If you’re tired of all the NBA ratings talk, you might want want to avoid the 2025 Finals, which we now know will be between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Indiana Pacers — who eliminated the New York Knicks, 125-108, in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals on Saturday.
Or, maybe you’ll be even more interested in this matchup to see just how much there really is to the ratings debate as it pertains to “small-market” teams and next-generation stars. How big of a draw, really, are the likes of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Tyrese Haliburton?
We’re about to find out in what will mark the first NBA Finals in which both teams hail from a market outside the top 20, according to Nielsen rankings, which measure media audience size — notably TV. As of the latest ratings, Indianapolis ranks No. 25 among U.S. cities and Oklahoma City ranks No. 47. The last time we saw a small-market matchup like this was in 1971 when the Milwaukee Bucks swept the Baltimore Bullets.
That was obviously long time ago. There were only 17 NBA teams in 1971 and TV coverage was totally incomparable. If we look at even just this century, the only Finals series that come close to an all-small-market matchup were Denver-Miami in 2023, San Antonio-Miami in 2013 and 2014, and San Antonio-Detroit in 2004.
San Antonio is the only bottom-10 market in that group, based on TV audience and metro population, while Detroit, Denver and Miami rank 14th, 15th and 17th, respectively.
Indiana and Oklahoma City are two true small-market teams, and if the NBA is going to be able to ride this new wave of parity, which was created specifically to get closer to an equal-opportunity championship landscape, it will surely be gauging the level of macro interest in a series that pits two really entertaining basketball teams that are probably not very well known to a lot of casual fans.
This is especially true of the Pacers, who some would argue don’t even have a bona fide superstar, although Haliburton certainly plays like one most nights. At least the Thunder have the MVP in Gilgeous-Alexander, but there’s foul-baiting baggage with him. There’s no question the NBA, from a pure marketing standpoint, would have preferred the Knicks instead of the Pacers.
But again, does this matter anymore? The answer to that question is still almost certainly yes, but perhaps to a smaller degree than was true even a half decade ago. With the access that fans have to all players and teams in the League Pass era, and as the talent pool has continuously deepened, great teams and players can and do come from all over. And fans, the NBA is hoping, will ultimately flock to good basketball and good stories.
The Thunder genuinely might be one of the best teams ever, and from a story standpoint, their Seattle defection combined with an all-time modern-era rebuild by Sam Presti make for a couple pretty compelling narratives. On the flip side, the Pacers are going back to the Finals for the first time in a quarter century. They did it by beating the Knicks, rekindling one of the best rivalries of the 1990s.
The Pacers play a run and gun, infectious brand of basketball that relies not on a ball-dominant point guard dribbling the air out of possessions, but rather on ball and player movement and the hot-potato passing that connects it all. If you’re betting on basketball — not star power — to drive ratings, the Pacers are a good bet.
Stories sell, too. Particularly underdog stories. Consider that among OKC and Indiana, there will be only one starter in this series who was drafted in the top five (OKC’s Chet Holmgren, who went No. 2 overall in 2022). Gilgeous-Alexander went 11th in 2018; Haliburton went 12th in 2020. Both came to their teams by way of a trade, and neither entered the league with anything close to the expectation of becoming a championship captain.
As for second options, OKC’s Jalen Williams was a virtual unknown, at least to people who don’t put together mock drafts for a living, coming out of Santa Clara, and Indiana’s Pascal Siakam has long been doubted as a true go-to option on a high-level team. He’s been putting those doubts to rest since he showed up in Indiana, and he has been spectacular in this postseason. So much for the days when he wasn’t considered a “needle mover” on the trade market.
Or how about Indiana’s Aaron Nesmith? Discarded by the Celtics only to become a defensive cornerstone and knockdown shooter in Indiana. Andrew Nembhard, and especially T.J. McConnell, embody the underdog hero. If McConnell was a football player, his name would be Rudy.
So there’s no shortage of storylines here, and certainly no shortage of high-quality, entertaining basketball — though there is a chance that OKC’s defense is so smothering that fans new to Pacers basketball might start asking what all the fuss is about their offense. The Pacers will not find many easy buckets, which is one of the more compelling facets of this series for diehard basketball fans.
But ratings, in the end, aren’t as much about the diehards as they are the casual fans tuning in for the magnitude of the event. Are the Pacers and Thunder enough of a draw for that contingent of fans? We’re about to find out in what feels like an important litmus test for the NBA as it moves, at this point seemingly pretty unstoppably, in the direction of parity. That means more small-market opportunity, and thus a greater chance of a Finals like this one becoming more of a rule than an exception.
