{"id":73843,"date":"2025-06-03T11:50:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-03T11:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/73843\/"},"modified":"2025-06-03T11:50:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-03T11:50:09","slug":"why-pacers-are-massive-nba-finals-underdogs-after-beating-knicks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/73843\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Pacers are massive NBA Finals underdogs after beating Knicks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Monday night could have been one of the most memorable nights in the history of Madison Square Garden.<\/p>\n<p>But <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2025\/06\/01\/sports\/jalen-brunson-overconfident-knicks-can-take-next-step\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">instead of Game 7<\/a> of the Eastern Conference finals, the <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2025\/06\/02\/sports\/jalen-brunsons-knicks-sacrifice-changes-everything-about-critical-offseason\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">postmortem of the Knicks continued<\/a>, the final drops of adrenaline sapped from a six-week thrill ride that took a quarter-century to enjoy.<\/p>\n<p>It is understandable if it is difficult to get up for the NBA Finals after watching the Knicks lose to an old rival <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2025\/06\/01\/sports\/tyrese-haliburton-rubs-it-in-with-video-mocking-knicks-fans\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">with a new villain<\/a> (Tyrese Haliburton) in a series they entered as the favorites. It will be a challenge for many casual fans, who see Oklahoma City and Indiana \u2014 and reach for the remote.<\/p>\n<p>But in addition to the historically dominant Thunder and up-tempo Pacers bringing two of the league\u2019s most entertaining and uncommon styles to the Finals, the matchup ranks among the most unique in title history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Monday night could have been one of the most memorable nights in the history of Madison Square Garden.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73844,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3774],"tags":[7,4517,113,126,3866,6,197,179,114,3823,209,66,196,278],"class_list":{"0":"post-73843","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-indiana-pacers","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-beyond-the-back-page","10":"tag-indiana","11":"tag-indiana-pacers","12":"tag-indianapacers","13":"tag-nba","14":"tag-nba-playoffs-2025","15":"tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","16":"tag-pacers","17":"tag-post-sports-newsletters","18":"tag-shai-gilgeous-alexander","19":"tag-sports","20":"tag-sports-plus","21":"tag-tyrese-haliburton"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114619287113450916","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}