THE CORE THEME of this NBA Finals matchup might’ve been summed up in two powerful yet simple quotes this week.

The first came from Indiana Pacers center Myles Turner, whose love of Lego is famous within the NBA, to the point where opponents occasionally will use it as an insult. But Turner sees their construction, brick by brick, as art and himself as kind of an artist.

There are books and dissertations about the philosophy of Lego, just as there are many about basketball. Turner is a disciple of both and a thinker — had he not left the University of Texas after his freshman year for the 2015 NBA draft, he had planned to pursue psychology.

So he wasn’t being flippant when he delivered what might be the most defining and all-encompassing line about this NBA season — and perhaps the forthcoming NBA Finals between his Pacers and the Oklahoma City Thunder that begin with Game 1 on Thursday (8:30 p.m. ET, ABC).

It was both profound and simple, deep and whimsical. Just like his Legos. He explained why both these teams, one a long shot, the other a dominant force all season, are still standing. It comes down to their ability to “use the power of friendship,” he said, to find chemistry on the court and off.

Then there’s one from MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, fueled perhaps by a Michael Jordan-inspired connection. SGA, too, got “cut” from his junior varsity team as a ninth grader in his hometown of Hamilton, Ontario. More accurately, he “only” made the freshman team … and ended up leading them to the city title.

It’s safe to say Gilgeous-Alexander had quite a come-up in high school, but it was deeper than simply eventually earning a spot at the University of Kentucky. This week, he described a lesson he learned in high school, one that came to be a defining characteristic in his life.

The power of calm.

“I used to be a kid that got mad and threw the ball around the court over a pickup game,” he said. “My coaches taught me the older you get, the less you get away with things like that.”

“To be the guy I want to be, I can’t behave like that because it will translate to the rest of my team. That lesson always stuck with me. I still have [that fire], I still feel it. I just understand not to let it show, and it kind of weaponized it for myself. Showing [your emotion] gives your opponent a weapon as well.”

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THE 2025 NBA FINALS: The power of friendship and the weaponization of calm.

That book title could be on the shelves by next spring. And it encapsulates the story of these two small-market teams that were built slowly, deliberately and without fanfare, like assembling the 9,000-piece Lego Titanic replica that remains one of Turner’s prized possessions. There’s only one player in the Finals who was a top-three draft pick, Thunder big man Chet Holmgren, and he hasn’t even been an All-Star … yet .

“I think it’s a new blueprint for the league,” Turner said after the Pacers eliminated the New York Knicks in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals.

“I think the years of the superteams and stacking, it’s just not as effective as it once was. … The new trend now is just kind of what we’re doing. OKC does the same thing — young guys get out and run, defend and use the power of friendship.”

It’s catchy, and it’s got merit.

Earlier this season, Cleveland Cavaliers center Jarrett Allen said his team played “ethical basketball.”

“Farm-raised, non-GMO, organic, free-range, ethical basketball,” Allen said about his 64-win Cavs team that featured three All-Stars, routinely played 10 players, and featured high-passing and balanced attacks throughout the regular season.

The Cavs’ team-first “ethical” attack was praised leaguewide as Kenny Atkinson won Coach of the Year in his first season in Cleveland. But the Cavaliers’ brand of basketball ran into a team in the Eastern Conference semis that pushed that ethic even better, the circle-of-friends squad known as the Indiana Pacers.

The Knicks, who made it a round further than the Cavs, have an entire brand built around their intrateam friendships, complete with Jalen Brunson–Josh Hart–Mikal Bridges podcasts, TV commercials and long history, dating back to their time as teammates at Villanova.

The team president, former agent Leon Rose, hired his longtime friends and clients Tom Thibodeau and Rick Brunson as coaches and prioritized landing former clients Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns — both of whom made All-NBA teams this season — as cornerstones.

The Knicks just had their best back-to-back seasons in a quarter century, adding more support to Turner’s thesis.

“The whole is better than the sum of the parts with the Pacers, which I think is the sign of a good team,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “They play the same way in January as they do in May. They play the same way up 20 as they do down 20. They’ve got unbelievable integrity to the way that they do things.”

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FRIENDSHIP CIRCLE, EMOTION-FREE play, integrity: These are not exactly common tenets that typically describe teams that make the Finals — much less those that win.

“When people see this” — Jordan famously said about his personal creed during the defining scene in “The Last Dance” — “they’re going to say, ‘Well, he wasn’t really a nice guy. He was a tyrant.’ Well, that’s you because you never won anything.

“It’s who I am, it’s how I played the game. That was my mentality. If you don’t want to play that way, don’t play that way.”

The Pacers do have some edge. Their star Tyrese Haliburton is developing into one of the more established trolls in the league. Some players, including Haliburton, showed up to Game 6’s elimination situation against the Knicks in funeral black. Haliburton even responded to Knicks superfan, actor Ben Stiller, on X following the series-clinching win.

Nah, was to pack y’all up https://t.co/hhgo9fp8ib

— Tyrese Haliburton (@TyHaliburton22) June 1, 2025

Still, despite the choke signs and clapbacks, it’s not the way they play. They might be killers in the clutch and play with reckless abandon, but Turner’s characterization about what the squad embodies is accurate.

The Thunder, for their part, have built their own culture, stemming from the same ideal. One of their defining traditions, often led by SGA, is always doing postgame on-court interviews as a group.

Earlier this season, Daigneault said that when the Thunder “got the angel and devil on your shoulder, we’re going with the angel.”

For the most part, they follow the lead of their MVP, who is committed to keeping his emotions in check and supporting his teammates.

“We’ve been as close as you can be as a basketball team, guys are connected at the hip everywhere we go,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “We do everything together on and off the court. Above all we prioritize winning and enjoy each other’s company. I think it’s organically happened that way.”

Add “organic” to this series’ buzzwords. By the way, in his year at Kentucky, Gilgeous-Alexander focused his studies on agriculture. The 2025 NBA Finals: Lego, farms and friendship. Just another theme to workshop for the future documentary.

If nothing else, this championship series does bring a breath of fresh air to the NBA landscape. These teams operate and feel a little different from recent champions of this era, where proving critics wrong and overcoming hardship has defined teams such as the Boston Celtics and Golden State Warriors.

The play and the mastery are just as intense, but the personalities around them are different. And those involved are fully aware.

“It’s something you don’t take for granted,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “You never know how many times you get to play for a team like this.”