The Oklahoma City Thunder and Indiana Pacers are set for a 2025 NBA Finals showdown, and there are plenty of common threads between the two franchises. Indianapolis and OKC are two of the smallest markets in the NBA. These are the two best teams in the league at avoiding turnovers on offense, and two of the league leaders in pace. Neither is reliant on the three-point shot after both placed in the bottom half of the league in three-point rate during the regular season.
There is one big roster-building similarity between these two teams, as well, and it all comes back to a star player they both traded. The Pacers and Thunder each built their NBA Finals roster thanks to trading Paul George. George was an awesome player in Indiana and then Oklahoma City, but trading him was the best move the Pacers and Thunder ever made.
George was drafted by the Pacers with the No. 10 overall pick in the 2010 NBA Draft out of Fresno State. He barely played as a rookie, but started every game in his second season and started to show his long-term potential. The leap came in his third year, when George was named NBA Most Improved Player and Third-Team All-NBA as he led the Pacers to the Eastern Conference Finals, where they suffered a crushing defeat to the LeBron James-era Miami Heat. There was George going toe-to-toe with James at 22 years old, and proving he could be the face of Indiana’s franchise.
George was even better the next year as Indiana won 56 games, again reached the conference finals, and again were eliminated by the Heat. George was named First-Team All-Defense and Third-Team All-NBA. Going into the next season, George suffered one of the most gruesome leg injuries in league history. He missed almost all of the 2014-15 season recovering, but would return strong the next year.
George proved he made a miraculous recovery in the 2015-16 year by again playing at an All-NBA level. At this point, though, the Pacers were starting to break apart, with Roy Hibbert, Lance Stephenson, Danny Granger, and David West all departing from the last conference finals team. The Pacers would lose in the first-round of the 2016 playoffs to the Raptors, Frank Vogel was fired, and suddenly the rumors about George’s future were in full swing. For a while, it felt like George was trying to push his way to his hometown Los Angeles Lakers.
The Thunder swooped in and landed him instead, with George serving as their de-facto Kevin Durant replacement after he left OKC for the Warriors in free agency in the summer of 2016. Oklahoma City acquired George from Indy on June 30, 2017, and he signed a big extension to remain in OKC a year later. Here’s the full deal between OKC and Indiana:
Thunder get: Paul George
Pacers get: Victor Oladipo, Domantas Sabonis
For a while, this traded looked like a massive win-win.
Oladipo immediately took a star leap upon arriving in Indiana, winning Most Improved Player and earning Third-Team All-NBA and First-Team All-Defense in his first season with the Pacers. Sabonis also took a jump in production in his second pro season after struggling to get minutes on OKC as a rookie. By his third season in Indiana, Sabonis was an All-Star and looking like one of the most promising young bigs in the league.
Meanwhile, George soared on the Thunder next to Westbrook. PG’s second season with the Thunder in 2018-19 was the finest season of his career: he averaged 29 points, 8.2 rebounds, and 4.1 assists per game while leading the NBA in steals. He finished third in MVP voting, third in Defensive Player of the Year voting, and was named First-Team All-NBA and First-Team All-Defense.
At the end of the year, the Thunder traded him to the Los Angeles Clippers in the most shocking NBA trade of the decade … until Luka Doncic got traded to the Lakers years later. Here’s the terms of the deal:
Clippers get: Paul George
Thunder get: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Danilo Gallinari, Miami Heat’s 2021 unprotected first-rounder, Clippers’ 2022 unprotected first-rounder, Clippers’ 2024 unprotected first-rounder, Heat’s lottery-protected 2025 first-rounder, swap rights with Clippers’ 2025 first-rounder, Clippers’ 2026 unprotected first-rounder
And just like that, the Thunder’s potential dynasty was set in motion.
Gilgeous-Alexander had a promising rookie year for the Clippers as the former No. 11 overall pick in the 2018 draft. When he arrived in OKC, he started to blossom as a star. SGA was mentored by Chris Paul in his first year in OKC in a surprising season that saw the team win 61 percent of its games and push the Rockets to a Game 7 in the first round of the bubble playoffs. After trading Paul, OKC wandered the tanking desert for two seasons. By his fourth year on the Thunder, Gilgeous-Alexander was a regular on the MVP ballot until he finally won the award this season.
The draft pick haul from the Clippers also paid off in a big way. The Thunder used the Clippers’ 2022 first-rounder to selection Santa Clara wing Jalen Williams with the No. 12 overall pick in the 2022 NBA Draft in the same draft they also selected Chet Holmgren at No. 2 overall. This season, Williams was named an All-Star and Third-Team All-NBA before putting up a monster performance in the conference finals against the Wolves.
The Clippers trade for George was largely motivated by Kawhi Leonard. Leonard had reportedly told the Clippers he would only sign with them in free agency if they paired him with a star like George. The Clippers thought they would win championships with a Leonard-George pairing, but injury issues for both players (and especially Leonard) prevented them from ever living up to their potential. The Clippers made their first conference finals appearance ever behind Kawhi and PG, but that’s as far as they got before the duo broke up.
Meanwhile, the Pacers used the pieces from their George trade to eventually land their next superstar.
Oladipo’s prime flamed out early because of injuries, but Sabonis continued to look fantastic. The only problem was that he was an awkward fit next to Myles Turner in the front court. The Pacers broke up the big tandem by fleecing the Kings in an all-time fleecing that looked like a steal for Indiana at the time in Feb. 2022 and has only aged better since.
Pacers get: Tyrese Haliburton, Buddy Hield
Kings get: Domantas Sabonis, Jeremy Lamb, Justin Holiday
From the moment Haliburton got to Indy, he looked like a star. The Pacers immediately remade themselves as an up-tempo offense that would teams off the floor with Haliburton’s ability to push the pace and special gift for feeding teammates without turning the ball over. The Pacers needed one more great trade before their roster was good enough to really compete in the East, and that happened when Pascal Siakam arrived in a deal with the Raptors in early 2024.
The Thunder are going to the NBA Finals thanks to selling-high on Paul George, which returned Gilgeous-Alexander, Williams, and more. The Pacers are going to the NBA Finals because of Haliburton, who they were able to trade for thanks to the pieces they got in return from their own George trade. The 2025 NBA Finals are going to be wonderful, and both teams owe it all to trading Paul George.
