- The Pacers will host Game 6 vs the Thunder at 8:30 p.m. Thursday trailing in the NBA Finals 3-2
- T.J. McConnell scored 22 points in 18 minutes, why didn’t he play more in the fourth quarter?
- With Tyrese Haliburton dealing with a calf injury and Andrew Nembhard playing poorly, why didn’t TJ McConnell play more in fourth quarter on Monday?
OKLAHOMA CITY — Moments after a Game 5 loss in the NBA Finals that puts the Pacers‘ season on the brink, TJ McConnell lay on his stomach a trainer’s table in the bowels of the Paycom Center as a medical assistant took a careful examination of his back. He stayed there so long that he was the second-to-last Pacers player to enter the locker room, trailed only by the injured Tyrese Haliburton.
A back needs a certain level of inspection when it just carried a team and a city’s championship hopes. Especially when it might need to do so again in two days.
McConnell was the spark the Pacers were searching high and wide for in a Game 5 that turned so rapidly into the kind of deep hole against the Thunder that these comeback kids have been desperate to avoid. The backup point guard exploded when he made his usual third-quarter appearance, ripping off 13 points on 6 of 8 shooting in a single frame to turn a laugher into the kind of game these playoffs have taught the Pacers they can win.
In the process, the Pacers closed the gap from down 14 at halftime to within 2 points early in the fourth quarter. And all of a sudden, the game had the feel of another Pacers second-half comeback.
It wasn’t ultimately enough, for reasons both organic and debatable in the aftermath of a 120-109 defeat that gave the Thunder a 3-2 series lead.
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There he was, dribbling at the top of the key against Alex Caruso, forcing McConnell to his right in order to slalom through a double team before drilling a midrange jumper against a collapsing closing defender. Then there he was, driving hard into the paint to draw a double team, spinning around as if he was going to launch another midrange jumper and flipping it to the corner for a Pascal Siakam 3-pointer.
McConnell finished with 18 points, the most points he’s scored in a playoff game on fewer than 20 minutes.
But therein lies the harsh reality of turning up the inferno in a 33-year-old’s belly: His fuel lives on borrowed time. McConnell is wired at this stage to be a spark, not the entire flame that can overwhelm the heroics of a duo like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jalen Williams and an Oklahoma City crowd salivating in sight of its first championship.
And the concern now is that he might need to do just that to survive a Game 6 on Thursday if Haliburton’s calf injury has him as nonexistent as he was in Game 5, when he scored four points and didn’t make a single shot.
“He answered the call,” Myles Turner said of McConnell. “It doesn’t surprise me, personally. I’ve seen him do this multiple times before. It may be a lot of peoples’ first times seeing it, just his heroics and the different things that he does. His mindset and mentality, it never waivers. It’s inspiring and it gets our team going.”
The question the Pacers face is not whether McConnell can do this. It’s just about how much to reasonably squeeze out of an aging player with an all-gas-no-breaks playing style before it creates diminishing returns. And for as supercharged as his third quarter was, those signs of wear and tear were setting in by the beginning of the fourth quarter, or the time when the games of this series have too often turned on their heads.
“He was very tired. That’s why we got him out,” said coach Rick Carlisle, who brought McConnell in earlier in the third quarter than usual in order to create that spark. “I think there was a play early in the fourth where it looked like fatigue had set in there.
“Then Ty was back in, and then that group went on a good run there. Yeah, it’s always a consideration. But I haven’t gone through the entire game and completely analyzed the whole thing.”
McConnell came out after committing a turnover that led to a Thunder 3-pointer and 10-point lead with 10:50 to play in the game. The Pacers would cut the deficit to 95-93 with 8:30 remaining and McConnell on the bench. But turnovers by Haliburton and Andrew Nembhard on four consecutive possession starting with 6:16 left led to 8 consecutive Thunder points and put the game out of reach.
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It’s going to create one of the bigger “what ifs” of this playoff series, if the Pacers don’t end up winning it. Carlisle knows when to read McConnell’s fatigue and to prevent a slip, but he chose not to bring him back into the game after the fourth quarter devolved into more costly turnovers and stagnant offense, particularly in the backcourt.
Carlisle had a couple of different possibilities on his hands. He could have given Haliburton more rest, given that his shot still hadn’t gotten going and Carlisle had already considered shutting his star point guard down at halftime due to the calf that had him out of sorts. Haliburton pushed to play, and trusting in his star has been essential to building this team. It was also potentially the necessary formula in a game that increasingly became about the stars, with Williams and Gilgeous-Alexander becoming the second duo in the past 40 Finals to go for 40 and 30 points, respectively, in the same game.
The other option was to pull Nembhard. Though he came out with a decent first half with seven points, he went scoreless in the second as the ball pressure became overwhelming. He finished with four turnovers, but they turned into easy Thunder scores at critical moments that killed potential Pacers rallies and gave all the energy back to the road crowd.
Nembhard was able to appreciate what McConnell gave while acknowledging that turnovers did the Pacers in.
“He was aggressive, got into the paint, created problems and made shots,” Nembhard said.
Not enough Pacers found ways to do that with Haliburton unable to be the engine. Pascal Siakam dropped 28 points, but no other Indianapolis player could match what McConnell did in just 22 minutes.
It’s valuable to have but problematic to count too much on.
“I’m just trying to put some energy into the game as I always do,” McConnell said, “and get us jumpstarted.”
Now, the Pacers have to hope they only need a jump, and that they have what it takes to drive the rest of the way.
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