Sea­son on the line, the In­di­ana Pac­ers did what they’ve done time and time again. They bucked the odds.

And the NBA Fi­nals are go­ing to an ul­ti­mate game.

Obi Top­pin scored 20 points, An­drew Nem­b­hard added 17 and the Pac­ers forced a win­ner-take-all Game 7 by rolling past the Ok­la­homa City Thun­der 108-91 on Thurs­day night.

The first Game 7 in the NBA Fi­nals since 2016 is Sun­day night in Ok­la­homa City.

“The ul­ti­mate game,” Pac­ers coach Rick Carlisle said.

Pas­cal Siakam had 16 points and 13 re­bounds for In­di­ana, while Tyrese Hal­ibur­ton — play­ing through a strained calf — scored 14 points. The Pac­ers start­ed slow­ly and then turned things in­to a blowout.

Game 6 was a mi­cro­cosm of In­di­ana’s sea­son in a way. The Pac­ers start­ed the reg­u­lar sea­son with 15 loss­es in 25 games, have had five come­backs from 15 or more down to win games in these play­offs, and they’re one win from a ti­tle.

“We just want­ed to pro­tect home court,” Hal­ibur­ton said. “We didn’t want to see these guys cel­e­brate a cham­pi­onship on our home floor. Backs against the wall and we just re­spond­ed. ... To­tal team ef­fort.”

Re­lat­ed Sto­ries

TJ Mc­Connell, the spark off the bench again, fin­ished with 12 points, nine re­bounds and six as­sists for In­di­ana.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexan­der scored 21 points for the Thun­der, who pulled their starters af­ter get­ting down by 30 go­ing in­to the fourth. Jalen Williams added 16.

“Cred­it In­di­ana,” Thun­der coach Mark Daigneault said. “They earned the win. They out­played us for most of the 48 min­utes. They went out there and at­tacked the game.”

Good news for the Thun­der: home teams are 15-4 in fi­nals Game 7s. Bad news for the Thun­der: Cleve­land won at Gold­en State in the most re­cent of those and one of the three oth­er home-team loss­es was in 1978 — by Seat­tle, the fran­chise that would move to Ok­la­homa City three decades lat­er.

In­di­ana missed its first eight shots and got down 10-2. The are­na, roar­ing just a few min­utes be­fore at the start, qui­et­ed quick­ly. Hall of Famer Reg­gie Miller, sit­ting court­side in a Jalen Rose Pac­ers jer­sey, was pac­ing, kneel­ing, gen­er­al­ly act­ing more ner­vous than he ever seemed as a play­er.

No need.

Af­ter the slow start, the Pac­ers outscored the Thun­der 68-32 over the next 24 min­utes. An In­di­ana team that hadn’t led by more than 10 points at any time in the first five games — and that dou­ble-dig­it lead was brief — led by 28 ear­ly in the third quar­ter. The mar­gin even­tu­al­ly got to 31, which was Ok­la­homa City’s sec­ond-biggest deficit of the sea­son.

The worst al­so came in these play­offs: a 45-point hole against Min­neso­ta in the West­ern Con­fer­ence fi­nals. The Thun­der came back to win that se­ries, ob­vi­ous­ly, and now will need that bounce-back abil­i­ty one more time.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly, it was a very poor per­for­mance by us,” Daigneault said.

The Thun­der, des­per­ate for a spark, put Alex Caru­so in the start­ing line­up in place of Isa­iah Harten­stein to open the sec­ond half. There was no spark. In fact, there was noth­ing what­so­ev­er — nei­ther team scored in the first 3:53 af­ter half­time, the sides com­bin­ing to miss their first 13 shots of the third quar­ter.

And the out­come was nev­er in doubt.

By TIM REYNOLDS

IN­DI­ANAPO­LIS (AP)