with a chance to win his second ring.

NBA Pick: Alex Caruso Over 9.5 Points (+116) at FanDuel

6. Aaron Nesmith: Playoff Hero

One of Indiana’s playoff heroes that has made this run so legendary is Aaron Nesmith, who went scorched earth in Game 1 against the Knicks when he scored 20 points in 5:00. He’s been solid shooting the 3 in this series too, and I think like Caruso, he shows up for his team in this game and scores in double figures.

NBA Pick: Aaron Nesmith Over 10.5 Points (-102) at FanDuel

7. Who Wins Game 7 of the NBA Finals?

It all comes down to this. Does the 68-win team that’s been favored all year long with the historic turnover differential and the largest margin of victory in NBA history finish the job? Does the team the oddsmakers put at 80-1 before round one finish this magical journey with some of the most improbable wins in the play-by-play era? They’ve certainly played well enough in this series to believe they can get this done.

There’s also the fact that none of the 30 teams who have lost a playoff game by 40+ points like the Thunder did in Minnesota have won a championship that year. They were fixing to get beat by 30 in this last game before the Pacers put in the backups for the final stretch.

There’s a lot to consider with Haliburton’s passive nature in the series to the way the Thunder usually win at home in dominant fashion, the regression from last time, and hopefully Scott Foster won’t be the referee or people will really talk about “Free Throw Merchants” after this series.

It feels like the Pacers are a team of destiny and they should pull this off, giving us the greatest upset run to a title in NBA history. At the same time, it feels like OKC will just repeat the Denver series, and after a slow start that gives Indiana hope, they crush them and win by 11+ points again (+115 at FanDuel).

After taking some chances on the final score in this series, I’m playing it safe this time. Give me Pacers with the points (+7.5), because I really believe this will be a low-scoring game where they are within striking distance late.

And that’s why you don’t let a team hang around to the fourth quarter, which the Thunder are good at avoiding. That’s also why you don’t let this series reach seven games, but here we are.

Hope it’s an unforgettable ending to the season.

NBA Pick: Pacers +7.5 (-114) at FanDuel

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Photo of Scott Kacsmar Scott Kacsmar21/06/2025 - 09:43 am