The OKC Thunder & Florida Panthers: 2025 Champions: An Off-Balance Round Up.
Dynasties, dreams and dynamos, as the NBA and NHL seasons conclude.
NBA Finals
Oklahoma City Thunder vs Indiana Pacers
Oklahoma City wins 4-3
A lot can change in just under a decade.
In 2016 of course, the NBA at large was in the midst of the Warriors-Cavaliers rivalry, a four-year series of back-to-back tilts that would see shockwaves reverberate from well beyond The Bay.
Sure, while The Dubs would return to the Finals in 2019 - and win their seventh overall championship in 2022 -, for perhaps the first time, truly, in NBA history, the Association has lacked a proper dynasty.
Power to parity.
To this, with their 103-91, championship-securing Game 7 victory over the Indiana Pacers on home court Sunday night, the Oklahoma City Thunder became the seventh unique winner to hoist the Larry O’Brien Trophy over the past seven years.
No back-to-backs. No purported dynasties.
No chokeholds, as decried, over the competitive spirit held, ostensibly, so closely.
Yet in saying so, it isn’t in an effort to minimize the accomplishment, not at all but instead, to view it through what is an ever-changing lens.
Oklahoma City won 68 games in the regular season, with some of the best winning-points-differential percentage numbers of all-time and led by a history-making Shai Gilgeous-Alexander1, secured, if not without battle scars, the franchise’s second-ever title - though their first since relocating to Oklahoma City from Seattle, in 2008.
For the Pacers proved themselves, when the pressure was highest, their most competitive equals.
Trading wins for the majority of the series, only for OKC to fumble their close-out opportunity in Game 6 and then, when facing down the 20th winner-take-all Game 7 in NBA history, to find themselves behind, albeit, by a single point, come halftime.
But then again, that alone serves as a reminder that not every championship nor every win is decided, moment-to-moment, through running-the-table dominance.
Rather, opportunity, seized.
After dealing with calf trouble previously, with just a shade under five minutes left in the first quarter, Indiana’s Tyrese Haliburton, who has made himself a lightening rod of both rightful criticism and star-making acclaim these playoffs (depending on the area code) went down with what his father later described to the media, with no quarter, as an Achilles injury.
Oklahoma City would steadily build their lead in his absence and battled though they did, with the as-expected resilience that has defined their season from the first jump, the Pacers saw themselves come up a single win short, in this, a Finals which served as a possible beacon for the NBA as-is going forward.
Lacking the big-market draws which will, understandably, always be the darlings of both the broader fan and those crunching PR numbers in New York but offering instead, the sport’s best spectacle in its purest form.
And history too, as the thunder roars.
Stanley Cup Finals
Florida Panthers vs Edmonton Oilers
Florida wins 4-2
To noted irony, despite the speed at which the game is played, hockey has never been a sport known for its immediate inclination towards change, towards progress.
Consider: while the continued focus by the suits on so-called non-traditional markets has maddened many, the proof of success, it is clear, is in whatever has become of Matthew Tkachuk’s chewed-to-all-hell mouthguard.
For until further notice, the Cup runs through the Sunbelt.
And it couldn’t be said with more pronouncement, which, following their 5-1, Game 6 victory over the Edmonton Oilers, the Florida Panthers won not just their second consecutive Cup, in defeating Edmonton in back-to-back years but capped off a run which has seen a team from the state play for the title in six straight seasons - be it the Panthers or their long-time rivals, the Tampa Bay Lightning.
But while Tampa Bay’s accession was the cumulation of years of up-and-down trials (during two seasons defined by the pandemic, no less) and though the first team to repeat since the 2016/2017 Pittsburgh Penguins as they may be, Florida’s championship acumen feels distinct, wholly dictated on their own terms.
Taking hockey’s inherent volatility and properly tanning it to a crisp under their Sunrise-based pressure cooker.
They led for 255:49 minutes in the Final, the most ever by any team, per NHL.com, betraying Edmonton’s supposed momentum swing following the Oilers tying of the series at two in Game 4. They limited the high-octane nature of the Edmonton powerplay and whilst indebted to their stars - be it Conn Smythe winner Sam Bennett, trade-deadline acquisition Brad Marchand, who has gone from working the corners to taking on celebratory shifts at Dairy Queen or the steadying presence of legacy-affirming Sergei Bobrovsky in goal - every shift, every play under Paul’s Maurice’s outfit felt unified.
Simple in practice, nigh-revolutionary in late June when bodies are strung-out, legs are gone and the ice has long turned to slush.2
Tight defense, bursts of individual power when needed (à la Sam Reinhart3) or an often relentless, team-first physicality that has drawn a notable air of criticism both in the way it was (or wasn’t) officiated throughout the series and the unapologetic nature in which the Panthers played.
Though amplified, as it was, within the discourse, no doubt.
Once more, Edmonton, in their quest to bring Lord Stanley back to Canada, came up just wins short of claiming their first title since 1990 but even more so than they were in 2024 (where they were forced to dig themselves out of a 3-0 hole before losing in Game 7) the Oilers often seemed wall-to-wall outclassed up against the Panthers, never able to establish a rhythm relative to their own ability, despite their two wins as was, Florida, stymieing them at every key juncture.
Though perhaps the most prominent concern in Oil Country is not necessarily what to do with their goaltending - Stuart Skinner - or the shoring up of their smaller pieces, their depth but instead, just what will be Connor McDavid’s next move.
The Edmonton captain, at 28, is square in the middle of his prime and is, still, with respect to his contemporaries (and the team’s number two, Leon Draisaitl) the univocal best player in the world. The pundits and the superfans elsewhere will itch for drama of course, until McDavid moves forward - he is eligible to sign an extension on July 1st - but the most likely course is that he stays right where he is, on the cusp of blue-and-orange championship glory - though for now, it remains a goal just out of reach.
For in South Florida, the party bells have been rightly rung.
Steve Nash’s legacy understood, it isn’t hyperbole to suggest that the soon-to-be twenty-seven year-old Gilgeous-Alexander is, already, the greatest Canadian to set foot on NBA hardwood. Per the Associated Press, the Hamilton native is just the fourth player ever (alongside Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Michael Jordan and Shaquille O’Neal) to be named both a regular season MVP + Finals MVP, while also winning a scoring title (32.7 PPG, his third-straight season of 30+ points-per-game) and a championship in the same season.
Matthew Tkachuk, by his own admission, played from February onwards (post 4 Nations) with both a sports hernia and an adductor muscle that had been torn clean off the bone.
Reinhart, in scoring four goals in Game 6 became the first player to do so, in a Cup clinging scenario, since Babe Dye of the then Toronto St. Patricks (now Maple Leafs) in 1922.