Joyous Oklahoma City Thunder stars pulled on their ski goggles and soaked themselves in champagne as they toasted their NBA Finals triumph in wild fashion on Sunday night.
The Thunder held their nerve in a deciding Game 7 against the Indiana Pacers, with MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s 29-point return helping them to a title-clinching 103-91 victory in front of their own supporters.
It proved a historic evening for Oklahoma City, which had not witnessed an NBA Championship win for 46 years before the team got over the line on Sunday.
And after their all-important Game 7 success, the newly-crowned champions danced the night away in a boozy locker-room party.
Thunder players, wearing ski goggles to protect their eyes from the subsequent alcohol showers, arrived back to find a table full of beers and champagne bottles for them to pop open and enjoy.
However, doing so proved a difficult task when it came to the champagne.
Several members of the team could be seen initially struggling to open the bottles, meaning the champagne celebrations took a little while to get going.
‘First of all, none of us knew how to do it,’ Thunder center Isaiah Hartenstein joked in his postgame press conference. ‘It was more like those YouTube tutorials, so we were just asking AC [Alex Caruso] how to do it.
‘It wasn’t really in sync because no one knew how to do it.’
While the champagne bottles were tough to operate, the beers also didn’t seem to go down well for Jaylin Williams.
The 22-year-old knocked back his first ever beer amidst the celebrations, only to be left disgusted by the taste of it.
‘Where’s the tequila?’ he could be heard saying.
The Larry O’Brien NBA Championship trophy was of course present with Oklahoma City stars as they celebrated their victory, and luckily it appeared to emerge unscathed despite the raucous scenes.
Led by MVP Gilgeous-Alexander, the Thunder secured the franchise’s second-ever championship with a 103-91 win on their own court to wrap up a 4-3 series success.
The Pacers were stunned by the loss of their star player Tyrese Haliburton at the end of the first quarter. He suffered an Achilles injury and left the court in tears.
A spirited Indiana team did their best to compete without their main man, powered by a sensational performance from T.J. McConnell, but it was not enough to deny Oklahoma City.
Gilgeous-Alexander, who was named Finals MVP, scored 29 points and got 12 assists while Jalen Williams scored 20 and Chet Holmgren had 18 for the Thunder, who were pushed to the brink but finished off a season for the ages. The former also became only the third player in history to achieve the triple crown of scoring champion, MVP and NBA champion in the same season.
‘It’s hard to believe that I’m part of that group. It’s hard to even fathom that I’m that type of basketball player sometimes,’ he said on Sunday night.
‘As a kid, you dream. Every kid dreams. But you don’t ever really know if it’s going to come true. I’m just glad and happy that my dreams have been able to come true.’
