the nba’s worst market is your nostalgia

oklahoma city and indiana are exactly what the league needed - you just don’t like what that says about you

somewhere between the fourth shai iso and the fifth pacers turnover, someone on twitter posted that this was the worst nba finals opener ever. not just in terms of market size. not just in terms of star power. just... ever. and then, of course, haliburton buried a 21-footer with 0.3 on the clock, the pacers took their only lead of the game, and the entire okc crowd collapsed into the floor like a dying opera singer.

it turns out the worst finals opener in history delivered one of the best endings of the last twenty years. but that’s the problem, isn’t it? when your entire definition of importance is preloaded with tv markets and t-shirt sales, actual basketball becomes an inconvenience.

adam silver has had enough. “i walk down the street and people ask about ratings before they talk about the games”, he said before game 1. when the most powerful man in basketball is tired of the discourse, you know something's rotten. and it’s not okc. it’s not indy. it’s your nostalgia.

this league is allergic to the present. it clings to coastlines and golden eras, to magic vs bird, to jordan on nbc, to lebron vs steph. and every time a finals series doesn’t follow that script, the takes come preloaded: “the league is cooked”, “nobody will watch”, “who even are these guys?”.

but here’s the catch: oklahoma city and indianapolis aren’t that small. they’re just not sexy. they’re not legacy franchises with billion-dollar propaganda machines. they don’t have jack nicholson on the baseline or a reebok pump commercial to reference. and that bothers you more than you want to admit.

okc is bigger than 97% of american cities. indy is home to the damn nfl combine. but somehow we still call them small markets because that’s the only language the old nba knows. when david stern handed out trophies between boston and l.a., it was easy. now we have parity of opportunity. seven champions in seven years. twelve different franchises in the last eight finals. and you miss the days when the calendar was just warriors in five.

well, too bad. you don’t get to whine about superteams and then cry when variety shows up. this is the world you said you wanted. balance. unpredictability. depth. you just didn’t want it to come in a thunder jersey.

and speaking of thunder: you watched shai drop 38 in his finals debut, on thirty shots, with a stepback that should’ve iced game 1. you saw haliburton stumble through 47 minutes of jitters, only to hit a dagger over cason wallace and then flash his pink hali 1s on the podium like it was scripted.

this wasn’t lakers-celtics. this was better. because it wasn’t nostalgia cosplay. it was basketball, raw and imperfect and alive.

and if you’re worried that everyone in the league is too friendly now, maybe you should meet drew hanlen. the man trains half the league and trolls the other half through speakerphone. he’s the architect of the quietest war in the nba: haliburton vs maxey, tatum vs embiid, holmgren vs whoever’s guarding his ankles. no need for fake beefs when your group chat is already a pressure cooker.

this is what competition looks like in 2025. not scripted feuds or legacy bait, but personal pride, developmental violence, and trainers who hang up on you unless you drop 40.

silver said it best: the goal is for market size to be irrelevant. but it won’t be, not until we stop pretending that real greatness needs a zip code. haliburton didn’t need madison square garden to become a killer. shai didn’t need crypto.com arena to become mvp.

you don’t have to love these finals. but you have to accept what they represent: the decentralization of narrative. the death of prestige by geography. the slow, glorious collapse of the nba’s comfort zones.

and if you’re still upset that okc and indy made it here, maybe the problem isn’t the matchup. maybe it’s just that the league passed you by while you were busy waiting for the past to come back.

this is the future. and it’s already better than your memory.