NBA Finals 2025: What to know ahead of Pacers-Thunder championship matchup - ESPN

The Oklahoma City Thunder spent Christmas night in Indianapolis in a bittersweet mood.

They woke up at home earlier that day, with their families, and opened presents with their children before a late afternoon flight for a short road trip, which was positive. But they also were annoyed, whether they admitted it publicly or not, that 10 teams were playing five games on the NBA's marquee day — and they were spectators.

They'd won a league-best 57 games the season before and had one of the top players in the league, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the previous season's MVP runner-up whom the NBA perhaps should've been featuring on its highest-profile day. The Thunder also were 23-5 at that point and on an eight-game win streak — and not playing on Dec. 25 was looking kind of ridiculous.

Their hosts for a pedestrian non-national-television game on Dec. 26 were the Indiana Pacers. The Pacers had rolled their eyes four months earlier when the schedule read that they weren't playing on Christmas Day, despite making the Eastern Conference finals the season prior. It was the 20th consecutive year the Pacers had been deemed not worthy of a Christmas game.

In retrospect, this was an ironic moment in the season: The two teams that eventually would meet in the NBA Finals were together on the headline day for the league; they were just living the lives of small-market underdogs.

From the play-in tournament to the NBA Finals, ESPN has you covered throughout the postseason.

• NBA finals: Preview
• Shelburne: Inside the Dorture Chamber
• Collier: What's fueling Haliburton's run
• Kram/Pelton: Seven things that will decide the finals
• Kram: Why the NBA should be terrified of OKC
• Pelton: Are the Pacers the best comeback team ever?
• Marks: Of