A nine-year trend will be broken if NBA Finals go the distance

With the Oklahoma City Thunder and Indiana Pacers tied at two wins apiece, the 2025 NBA Finals has the potential to go the distance.

If it does, it'll mark the first NBA championship round to go seven games since the 2016 Finals between the Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers, which famously saw the latter overcome a 3-1 series deficit.

Since 2016, nearly every NBA Finals has been lopsided. In 2017 and 2018, the Warriors dropped only one game en route to winning both titles. In 2019, the Raptors needed six games, but the outcome became a mere formality when Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson suffered season-ending injuries.

In 2020, the Lakers drubbed the Heat by double-digit margins in three of their four wins. The following year, the Suns showed promise by going up 2-0, only to lose four in a row, including a 20-point blowout loss in Game 3. A similar trend followed in 2022 when the Celtics went up 2-1, but lost three consecutive games by double-digit margins. 

Things got even more one-sided in the previous two years. The Nuggets drubbed the Heat by a total margin of 44 points in their 4-1 win, and the Celtics obliterated the Mavericks by an average margin of 12.4 points in another gentleman's sweep.

Fans have been yearning for a fiercely contested Finals, and the Thunder and Pacers are rising to the occasion. So far, only OKC's 16-point Game 2 win was lopsided, but even that contest saw Indiana make a late push with a 66-64 second-half advantage. To further illustrate how close the series has been, OKC and Indiana are nearly identical in points (112.8 to 109.5), FG% (45.4 to 46.8), rebounds (41.8 to 40.0) and 3P% (36.5 to 36.6) through four games.

It's also eerie that the Thunder and Pacers have had the same number of possessions (399) through 192 minutes of action thus far. While the Thunder entered the series as overwhelming favorites, it's been hard to separate the two teams in a series that promises a photo finish.

The all-important Game 5 tips off at 8:30 p.m. ET on Monday on ABC. Teams that prevail in Game 5 of a tied NBA Finals are 23-8. But neither team can be counted out even if they face a deficit going into Game 6 — they have shown too much resilience in these playoffs.