Jalen Williams explodes for 40 points as Thunder 1 win from 1st-ever NBA title

Tim Reynolds · The Associated Press

· Posted: Jun 16, 2025 11:21 PM EDT | Last Updated: 4 hours ago

Game 5 was starting to look similar Game 1 each implicit again. Oklahoma City, astatine home, takes a immense lead. Indiana comes roaring backmost successful the 4th quarter.

Indiana won that one.

This time, the Thunder crafted a antithetic ending — and a 3-2 pb successful the NBA Finals was their reward.

Jalen Williams scored a vocation playoff-high 40 points, MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander added 31 and the Thunder moved 1 triumph from a rubric by beating the Pacers 120-109 connected Monday night.

"We're learning," said Williams, whose erstwhile playoff champion was 34.

It was the 10th — and by far, the biggest — clip the Thunder stars combined for much than 70 points successful a game. Williams was 14 of 24 from the field, and Gilgeous-Alexander added 10 assists.

"It wasn't a cleanable crippled astatine each and there's a batch of country for growth," Thunder manager Mark Daigneault said. "But our betterment from Game 4 to Game 5 was critical."

Pascal Siakam had 28 points for Indiana, which volition big Game 6 connected Thursday night. TJ McConnell added 18 for the Pacers, who whittled an 18-point shortage down to 2 successful the 4th — past watched the Thunder propulsion distant again, and for good.

"It benignant of went distant from us," Siakam said. "But the combat was there."

It was, but present everything favors the Thunder.

Game 5 winners clasp edge

Teams that triumph Game 5 of an NBA Finals that was tied astatine 2-2 person gone connected to triumph the bid 23 times successful 31 erstwhile opportunities, oregon 74 per cent. And teams with a 3-2 pb successful the finals person won 40 times successful 49 erstwhile opportunities, oregon 82 per cent.

But Game 5 was not easy. Far from it.

Down by 18 precocious successful the 2nd quarter, the Pacers — the comeback kings of these playoffs, with arsenic galore wins successful this postseason from 15 points down oregon much (five) than the remainder of the league has combined, including successful Game 1 of this bid — did what they do, chipping away. And they did it with Tyrese Haliburton reduced to fundamentally playing decoy connected offence due to the fact that of a limb contented that helium aggravated successful the archetypal quarter.

"He's not 100 per cent," Pacers manager Rick Carlisle said. "It's beauteous clear."

Led by McConnell, who scored 13 points successful conscionable nether 7 minutes of the third, the Pacers got wrong 5 precocious successful that quarter.

Then, Siakam went to enactment — a brace of escaped throws with 9:19 near got Indiana wrong four, past a 3-pointer astir a infinitesimal aboriginal made it 95-93. In the play-by-play epoch of the NBA, starting with the 1997 playoffs, teams with leads of 15 points oregon much successful the finals were 80-9.

Make that 81-9 now, and the Thunder are 1 triumph distant from giving Oklahoma City its archetypal NBA title.

"That was honestly the aforesaid nonstop crippled arsenic Game 1," Williams said. "Learning done these finals, that's what makes a squad good."

One much win, and his squad volition beryllium certified arsenic great.