OKC Thunder Starting Lineup vs. Indiana Pacers Game 2

The Oklahoma City Thunder are taking on the Indiana Pacers in a must-win Game 2 of the 2025 NBA Finals.

Oklahoma City waltzed into this series feeling good and as massive favorites to win its first title going up against another banner-less foe. Though, the Indiana Pacers landed the first punch of the series, shocking the Thunder in the series opener with a Tyrese Haliburton rise up mid-range jumper with 0.3 ticks to go on Thursday, the first and only lead the Pacers needed.

After a shocking 111-110 defeat, the Oklahoma City Thunder will play on its heels in Game 2, needing to not only defend home court but avoid a series –– and season –– ending loss that would have its title hopes on life support heading to Indiana down 0-2 for Game 3 on Wednesday.

OKC has to be able to to pull off a win at the Paycom Center but questions remained around its starting five. For the first time all postseason, the Oklahoma City Thunder went away from the double-big lineup of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Lu Dort, Jalen Williams, Isaiah Hartenstein and Chet Holmgren to open up the Finals. Starting Cason Wallace in place of Hartenstein.

In that, Mark Daigneault went as far as to not play a single double-big minute in Game 1, commonly referred to as the feel out game of the series by the Thunder bench boss. However, pregame Daigneault said that is not predictive of how the series will go.

"What I would say is we have a lot of optionality, and when you have a lot of options and you choose one, you're leaving others on the table." Daigneault said. "I think we are pretty familiar with the archetypes of our lineups and what the trade-offs are, and one of the strengths of our team is we can deploy those at different times, different times in a game, different times in a series. I obviously opted to go away from that in Game 1. That's not necessarily predictive of the rest of the series. That's just where we started the series. That lineup has been very good for us and has very strong strengths and if we think it can help us in a game or in a portion of a game, then we're to going to it."

30 minutes before Game 2 began inside the Paycom Center, each coach issued its starting lineups for this contest.

NBA Finals Starting Lineup Game 2

Oklahoma City Thunder Starting Lineup

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, G

Cason Wallace, G

Lu Dort, G

Jalen Williams, F

Chet Holmgren, C

Indiana Pacers Starting Lineup

Tyrese Haliburton, G

Andrew Nembhard, G

Aaron Neismith, G

Pascal Siakam, F

Myles Turner, C

Stay tuned to Thunder on SI for total NBA Finals coverage as Oklahoma City continues its quest to a championship.