Lario Bryan Cup Curse: Thunder Pacers Ticket 7 reveals the cruel truth on the road to winning the championship

As the night wind in Indianapolis blew across Gainbridge Stadium, the Oklahoma City Thunders locker room was filled with a smell of sweat and anxiety. This historically strong team with 68 wins and 14 losses in the regular season is now standing on the edge of the cliff of the NBA championship journey - they have just been dragged into a tiebreak by the Indiana Pacers, and the scene of Teresa Halliburton playing with an injury for 23 minutes is like a thorn piercing every Thunder player. This scene reminds the NBA champion's motto during a dinner party: "The way to chase the championship ring will lead you into the dark place. "

The Thunder entered the finals with the third-largest winning rate in regular season history. Shea Gilgers-Alexander led them, who had 15 wins and 6 losses in the playoffs, overturning Jokic's Nuggets and Edwards's Timberwolves. But the Pacers smashed their perfect script with a 108-91 victory - Halliburton dragged his strained calf, insisted on playing like Willis Reed in 1970, igniting the team with a 14-point and 5-assist performance. "It is an honor to be able to play the tiebreak, but tonight we feel like we were stripped of armor. " Thunder coach Dagenut's voice was exhausted. This team, which has never tasted the taste of a championship, is experiencing the cruelest coming-of-age ceremony.

The data lost its temperature at this moment: the Thunder's dominance of 12.3 points per 100 rounds in the regular season was torn apart by the Pacers' iron-blooded defense in the sixth game of the finals. What's even more fatal is the psychological impact - except for Alex Caruso, those who have no championship experience in the Thunder lineup, when the game enters a life-and-death moment, the championship genes hidden behind the data begin to show differences. Just as Pacers forward Miles Turner rubbed his hair loss scalp and smiled bitterly: "Recently, the pressure is so great that his hair is crazy, this is the reality of the championship journey. "

The Thunder's dilemma is just the latest footnote to the NBA championship journey. The Warriors, which had 73 wins and 9 losses in 2016, were once regarded as invincible, but were shattered by James and Irving's "death block" in the finals; Jerry West lost six career finals in the finals, and he failed to get rid of the label of "uncrowned king" until his retirement; the miracle of 25 points in a single quarter of Isaiah Thomas in the 1988 finals was only left with a tragic figure wrapped in bandages on his ankles. These names write a truth together: winning the championship is never a simple superposition of strength, but a double ultimate challenge between the body and the spirit.

In 1970, Willis Reed created a miracle for the Knicks - after tearing his thigh muscles, he came on the field with an injured leg in the tiebreak. Although he scored only 4 points, he ignited the entire Madison Garden. Walter Fraser scored 36 points and 19 assists in that game, responding to Reed's courage with his all-time performance in the finals. Fifty-two years have passed, and the Knicks are still chasing the third championship trophy. This waiting itself is a cruel annotation on the difficulty of winning the championship.

Halliburton's injury history has become a microcosm of contemporary players. From a 4-point struggle in a single game on Monday to an outbreak of +25 positive and negative scores on Thursday, his recovery diary was full of hyperbaric oxygen chambers, electrical stimulation treatments and nights that couldn't sleep. "Wake up every day like a leg filled with gravel ", the 23-year-old point guard described the feeling of straining his calf in an understatement, but repeated thousands of rehabilitation shots in the training hall. This confrontation between the body and will is exactly the daily life of every champion competitor.

When the Thunder practiced late at night in the training hall and the lights illuminated the sweat stains on the floor, they might have truly understood the feelings of the champion senior. The 16 wins of the NBA championship are never the accumulation of numbers, but the courage to push the body to the limit of anatomy, the determination to withstand the booings when the referee whistle sounds, and the tenacity to hold back tears when watching his teammates withdraw from the game due to injury in the locker room. Like Reed's thigh muscles, Thomas' ankles, Halliburton's calves, these scarred body parts together form the heaviest mark on the championship trophy.

At this moment, under the floor of Gainbridge Stadium, Larry O'Brien's Cup is still covered with black cloth, waiting for the announcement on Sunday night. But no matter who wins the trophy in the end, this tiebreak battle has long proved that the journey of the NBA championship is never a path of glory, but a purgatory journey that requires a career--here, the 68-win regular season myth will be shattered by injuries, and talented stars will be swallowed by psychological pressure. Only those who can hold their hopes in the dark can touch the hottest glory in the basketball world.

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