The Indiana Pacers are set to face the Oklahoma City Thunder in the 2025 NBA Finals.
The last time the Pacers were in the Finals, a little-known rookie by the name of Jonathan Bender was on the squad.
Bender was just a rookie when the Pacers made the Finals back in 2000People may not remember the name from what Bender did on the court, but they may recognize his name off it.
The Pacers lost to the Los Angeles Lakers in the 2000 finals, while Bender would go on to play six more seasons with Indiana before chronic knee injuries got the best of him.
After his rookie season, Bender played 78 games during the 2001-2002 season.
After that, Bender’s knee injuries limited him to a combined 76 games over the next four seasons.
The former fifth overall pick was forced to retire at the young age of 25. Still, he made over $30 million during his time in the NBA.
During his time off the basketball court, Bender designed and engineered his own device that helped in rehabilitating his knees.
He was out of basketball for four years, before making a comeback and signing with the New York Knicks in 2009.
However, Bender would only play 25 games for the Knicks before officially retiring for the second, and last time.
While his career may have been cut short due to injury, it did open up another door for Bender.
The device he invented back in the mid-2000s became known as the JB Intensive Trainer.
Bender would have a rather short NBA careerGetty He has since gone on to become a successful entrepreneurGettyIt is now a home therapy device that is designed to relieve knee and back pain.
Bender began selling the devices in 2013 and has been going strong ever since.
Today, the JB Intensive Trainer sells for $130 on his website. It’s been a popular buy among fitness and physical therapy gurus, who praise the product as innovative.
JB Intensive Trainer is now used by tens of thousands of people across the globe.
Bender’s mission was for people to achieve self-rehabilitation and take control over their joint pain, and his invention has helped accomplish that.
“For over a decade, I have been laser focused on eliminating the source of knee pain,” Bender wrote in a statement.
“First, it was to heal myself so I could return to the NBA. Then, in order to help the millions of others like you, who suffer from chronic knee pain.
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“I spent years searching for the real solution for knee pain, that didn’t just ‘mask’ the pain or reduce the pain for just a few hours, so it would come back.
“A solution that fixed the underlying root cause of knee pain. So the inflammation, swelling, and paralyzing pain didn’t come back again. and again.
A solution that eliminated knee pain fast, safely, and reliably so that I didn’t need to pay an orthopedist every week to help me.”
Bender’s device looks to be that solution.
“As athletes, we don’t really get the chance to use our brains within life until we retire,” he said.
Bender would return to the NBA in 2010 for a brief cameo with the Knicks before permanently calling it a career to focus on his business.
He said part of the reason for his comeback was to prove to himself that his product worked.
“God gave me a brain and some creativity,” he said.
Twenty-five years after Bender went to the Finals as a rookie, the Pacers find themselves back on the sport’s biggest stage.
After taking care of the Knicks, something Bender’s Pacers also did on their way to the Finals, the Pacers are back on the doorstep of basketball immortality.
They have a tall task if they want to take home the franchise’s first ever NBA championship, but they are now just four wins away.
No doubt, Bender will be watching.
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