Obi Toppin on Indiana Pacers in NBA Finals: ‘We love that we’re the underdog’

Obi Toppin has used his signature between-the-legs East Bay dunk on various stages throughout his basketball career: twice in games with the Dayton Flyers; at the NBA Slam Dunk contest; and even in a playoff game.

Will he do it in the NBA Finals?

“It depends,” Toppin told reporters in Oklahoma City on Wednesday. “We’ve got to be up by a lot.”

Toppin, the consensus national player of the year in his final season at Dayton in 2020, will make his Finals debut when the Indiana Pacers face the Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 1 on Thursday.

“It’s just another game,” Toppin said. “We approach it the same way we approach every other game, but in the back of our minds, we know we have to limit all the mistakes. We don’t want to have any mistakes in the Finals. We want to be as perfect as we can be. Nobody’s perfect. We’re not going to be perfect. There’s going to be mess-ups here and there. But we’ve just got to learn how to get to the next play and just keep it going.”

Toppin will be the first former Flyer to play in a NBA Finals game since Johnny Davis, who got the opportunity as a rookie with the Portland Trail Blazers in 1977.

“It’s amazing,” Toppin said. “It feels great. I couldn’t even have dreamt about moments like this, but we’re here and it feels normal just because we’ve worked extremely hard to put us in this position. We can’t wait to get it started.”

The Pacers (50-32 in the regular season) are 5-1 underdogs. The Thunder (68-14) are a 9.5-point favorite in Game 1.

The Thunder beat the Pacers 120-114 in December and 132-11 in March.

“We love that we’re the underdog,” Toppin said. “We love to prove people wrong. We prove people wrong with our success and what we do as a team, and we’re going to continue doing that.

“They’re really, really good. Obviously, they wouldn’t be in the finals if they weren’t. They’re young like us. They like to run. We like to run. We kind of have similar games but are different in some ways.”