Oklahoma City (AFP) – Indiana point guard Tyrese Haliburton knows his Pacers will be heavy underdogs against the Oklahoma City Thunder when the NBA Finals tip off on Thursday, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“They’re a great team,” Haliburton said Wednesday of a Thunder squad that racked up 68 regular-season wins behind a Most Valuable Player season from point guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. “They’re historically great on both sides of the ball. They have the MVP. I mean, there’s so many different things you could name down the list of why they are so great at what they do, why they’re such a great team.”
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“If we were to win a championship, I don’t want to win any other way,” Haliburton said. “I don’t want to go around or over. I want to go through. You want to go through the best team, the best challenge. This is the best team in the NBA. It has been the best team in the NBA all year… There’s no shortcuts to beating this team.”
The Thunder will have enjoyed an eight-day break since defeating Minnesota in the Western Conference finals. The Pacers, who knocked off Eastern Conference top seeds Cleveland in the second round, completed a 4-2 series victory over the New York Knicks on Saturday — having missed out on their first chance to wrap up the series in game five.
“No quote-unquote expert or analyst is going to pick us,” Haliburton acknowledged on Tuesday. “That’s OK. We like it better that way. It’s going to be a lot of fun.”
In addition to the shorter turnaround, the Pacers had to contend with a travel delay on Tuesday, when a storm saw their flight to Oklahoma City diverted to Tulsa. “I slept the whole plane ride, which I don’t normally do,” Haliburton said. “We landed, I was ready to get up. They said we were in Tulsa.”
The delay added a few hours to their travel day, but Haliburton said it was a minor inconvenience only. “There’s worse problems in life,” he said. “We’ll be fine.”
© 2024 AFP
