{"id":7590,"date":"2025-06-23T09:00:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-23T09:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/7590\/"},"modified":"2025-06-23T09:00:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-23T09:00:10","slug":"thunder-dynasty-would-be-a-nightmare-for-nba-interest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/7590\/","title":{"rendered":"Thunder dynasty would be a nightmare for NBA interest"},"content":{"rendered":"

Normally, it\u2019d be sacrilege to root for the Pacers \u2014 especially an Indiana team that eliminated the Knicks in consecutive years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But these circumstances compelled treachery from New York to every city outside of a small pocket in the southwest. Nobody expected the Pacers to get to the NBA Finals, let alone reach Game 7. They were Cinderellas, and then they were flirting with a new Disney movie script after Tyrese Haliburton\u2019s Achilles exploded<\/a> in Sunday night\u2019s first half.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But their magic ran out in the second half of the Thunder\u2019s crowning victory<\/a>, 103-91. The Pacers hung around longer than most thought possible, taking a one-point lead into the break and riding, appropriately, their bulldog backup, TJ McConnell, in a spirited third quarter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

McConnell is the embodiment of an underdog. He\u2019s small, he went undrafted, he has never even dunked in the NBA. And in Game 7 of the Finals, McConnell stepped into Haliburton\u2019s spot and dropped all of his 16 points in the third quarter.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Normally, it\u2019d be sacrilege to root for the Pacers \u2014 especially an Indiana team that eliminated the Knicks…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7591,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[8952,1260,3578,1268,62,2632,2225,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-7590","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-adam-silver","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-nba-finals","11":"tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-sports-columnists","14":"tag-sports-plus","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114731865041117269","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}