Doyel: Pacers' 'magical ride' has been a long time coming. Four more wins ends it with a first NBA title

Indianapolis Star

2 days ago

INDIANAPOLIS – Cars are honking on Virginia Avenue and Maryland Street. Pedestrians are dancing on Delaware and Pennsylvania streets. They've just been sent out into the final moments of Saturday night by the Indiana Pacers' 125-108 victory against the New York Knicks — they're probably having a good time on New York Street, too, to say nothing of Washington and Illinois — a victory that put the Pacers into the NBA Finals for the second time in franchise history.
'In 49 states it's basketball,' Pacers coach Rick Carlisle is telling TNT's Ernie Johnson over the P.A. system, though he's really saying this for the benefit of the sold-out, gold-out crowd at Gainbridge Fieldhouse. And the crowd is starting to make noise, because it knows what's coming next.
'But this is Indiana!' Carlisle thunders, and now it's bedlam, and people are heading for the exits, to all those streets named after all those states where it's just, you know … basketball.
But it's different here, and it's been too long. The Pacers of Slick Leonard and George McGinnis won three ABA titles in four years in the early 1970s, but the last time the Pacers reached the NBA Finals — the only time they reached the NBA Finals — it was 2000. Donnie Walsh built that team, Larry Bird coached it and Reggie Miller led it. Reggie was courtside for this one, calling the game for TNT.
'It was 25 years ago that the Pacers went to the NBA Finals for the first time,' Johnson had told the crowd before handing the mic to Carlisle, 'beating the New York Knicks in six games. Now it's happened again. And the guy that scored 34 points (in Game 6 of 2000), I think you just call him by one name.'
This is a revival, the call-and-response part of the service, and the crowd knows its line:
Reg-gie! Reg-gie! Reg-gie!
'So,' Johnson continues, 'we're going to have Reggie have the honors and hand the Bob Cousy Trophy to (Pacers owner) Herb Simon.'
Reggie hands the trophy to Simon, a 2024 inductee into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, and Simon seems surprised by its weight. He's smiling, he's thrilled, but he's looking for someone else to hold the trophy. Let them have a turn. Myles Turner, the longest-tenured player on roster — the No. 11 overall pick in the 2015 NBA Draft — is right there. He takes the trophy, hoists it over his head and looks absolutely, positively gleeful.
The crowd knows its line here, too.
The crowd roars.
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These guys are greedy, man.
Carlisle took out Tyrese Haliburton with 47 seconds left. He's letting the Pacers' franchise star — who started slow, without a point or a rebound in the first quarter, but finished with 21 points and six boards, to go with 13 assists — get some love from the crowd. Haliburton's also getting love from the bench, but when assistant coach Lloyd Pierce approaches for a hug, Haliburton has two words for him:
'Four more.'
He's talking about the NBA Finals. The Pacers still have 47 seconds before they can put on the ballcaps calling themselves Eastern Conference champions, but already Haliburton is doing what he does on the court better than anyone ever has in a Pacers uniform: looking ahead.
The Pacers follow his lead, too. A few minutes later, after the game ends — before Carlisle has his drop-the-mic moment and sends the crowd out into the states, er, streets — Pacers analyst Pat Boylan is on the court, inside the ropes, looking for a player to interview on the giant videoboard. He makes the sentimental choice.
'Myles Turner,' Boylan tells him, 'you're going to the NBA Finals. What's going through your mind right now?'
Turner is beaming. Has he ever been happier? Maybe. But I've not seen it. Not until Herb Simon hands him the Bob Cousy Trophy, anyway, but that's a few minutes away. And right now, Turner has a message for the crowd, and his team.
'We got four more, baby,' he shouted. 'We got four more to bring it home.'
Turner keeps going, stoking the crowd into a frenzy of hometown love.
'This team thrives on adversity,' he says. 'This city thrives on adversity. We're overlooked. We keep fighting.
'We don't quit, man. We don't quit in this city, baby.'
Four more days. And then they can go about the business of winning those four more games.
This game was never in doubt. Not in the classical sense. The Knicks scored the first bucket, and they led 22-20 late in the first quarter, but that was it. The rest of the game was an avalanche of the Pacers doing what they do best: Running, scoring, coming at the opponent in waves, getting points from players you'd expect — Pascal Siakam (31), Haliburton (21), Andrew Nembhard (14), Turner (11) and Aaron Nesmith (10) — and getting a boost from players you might not have seen coming.
Former Knicks player Obi Toppin, for example, scored 18 points and added six rebounds and three blocked shots off the bench. And Thomas Bryant, who didn't play in two of the first five games this series, had 11 points — and was, frankly, the spark that got this rout rolling. It was Bryant's 3-pointer that erased the Knicks' final lead of the game, putting the Pacers ahead 23-22 late in the first quarter. And it was Bryant who sandwiched a pair of corner 3s around one from Nembhard in the third quarter as the Pacers expanded their 69-61 lead to 78-63.
And this one was over.
Pretty soon Nesmith is getting a pass from Nembhard and dunking. The Knicks are leaving T.J. McConnell alone for the second time behind the 3-point arc, and for the second time McConnell is all but shrugging before burying the 3-pointer.
Now it's Haliburton with the ball in transition, a 2-on-1 fast break with Siakam on his right. Haliburton looks to Siakam, and the defense goes that way, but hang on. What? Haliburton is going to the rim and throwing it down with two hands? Yes he is.
That finish is almost as startling as whatever becomes of the 2025 Indiana Pacers — four more, baby — when you consider where this franchise was just a few years ago. The Pacers averaged 31 victories from 2020-21 to 2022-23, losing enough to miss the playoffs all three years but winning just enough to miss out on a transformational player at the top of the lottery. Less than a year after the 2023 NBA draft lottery, the Pacers qualified for the 2024 Eastern Conference Finals. And here they are one year after that, heading to the 2025 NBA Finals.
Afterward, to reporters in the postgame interview room, Carlisle is talking about those two players involved in that finish — about Haliburton and Siakam — to explain how the Pacers have been writing this one.
"Getting Tyrese made it very clear what our identity as a team needed to be," Carlisle says of the team's trade in February 2022 that sent Domantas Sabonis to Sacramento for Haliburton and Buddy Hield. 'The Siakam trade (in January 2024) took things to another level."
The Pacers have two All-Stars, Haliburton and Siakam, and three more starters capable of big nights. One game after the starting five was uncharacteristically quiet, combining for 37 points in that Game 5 loss to the Knicks in Madison Square Garden, all five starters reached double figures and combined for 87 points, total.
That starting lineup, and a deep bench that gets occasional starring performances from McConnell, Toppin and Bennedict Mathurin — and quality minutes from Bryant, Ben Sheppard, Jarace Walker and Tony Bradley — has helped the Pacers set up an NBA Finals featuring the two hottest teams in the NBA. Fact: Since Jan. 1, only the Thunder have had a better record (53-13) than the Pacers (46-18).
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The Pacers have been getting better as the games get tougher, eliminating Milwaukee in five games in the first round, top-seeded Cleveland in five in the second round, and now the Knicks in six. Afterward, Carlisle is congratulating the Knicks on a fine season of their own, and almost feeling bad about having to end it.
'They caught a team that's been on a magical ride,' Carlisle told the crowd afterward.
Wheels up, soon, for Oklahoma City. And the hunt for four more.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Threads, or on BlueSky and Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar, or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar. Subscribe to the free weekly Doyel on Demand newsletter.