The Oklahoma City Thunder keep on making history — though maybe not in the way they’d like. With a narrow 141-135 double-overtime win against the Indiana Pacers on Thursday, the Thunder became the first time in NBA history to head to double-OT — and win — in both of the first two games of the season.
The matchup carried a bit of extra juice, given that that two teams faced off in the 2025 NBA Finals this summer. Back in June, the Thunder picked up the victory, defeating the Pacers in Game 7 to win its first outright title; on Thursday, Oklahoma City backed it up with a six-point win.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the reigning league MVP, dropped a whopping 55 points in the win for a new career high, and the first 50-ball of the NBA season.
23 of those points came from free throws, with the guard hitting all but three of those attempts. It’s the fifth 50-point game of the guard’s career, tying Russell Westbrook for most in franchise history.
The Thunder are now 2-0, after beating the Houston Rockets by one point in double-overtime on Tuesday.
In a physical matchup that saw 70 personal fouls and 51 free throw attempts, the Thunder pulled to a seven-point lead at halftime, before the Pacers started to pull back with the help of a hot second half from Bennedict Mathurin. The two teams started to trade leads in the fourth quarter, before Pascal Siakam hit a tough jumper to tie up the game with seconds left.
Gilgeous-Alexander had a chance to take the lead in the final seconds, but his buzzer-beating shot was off as a result of a well-timed Pacers double-team.
In the first overtime, both teams kept up the pressure in a turnover-heavy extra period, but neither team could pull ahead enough to end the game. Then, in second overtime, Oklahoma City started to pull away, icing the lead with yet a few more Gilgeous-Alexander free throws.
The ending did draw some controversy: With less than 30 seconds left in the second OT, with the Pacers down four, Obi Toppin had a massive steal off an inbound from Chet Holmgren. But the officials called it back, as Thunder coach Mark Daigneault had called a timeout just before the game-changing play — drawing the ire of the crowd.
In the end, though, it was a game that belonged to Gilgeous-Alexander and the Thunder, who defend their trophies with a scrappy 2-0 start to the season.
