Last night’s Game 7 between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Indiana Pacers ended with the West’s No. 1 seed lifting the Larry O’Brien Trophy, a predictable conclusion to what has been a very unpredictable postseason. This was the 20th Game 7 in NBA Finals history, and the 16th time that the home team has prevailed.
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The last Finals Game 7 occurred in 2016, when the Cleveland Cavaliers finished off their historic 3-1 comeback to beat the Golden State Warriors and become just the fourth road team to win a rubber match away from home in the process. LeBron James and Kyrie Irving led the way with 53 of the Cavs’ 93 points.
LeBron won Finals MVP, but it was Kyrie who sank the most iconic shot of the series, a 3-pointer over Steph Curry with 53 seconds left to break an 89-89 tie and give the Cavs the lead for good.
Kyrie, who is currently rehabbing the torn ACL he suffered in early March, was interviewed by ESPN’s pregame crew before the game last night. As Isiah Thomas took him down memory lane by referencing his legendary title-clinching shot, Kyrie shed some interesting insight into his mindset as that play unfolded.
“It reminded me of some of the shots that some of my peers would make fun of me for when I was a kid,” Kyrie said. “Trainers or skill development guys would tell me not a lot of righties shoot off a hesi going right, or a sidestep going right.”
“For me,” Irving continued, “when I was matched up with Steph on that play, all I was thinking was, ‘Let me create enough space on this jumpshot,’ so once I gave him a little bit of a jab, gave him a little bit of in-and-out and he jumped, I really felt like he didn’t have an idea that I was gonna go to that shot either, or that I had it in my bag.”
Kyrie is often cited by his peers as having the deepest bag in the game. It served him well when it mattered most. All the hours he put in working on that difficult shot helped deliver Cleveland its first NBA championship and etched Irving’s name into NBA lore in the process.
The unfortunate irony of Kyrie reliving that shot and being interviewed before the game was that another point guard, Indiana’s Tyrese Haliburton, was trying to author his own unlikely title story. Haliburton has made clutch shotmaking a regular occurrence during this postseason. He came out red-hot in Game 7 with three first-quarter 3s.
Unfortunately, just as Kyrie went down with a catastrophic injury of his own a few months ago, Haliburton, who had been playing through a strained calf, tore his Achilles just over halfway through the first quarter, robbing him of the chance to succeed Kyrie as the next Game 7 road hero.
