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OKLAHOMA CITY: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander finished off his MVP season with 29 points and 12 assists, and the Oklahoma City Thunder won the NBA championship, pulling away in the second half to beat the Indiana Pacers 103-91 on Sunday night.
Jalen Williams scored 20 and Chet Holmgren had 18 for the Thunder, who were pushed to a Game 7 brink in the NBA Finals — but finished off a season for the ages. Oklahoma City won 84 games between the regular season and the playoffs, tying the 1996-97 Chicago Bulls for third-most in any season.
Only Golden State (88 in 2016-17) and the Bulls (87 in 2015-16) won more.
It’s the second championship for the franchise. The Seattle SuperSonics won the NBA title in 1979; the team was moved to Oklahoma City in 2008. There’s nothing in the rafters in Oklahoma City to commemorate that title.
Next October, a championship banner is finally coming. A Thunder banner.
It was not easy to secure.
The Pacers led 48-47 at the half even after losing star guard Tyrese Haliburton to what his father said was an Achilles tendon injury about seven minutes into the game. But they were outscored 34-20 in the third quarter as the Thunder built a 13-point lead and began to run away.
Bennedict Mathurin had 24 points and 13 rebounds for Indiana, which still is waiting for its first NBA title. The Pacers — who were 10-15 after 25 games and were bidding to be the first team in NBA history to turn that bad of a start into a championship — had leads of 1-0 and 2-1 in the series, but they simply didn’t have enough in the end.
Home teams are now 16-4 in NBA Finals Game 7s. And the Thunder became the seventh champion in the last seven seasons, a run of parity like none other in NBA history.
Pacers forward Pascal Siakam was part of the Toronto team that won in 2019, Thunder guard Alex Caruso was part of the Los Angeles Lakers team that won in the pandemic “bubble” in 2020, Milwaukee won in 2021, Golden State in 2022, Pacers forward Thomas Bryant and Denver prevailed in 2023, and Boston won last year’s title.
The Thunder are the ninth franchise to win a title in NBA Commissioner Adam Silver 12 seasons leading the league. His predecessor, David Stern, saw eight franchises win titles in his 30 seasons as commissioner.
 

RB Salzburg and Al-Hilal played to a scoreless draw in a Group H match of the Club World Cup on Sunday in Washington.
Salzburg (1-0-1, 4 points), a 17-time Austrian Bundesliga champion, had an opportunity to become the first from Group H to advance to the quarterfinals but instead is second to Real Madrid (1-0-1, 4 points) on goal differential, which favors the Spanish club by one. They face each other in the final group match in Philadelphia on Thursday.
Al-Hilal (0-0-2, 2 points) of the Saudi Pro League, where they have won 19 titles, play Pachuca (0-2-0, 0 points), which has been eliminated, in Nashville on Thursday.
Yassine Bounou made five saves for Al-Hilal. His counterpart, Christian Zawieschitzky, had four.
The match was played with pace despite a real-feel temperature of 99 degrees.
Al-Hilal came close to a breakthrough in the 81st minute when Sergej Milinkovic-Savic earmarked a shot for the bottom left corner from outside the box, but Zawieschitzky covered the post for the save.
While Al-Hilal finished with a 19-13 advantage in attempts, it was a frustrating afternoon for each side with numerous missed chances.
Al-Hilal had 10 of the 15 shot attempts in the scoreless first half. The problem was that Zawieschitzky needed to make just one save.
It did help him that defender Jacob Rasmussen blocked a right-footed shot from Marcos Leonardo and cleared it from near the goal line in the 21st minute. Otherwise the lone Al-Hilal shot on target was by Salem Al-Dawsari in the fifth minute.
Salzburg put three of its five shots on target in the first half, including an opportunity in the ninth minute. Frans Kratzig sent a long overhead ball to Karim Onisiwo in the center of the box and he deftly flicked the ball toward keeper Yassine Bounou with the outside of his right foot.
Bounou was better tested in the 48th minute when he stood tall to deny John Mellberg staring at him from the 6-yard box.