This Week In 🏀 can only welcome you to the NBA's Vibes Finals

LOTS to get to in this Monday TWIB compilation now that Pacers vs. Thunder is set for the championship round

Only two teams are still alive in the NBA Tournament.

The natural tipoff to Finals Week, then, can only be an Eight Is Enough burst of Monday Musings:

🏀 Are these the Vibes Finals? I'm going with it. Pacers center Myles Turner all but introduced the concept after Indiana's Game 6 clincher over the visiting Knicks, asserting that both Indy and Oklahoma City are fueled by "the power of friendship" as opposed to aspiring to Superteam status. "It's a new blueprint for the league," Turner says. We'll actually need to see first how much staying power these good vibes have for two teams that genuinely do appear to have something special brewing and deservedly conquered the East and West. Is "the power of friendship" sustainable? Replicable? It sure sounds good, so I'm already convinced that several GMs out there are rooting for Turner to be right. Especially with no apparent salary cap or luxury tax consequences for manufacturing it.

🏀 Try to trade for Giannis or KD? Coaching change or back Tom Thibodeau? Around-the-edges retooling as opposed to a dramatic big swing? There will be lots more to come on the Knicks and where they go from here … but I wanted to ask this first to the numerous Knicks fans in our community before going deeper on all those topics: Does it provide any comfort that the last three teams to represent the East in the NBA Finals did so after a loss in the conference finals? It's legit: Miami in 2023, Boston in 2024 and now Indiana in 2025 were all conference finals losers in the previous season. (ClutchPoints graphic added for effect.)

🏀 I can't imagine readers of this Substack would spend much time getting caught up in this silliness, but I'm already sick of the Market Size Discussion that will inevitably intrude on the buildup to Thursday night's Game 1. The 25th-largest media market meets the 47th-largest media market and blah blah blah. If the basketball is good ... who bloody cares? The NBA has already secured a massive new TV deal for (checks notes) the next ELEVEN seasons.

🏀 As an incurable nostalgist, I was of course caught up in the Saturday night sadness to see TNT as we have known it for nearly 40 years exit the NBA broadcasting realm. Even though it's true that some of the outpouring is overdone when Inside The NBA will continue to air on ESPN starting next season, it's also a reality that the television landscape in #thisleague has changed forever, because TNT has been the network synonymous with the NBA since Michael Jordan was just entering his sixth season as a Chicago Bull and still lacking a championship on his résumé. For fun I couldn't resist sharing this old graphic that the Inside team once made for me and several more media members to let us all know what it felt like to be featured in a Gone Fishin' segment:

🏀 I am also an incurable grudge-holder and that's why I applaud Tyrese Haliburton and the endless amount of fuel he's getting from The Athletic anonymous player poll that labeled him overrated. Ninety players answered the question in question. Thirteen players responded. I repeat: 13. A mere 13 nameless players in a league with more than 450 players referred to Haliburton as "overrated." Chapeau to the Pacers' point guard for the seemingly limitless amount of slight mileage he's gotten out what really should be a non-story. Also had to share this ridiculously excellent column that my friend

Mark Whicker

wrote on Haliburton this week. This is my 32nd season on the NBA beat and I’m still wondering if I'll ever be able to write like Whick.

🏀 Today marks four months since the Luka Dončić trade. I live and work in a city where NBA fans don't want to be miserable anymore and are (largely) eager to celebrate the Mavericks' forthcoming selection of Cooper Flagg with the No. 1 overall pick amid their 77 Stages of (post-Luka) Grief. Yet I found myself thinking a lot about Sacramento Kings fans over the weekend and what it must be like for them watching Haliburton lead the Pacers into the NBA Finals. How do they feel? Where is their hope? The Kings didn't draft Dončić because they already had De'Aaron Fox. They traded away Haliburton — who so openly loved Sacramento — after he spent less than two seasons alongside Fox. And now the Kings have traded Fox away after, to be clear, alienating him first. Throw in one playoff berth in the last 19 seasons and, well, I genuinely don't know what to say to Sacramentans.

🏀 I once saw Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappe and Neymar all score for Paris Saint-Germain in a Champions League win away to Maccabi Haifa in September 2022. On Saturday, hours before the Pacers clinched their first NBA Finals berth in a quarter-century, PSG thrashed Inter Milan 5-0 in the Champions League final with Messi, Mbappe and Neymar all exiled. Guess Les Parisiens are likewise fueled by "the power of friendship" after dismantling their Superteam.

🏀 One more soccer/NBA crossover comment: There's such a stark difference watching Champions League coverage compared to our domestic playoffs. We all accept that Thierry Henry will be openly rooting for Arsenal and Jamie Carragher for Liverpool and Micah Richards for Manchester City on CBS. Compare that to the uproar that surrounds Reggie Miller calling a Pacers game.

Onto the rest of the standout stuff, NBA and otherwise, from The Week That Was both leaguewide and in my sphere:

Newsy Rumble of the Week (to spice up this TWIB compilation)

For starters please allow me to share this Sunday night story containing my latest on the Suns' coaching search:

Furthermore …