NBA FINALS: THUNDER VS. PACERS

June 5, 2025

Isaiah Hartenstein

Oklahoma Thunder

Game 1: Postgame

Pacers 111, Thunder 110

Q. When did you know about the lineup adjustment?

ISAIAH HARTENSTEIN: Mark does a great job of communicating, so we talked about it yesterday. I am here to do whatever is best for the team. I trust Mark and I think, again, it’s worked in the past.

Case (Cason Wallace) has been amazing throughout the playoffs. He’s been amazing when he started in the regular season. So I don’t think that contributed to us losing the game. We had control over the game the whole game.

It was more, again, like the Denver series, the first [game] where we let that go. That’s on us. I think we kind of slowed. We went into their hand slowing the pace down a little bit too much the last eight or six minutes. We slowed down the pace. I think that was the biggest key that we need to just keep going on. When we have the lead, let’s not slow it down. Let’s put the foot on the gas.

The Pacers have been doing an amazing job throughout the playoffs, so it wasn’t something coming in that we didn’t know they’ve come back from big leads.

We’ve always responded really good and we have a group of guys that respond, and we are going to be ready for the next game.

Q. How do you draw on the similarities between tonight and Game 1 vs. Denver?

ISAIAH HARTENSTEIN: Both games, controlling the whole game. I think today was even more. I think that was the first time they led the whole game, that last shot.

You hate to lose like that, but then you also know that's your controllables. It sounds weird -- it wasn’t like they won the game, but I feel like we lost the game. There was a lot of things where it was – closeouts, executing and slowing down the pace a little too much at the end.