Shai Gilgeous-Alexander leads Canadians taking starring roles in NBA Finals

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There has never been an NBA Finals with as much Canadian flavour as the one set to tip on Thursday.

While players like Jamal Murray and Andrew Wiggins have played key roles in the past in the biggest basketball series of the year and others like Dwight Powell, Tristan Thompson, Cory Joseph, Joel Anthony, Todd MacCulloch to Bill Wennington, Rick Fox and Mike Smrek have played bit parts, the 2025 matchup between Oklahoma City and Indiana is a completely different scenario.

The best player in the series, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the reigning NBA MVP, hails from Hamilton.

His teammate Lu Dort, arguably the best defensive player in these Finals, is from Montreal.

Andrew Nembhard, who just helped lock down all-NBA New York Knicks guard Jalen Brunson, might be Indiana’s top defender and is from Aurora, Ont.

The team’s third-leading regular-season scorer, Bennedict Mathurin, is from the same Montreal-Nord neighbourhood as Dort and the two are close (not to mention Pacers scoring leader Pascal Siakam has spent a good portion of his life living in Toronto on his way to becoming an iconic Raptor).

Canadians will have their fingerprints all over this matchup.

The spotlight firmly will be on Gilgeous-Alexander, the sublime scoring machine. If he goes off, as he usually does, the heavily favoured Thunder should cruise to the franchise’s first title (the 1979 NBA championship won by the Seattle Supersonics doesn’t count).

The Pacers will scheme to prevent that from happening and it’s fitting that Nembhard, Gilgeous-Alexander’s frequent teammate with Canada’s national team, will be asked to do much of the heavy lifting in that regard. Nembhard had nine steals over the final two games against the Knicks, frustrating Brunson, and has had at least three swipes four times in these playoffs.

Nembhard also has been a big threat at the other end, shooting 48.3% from three, matching his mark in 17 playoff games a year ago, while handing out 5.1 assists for the high-octane Pacers.

He’s going to be important, too, both for what Indiana head coach Rick Carlisle will ask from him defensively, and for the pressure he’ll take offensively off Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton.

Haliburton will likely be hounded by Oklahoma City’s defensive-stoppers Dort, Alex Caruso, Cason Wallace and Jaylen Williams. That was the case in the two regular-season matchups between the teams, with Nembhard tasked with running the offence more in those meetings.

Expect Dort to be his usual aggressive self against the likes of Haliburton, Nembhard, Mathurin and Siakam. He was 11th in personal fouls in the regular season, is fourth in these playoffs and is built like a tank.

Mathurin could be a wild card. Shifted back to the bench, the 22-year-old scoring guard has been inconsistent, but at times has provided points in bunches (like 20 in 12 minutes in Game 4 against New York and then 23 in 25 minutes in Game 6, and some big games earlier against Cleveland and Milwaukee).

And it’s a nice touch that Mathurin and Dort at times likely will match up. Dort said on a recent conference call how big he thinks the moment will be for the city and its young basketball fans. And, like with Gilgeous-Alexander and Nembhard, Dort and Mathurin have trained and competed a lot against each other and know all of each other’s tricks, adding another interesting subplot.

Overall, Canadians should savour this moment because even though there are now so many in the NBA (only the United States produces more players, with Canada and France neck-and-neck annually for second), there’s no guarantees that subsequent Finals will feature as many key Canucks.

“To see four homegrown players competing for an NBA championship is a testament to the depth, resilience and world-class players being developed in Canada,” Rowan Barrett, Canada Basketball’s general manager and executive vice-president of men’s high performance, said ahead of the Finals.

“We couldn’t be prouder of what this means for our country and for the continued growth of the game.”