The 2024–25 season had its share of special moments, and now that we’re in the offseason, many are sharing their thoughts on what they made of this past year of basketball. The Finals, in particular, are still a hot topic, played between two “small market teams,” the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Indiana Pacers. OKC won in seven games after a compelling and exciting series. Aries Spears, however, had nothing positive to say about the series.
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The famed comedian and New York Knicks fan was a guest on a recent episode of VladTV, where he revealed just how disinterested he was in the OKC vs Indiana matchup. He admitted he didn’t even watch the series, believing the Thunder were overwhelming favorites from the start.
At a time when fan bases around the league were celebrating their Round 1 and Semi-Final victories, Spears was convinced it was all pointless. No one, in his eyes, was beating Oklahoma. Not even the New York Knicks’ triumphant win over the Boston Celtics, which took them to the Conference Finals, changed his mind.
“Listen, when the Knicks were going crazy, one of the posts I put out was, ‘Listen, I’m a New Yorker. I love New York. My heart is with New York. You ****** need to calm the f*** down, because nobody is beating Oklahoma City. Nobody.’ You saw that championship coming from a mile away,” he passionately said.
While OKC did enter the Finals as the favorite, they narrowly dodged a bullet against the Pacers. Indiana’s superstar Tyrese Haliburton looked locked in for Game 7 but went down early with a torn Achilles. That injury was essentially the nail in the coffin for the Pacers, who couldn’t keep up with the Thunder’s explosive offense afterward. Spears believed the Finals would have been far more exciting if it had been OKC vs. New York.
“It would have been a better story for the NBA had the Knicks got to the Finals,” he said. “If they would have beat the Pacers and then went on to win the whole thing? That’s the Cinderella story. But even if they would have lost to OKC, because of all of the frenzy of the New York fans, the history of the last time New York won it, Spike Lee, it would have just been a better entertainment story.”
“Who gives a f*** about the Pacers? It’s Indiana,” he said somewhat harshly, prompting laughter from the VladTV interviewer. It’s a wild thing to say, especially considering the Pacers have one of the most passionate fan bases in basketball. Plus, Indiana is a basketball hotbed, home to some of the game’s greats, including Larry Bird, Shawn Kemp, and Zach Randolph, to name a few.
It’s not like Spears is entirely wrong, either. New York is still the mecca of sports towns, and there are few venues more iconic than Madison Square Garden. Viewership likely would’ve been off the charts, especially since the Knicks haven’t won a Finals since the ’70s and haven’t even been there since 1999.
But no team in the 2025 postseason had more magic than the Pacers. They pulled off five of the most miraculous come-from-behind victories in playoff history. But by the time Game 7 came around, it seemed their luck had finally run out. Had they pulled it off, they’d have etched their names into history forever. Oh well. There’s always next year.
