The essence of the 2025 NBA Finals is summed up in two powerful, yet simple, quotes that emerged this week.
The first comes from Indiana Pacers center Myles Turner, recognized in the NBA for his love of Legos, even being used as an insult by his opponents. However, Turner sees the construction of these, brick by brick, as a form of art, and considers himself an artist.
There are books and dissertations on the philosophy of Lego, just as there are many on basketball. Turner is a follower of both and a thinker; if he hadn’t left the University of Texas after his freshman year for the 2015 NBA draft, he had planned to study psychology.
Therefore, it wasn’t frivolous when he uttered what could be the most defining and complete sentence about this NBA season, and perhaps about the upcoming NBA Finals between his Pacers and the Oklahoma City Thunder, which will begin with Game 1 on Thursday.
It was profound and simple, profound and whimsical. Like their Legos. He explained why both teams, one considered a surprise and the other a dominant force throughout the season, are still standing. It comes down to their ability to “use the power of friendship,” he said, to find chemistry on and off the court.Then there’s the quote from Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, perhaps fueled by a Michael Jordan-inspired connection. SGA was also “cut” from his high school team in his hometown of Hamilton, Ontario, in ninth grade. More precisely, he “only” made the freshman team… and ended up leading them to the city title.
It’s safe to say that Gilgeous-Alexander had a great rise in high school, but it went deeper than just getting a place at the University of Kentucky. This week, he described a lesson he learned in high school, which became a defining feature of his life:
The power of calm.
The 2025 NBA Finals: the power of friendship and the control of calm.I used to be a kid who would get mad and throw the ball across the court in a pickup game. My coaches taught me that the older you get, the less you allow yourself to do things like that.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
That book title could be on the shelves by next spring. And it encapsulates the story of these two small-market teams that were built slowly and deliberately, without fanfare, like the assembly of Turner’s 9,000-piece Lego replica of the Titanic, which remains one of his most prized possessions. There’s only one player in the Finals who was a top-three draft pick, Chet Holmgren, and he’s not yet an All-Star… yet.
“I think it’s a new model for the league,” Turner said after the Pacers eliminated the New York Knicks in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals.“I think the years of super teams and accumulation just aren’t as effective as before… The new trend now is something like what we’re doing. OKC does the same: young people go out and run, defend, and use the power of friendship.”
It’s catchy and has merit.Earlier this season, Jarrett Allen, center for the Cleveland Cavaliers, said his team played “ethical basketball.”
“Ethical, farm-to-table, non-GMO, organic, pasture-raised basketball,” Allen said of his 64-win Cavs team, which featured three All-Stars, regularly played 10 players, and showcased balanced, high-passing offenses throughout the regular season. The “ethical” attack by the Cavs team was praised throughout the league when Kenny Atkinson won the Coach of the Year award in his first season in Cleveland. But the Cavaliers’ basketball style was met by a team in the Eastern Conference semifinals that pushed that ethic even further, the circle-of-friends team known as the Indiana Pacers.The Knicks, who advanced one round further than the Cavs, have an entire brand built around their friendships within the team, with podcasts, television commercials, and a long history, dating back to their time as teammates at Villanova.
The team president, former agent Leon Rose, hired his old friends and clients Tom Thibodeau and Rick Brunson as coaches and prioritized the signing of his former clients Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns, both of whom were part of the All-NBA teams this season, as cornerstones.
The Knicks have just had their best consecutive seasons in a quarter of a century, which adds more support to Turner’s thesis.
“The whole is better than the sum of its parts with the Pacers, which I think is the sign of a good team,” said Thunder coach Mark Daigneault. “They play the same way in January as they do in May. They play the same way with a 20-point lead as they do with a 20-point deficit. They have incredible integrity in the way they do things.”
Circle of friendship, a game without emotions, integrity: these are not exactly common principles that usually describe teams that reach the Finals, much less those that win. “When people see this” – Jordan said about his personal creed during the defining scene in “The Last Dance” – “they’re going to say, ‘Well, he wasn’t really a good guy. He was a tyrant.’ Well, that’s for you, because you never won anything. “That’s how I am, that’s how I played the game. That was my mentality. If you don’t want to play that way, don’t play that way.” The Pacers have some edge. Their star Tyrese Haliburton is becoming one of the league’s most established trolls. Some players, including Haliburton, showed up to the Game 6 elimination situation against the Knicks dressed in black in mourning. Haliburton even responded to Knicks superfan, actor Ben Stiller, on X after the series-clinching victory.Despite the taunts and the responses, it’s not the way they play. They could be killers at key moments and play with abandon, but Turner’s characterization of what the team embodies is accurate.
The Thunder, for their part, have built their own culture, which stems from the same ideal. One of their defining traditions, often led by SGA, is to always do group interviews on the court after the game.
Earlier this season, Daigneault said that when the Thunder “have the angel and the devil on their shoulder, we go with the angel.”
For the most part, they follow the leadership of their MVP, who is committed to keeping his emotions under control and supporting his teammates.
“We’ve been as close as you can be on a basketball team, the guys are connected at the hip wherever we go,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “We do everything together on and off the court. Above all, we prioritize winning and enjoying each other’s company. I think it’s happened organically that way.”
Add “organic” to the buzzwords of this series. By the way, in his year at Kentucky, Gilgeous-Alexander focused his studies on agriculture. The 2025 NBA Finals: Lego, farms, and friendship. Just another topic to work on for the future documentary.At the very least, this championship series brings a breath of fresh air to the NBA landscape. These teams operate and feel a bit different from the recent champions of this era, where proving critics wrong and overcoming difficulties has defined teams like the Boston Celtics and the Golden State Warriors.
The game and the domain are equally intense, but the personalities surrounding them are different. And those involved are fully aware. “It’s something you don’t take for granted,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “You never know how many times you get to play for a team like this.”
