At some point, they stopped being the plucky underdog on some Cinderella run that was just happy to be here.
At some point, as they dusted a two-time MVP in the first round, needed just five games to send the conference’s top seed home in the second, then worked over the New York Knicks in six to win the Eastern Conference, they started to look like something else — a contender.
At some point, they started to see it, long before everyone else: they were deep enough, gritty enough and good enough. Even then, who gave these Indiana Pacers a real chance in the NBA Finals? Against the league’s reigning MVP and a 68-win Oklahoma City Thunder squad?
“We’re playing the best team on the planet,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle conceded. “They’ve proven that the entire year.”
Carlisle’s team was up 2-1 in the series and still the betting underdog.
Then they crumbled down the stretch in Game 4. Then their comeback stalled in Game 5.
Suddenly, their star was hobbling, their momentum sapped, their outlook grim. The Pacers dropped back-to-back games for the first time since March. They were trailing in a series for the first time in the playoffs. Their dream season was on the brink, and the Thunder had a chance to clinch the title on Indiana’s home court.
Tyrese Haliburton, nursing that nagging calf strain, thought about the long climb to get here, and how if he missed Game 6 he’d never forgive himself. “If I can walk,” he said, “I wanna be out there.” Pascal Siakam thought back to all the seasons he had that ended early, with a vacation he wanted no part of. Obi Toppin went back to last spring, when the Pacers reached the Eastern Conference finals, only to be swept in four games by the eventual champion Boston Celtics. “Nobody was excited,” he said.
Translation: they had more in front of them, and they knew it.
Even if the rest of the league had no idea what was coming.
The response Thursday night was Indiana’s most complete and convincing win of the playoffs, a 108-91 rout of Oklahoma City that sets up the first Game 7 of the NBA Finals in nine years. That’s the thing about these Pacers: they’ll take your best punch and come right back swinging. They’re too stubborn to care. They’re too young to know better.
And they’re too resilient to fold.
“We’re hungry,” said Toppin, whose 20 points led Indiana Thursday night.
“We continue to be us, no matter what,” added Siakam, who chipped in with 17.
So, with one game left in the NBA season, forget the pundits. Forget the ratings. Forget all the Thunder-in-five predictions.
The Pacers are 48 minutes from their first NBA championship.
“One game,” Carlisle said. “This is what it’s all about. This is what you dream about growing up, this opportunity.”
This is what this city and state have dreamed about for decades. The Pacers joined the NBA in 1976; they’ve never been this close to a title, just one win away. It was 25 years ago Thursday that the Pacers’ only other trip to the championship round ended with a gutting Game 6 loss to a blossoming Los Angeles Lakers dynasty.
Plenty of pain followed. It took a quarter-century to make it back.
It’s been the story of this franchise: so often the bridesmaid, never the bride. A consistent contender but never a champion. Reggie Miller’s 1990s Pacers teams could never climb the mountain. Patrick Ewing’s Knicks stopped them in 1994, Shaquille O’Neal’s Orlando Magic in 1995. Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls in 1998, Shaq and Kobe Bryant’s Lakers in 2000. The Malice at the Palace derailed their best team of the 2000s. Paul George, Roy Hibbert and David West revived the team in the 2010s, only to twice run into LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and the Miami Heat. Then George got hurt. Then George asked out. Victor Oladipo offered a glimmer of hope, but before anyone could blink, he was gone, too.
It was easy to wonder: Was it ever going to change?
The franchise slogged through years of mediocrity until Haliburton showed up in 2022 and changed everything.
Three years later, he’s led this team to the precipice of a title.
Thursday night was a snapshot of their season: an early deficit and a stirring finish. Remember what ESPN’s Kendrick Perkins said back in October, after the Pacers started 1-4 and were calling up players from the G League just to survive on a nightly basis? “They’re not going to make the playoffs this season,” Perkins predicted. “I’m not high on them.”
So much for that. It took a while — the Pacers were 10-15 before finally getting hot — but now they’ve pushed their season further than any team in franchise history.
On Thursday night, they bricked their first seven shots and trailed 10-2 inside a nervy Gainbridge Fieldhouse. From there, they routed the Thunder in stunning fashion, pushing the lead to as many as 27 at one point. With every signature highlight, the crowd grew louder, craving a chance at witnessing something this franchise has never seen. There was Haliburton’s steal and no-look to Siakam on the break, then Siakam’s vicious dunk over the Thunder’s Jalen Williams. There was T.J. McConnell doing T.J. McConnell things. There was Ben Sheppard drilling a 3-pointer from the top of the key as the third quarter expired that nearly blew the roof off the Fieldhouse.
“The loudest I’ve ever heard Gainbridge,” Carlisle said.
After it was over, and while the streets of Indianapolis celebrated, Haliburton tempered the mood.
“It’s done with,” he said of Game 6, offering no more than a slight smile, already looking ahead to Sunday’s Game 7. The Pacers will be confident, and they should be. They could be dangerous, too.
What do they have to lose? What is there to be scared of?
The momentum is theirs. The pressure firmly rests with the Thunder, who’ll be playing at home, trying to avoid losing a series in which they led 3-2.
“We got one game,” Haliburton said. “One game. Nothing that’s happened before matters. Nothing that’s gonna happen after matters. It’s all about that one game.
“The next couple of days, the narratives are going to be almost poison.”
He’ll do his best to block it out. He’s deleted all the social media apps from his phone, trying to wall of the world while he chases a championship. Deliver a title and his imprint on this city and state will forever be stamped.
“I’ve dreamed of being in this situation my whole life,” Haliburton said.
So many in these parts have done the same, wanting to witness something they’ve never seen. Now, it’s right there, a victory that would change this franchise forever.
And this group might just have the mettle to pull it off.
(Photo of Tyrese Haliburton: Maddie Meyer / Getty Images)
