The Indiana Pacers are one win away from the 2024-25 NBA championship. They are playing in what will be the season’s last game. They’ve felled three postseason opponents and taken a fourth to the absolute brink. And yet, amazingly, they have not yet spent a single second as the betting favorite to win the championship.
They were never favored during the regular season. That makes plenty of sense. They started 10-15. The Thunder exploded out of the gate and the defending champion Celtics swept them a year ago. They never took over favored status during the Eastern Conference playoffs. Ok. That also makes a bit of sense. Nobody quite understood how special this team was yet, and in the one moment in which the Thunder looked somewhat vulnerable, leading into Game 7 against the Nuggets, the Pacers were set to start an Eastern Conference finals series as underdogs against the New York Knicks.
You’d think we’d have learned our lesson by the Finals. Alas, we did not. The Pacers won Game 1 on the road. Still series underdogs. They took a 2-1 lead after Game 3. Still series underdogs. They literally led Game 4 by seven points going into the fourth quarter. Amazingly, they were still just barely underdogs, with the Thunder having live odds of -108 to their -106 before that fourth quarter began.
Such consistent darkhorse status is extremely rare. You’d think that every champion would be a betting favorite at some point, right? Big underdogs have won championships before, but teams like the 2019 Raptors and 2004 Pistons built 3-1 leads, which forced the hands of the books. The 2015-16 Cleveland Cavaliers might have seemed like a candidate considering Golden State’s wire-to-wire dominance and 3-1 Finals lead, but the Cavaliers actually started that season as favorites after pushing the Warriors to six games in the 2015 Finals without Kevin Love or Kyrie Irving. To reach the last game of the season without ever having been the title favorite seems practically impossible.
And yet, it feels entirely appropriate given the postseason the Pacers have had. They are the ultimate underdogs in just about every sense. Their odds to win the Eastern Conference at some books got as long as 30-to-1 before the playoffs began. Good luck finding many Finalists who topped that. The Thunder were -700 favorites entering the Finals. That was tied for the seventh-shortest odds a favorite has ever brought into the Finals with the 2004 Los Angeles Lakers… who wound losing in the biggest Finals upset ever to the Pistons. Now, the Pacers are hoping to match that feat.
Here’s a record they actually can set: Thursday’s Game 6 victory gave them their 10th playoff win as an underdog in 2025. That tied the 2023 Heat for the record. Of course, the Pacers have opened as a 8.5-point underdogs on the road for Game 7. That means a win will not only give them their first championship, but also the record for most underdog victories in a single postseason.
In a vacuum, they are entirely justifiable underdogs. The Thunder are 10-2 at home this postseason with a mind-boggling +247 point-differential. They still have the MVP in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. They still have their fancy 68-win regular season and their historic net rating behind them. On paper, Oklahoma City still looks like the favorite.
But if the postseason were played on paper, the Pacers would have been eliminated a month ago. In a single-game setting, it’s hard to imagine a more dangerous Game 7 opponent.
Those season-long resumes disappear when that ball is tipped. The games are tense. Nerves take over. Who do you think is going to be more nervous: the incredibly young, overwhelming favorite that has already lost several devastating close games this postseason, or the underdog with more historic upsets and comebacks in a single postseason than we’ve ever seen before?
By the time a series reaches a Game 7, both sides tend to have figured each other out. The game slows down. Offense grinds down to a halt. Everything so often comes down to which team can make the tough shots, which are usually all that is left. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander can do that. When the Thunder have struggled this postseason, their problem has been that nobody else can. But practically ever member of Indiana’s rotation has some speciality, some shot they can always get to. They are a roster full of creators and mismatch hunters. Nothing has slowed the Pacers down this entire postseason. Why should Game 7 be any different?
They’ll remain underdogs when Game 7 begins. It might take a substantial second-half lead for them to finally become favorites. The Pacers have lived with that doubt all postseason. It’s all external. They thrive in the shadows. Sunday is their chance to grab the spotlight once and for all. You don’t have to be the favorites when the season or the series starts to be the one that hoists the trophy when it ends.
