Doyel: Pacers are two wins at home from NBA Finals? Not to get ahead of ourselves, but...

Indianapolis Star

24-05-2025

NEW YORK – That was a quiet 39 points scored by Pascal Siakam in Game 2 against the New York Knicks — it really was — and those aren't my words. That's straight from Indiana Pacers coach Rick Carlisle, whose team disposed of the Knicks 114-109 to take a 2-0 lead in the Eastern Conference Finals, meaning they're two wins from the 2025 NBA Finals.
But no one's getting ahead of themselves. There's still work to do.
That's also straight from Rick Carlisle.
And he's right, right about all of it. Those were a quiet 39 points from Pascal Siakam, whose game is a whisper on the night air of New York, drowned out by the big city's boos and honks and halftime rapping of Busta Rhymes and crowd cheers for Ben Stiller and Timothee Chalamet sitting courtside, and louder cheers for Bernard King and Clyde Frazier sitting down the row. Pay attention to Siakam — pay better attention than the Knicks did — or he'll hang 39 on you without making a sound.
The two games in New York, another historic comeback in Game 1 followed by this rather routine victory in Game 2 — the better team won, what more is there to say? — leave the Pacers two wins short of advancing to the NBA Finals for the first time since 2000. A franchise that won three ABA titles in four years in the early 1970s but is still looking for its first NBA title needs to win just two of the next five games to get into position. And three of those five games are at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, starting with Game 3 on Sunday and Game 4 on Tuesday.
If there's a Game 6, and stranger things have happened, it would be May 31.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves, and Rick Carlisle wouldn't like that. He's a veteran coach's veteran coach, perhaps the wisest owl in the league after the retirement of San Antonio's Gregg Popovich, and an NBA champion to boot — as player, and a coach. Carlisle has reinvented himself along the way, and is reinventing the way teams see their postseason rotation, but one of his biggest motivational ploys is to give the other team nothing in his media interviews.
And to give his team zero reason to get complacent.
Here's what he said, moments after the Pacers won Game 2 to move, perhaps, two games — and four days — away from clinching a spot in the NBA Finals.
'It's Day 3 of 13 days,' he said, noting the seven-game schedule for the Eastern Conference Finals. 'No one's getting ahead of themselves.'
Yeah, well.
Another Carlisle quote. Rather, the other Carlisle quote:
'It's a quiet 39 points,' he said of Siakam's scoring total Friday night. 'It really was.'
Silent, like the rustling of silk curtains. Siakam's game is smooth and played mostly in the mid-range, where the adults get their work done while the rest of us miss it, too enamored with dunks and 3-pointers.
This Pacers roster is mature and unselfish, playing a grown-up game that is wearing down New York just as surely as it wore down Milwaukee in the first round and top-seeded Cleveland in the conference semifinals. But even so, surrounded by all that maturity, all that poise — 'Composure,' Carlisle marveled more than once about his team's signature quality during its historic 2025 NBA playoff run — Siakam is the adult in the room. He's the one the Pacers look to when the shot clock is inside 10 seconds and the first play didn't work and the second and third actions aren't working. Siakam doesn't need a play or an action. Doesn't need a screen, either.
Give him the ball and get out of the way.
You'd think, given that description, that Siakam would make all kinds of noise scoring 39 points. But he doesn't. He gets the ball 18 feet from the basket, turns his back, dribbles once or twice and then launches a soft turnaround jumper from 15 feet. Or he scores from 14 feet off a pass from Andrew Nembhard. Or he dribbles into a 15-foot fadeaway against Knicks defensive ace Mikal Bridges.
'It's why we brought him here,' Tyrese Haliburton said of Siakam. 'He can get a bucket in many different ways.'
Siakam scored the first 11 points of the game for the Pacers, and that was loud, but then he went quiet. Made a few 3-pointers, as I recall. Hit some free throws, but missed a few too. Dunked once or twice, though they're not roaring thunder like Myles Turner tends to unleash. Siakam's dunks are smooth, almost gentle, the flapping of a butterfly's wings.
Ever heard the flapping of a butterfly's wings?
Did you realize Pascal Siakam scored 39 points?
Can you believe the Pacers will reach the NBA Finals if they win just two of the next five games?
Are we getting ahead of ourselves?
T.J. McConnell doesn't play quietly. He is the snare drum to Pascal Siakam's violin, pounding the ball against the hardwood — wham, wham, wham, wham — as he probes the defense, getting wherever he wants to go whenever he wants to get there. He has made a career out of it, 10 years in the NBA, and Game 2 was T.J. McConnell at his best:
Breaking down the Knicks defense, wearing it out, collapsing it on itself.
It starts with the score tied at 70. McConnell gets into the lane, because that's where he wanted to go, and buries a 12-footer. Then he's getting the ball after a 3-pointer from Bridges, and before the crowd has stopped cheering their good fortune he's knifing to the rim 94 feet away for a layup. The cheers are now groans, and just wait until McConnell gets into the lane on the next possession and finds Siakam for a 3-pointer. Then he bounces — wham, wham, wham, wham — into a 15-footer.
Now he's running the pick-and-roll with Turner, and the Knicks defense is completely befuddled. How is T.J. McConnell, more than 30 years old and barely 6 feet tall and looking like the youth pastor at your church, doing this to the Knicks? The defense sticks with him. McConnell passes to Turner for an easy 15-footer.
Now he's just showing off, dribbling into the heart of the defense over and over, waiting for it to collapse before finding Ben Sheppard for a 3-pointer and Siakam for a 3-pointer. McConnell, who scored 10 points in 14 minutes altogether, has just scored or assisted on 16 points in eight minutes and the Pacers lead 94-85. Soon he's going out, his work done for the night.
'This time of year you have to play with a certain attitude. You have to play with a defiance,' Carlisle said. 'It's kind of defined T.J.'s 10-year career in the NBA. … Tonight I thought he was a real key to the game.'
Let's give the coach some flowers, too. He changed this game — the way he's changing, well, this game.
Doyel on postseason: Pacers enjoying one of the wilder postseason runs in NBA history
Doyel from Game 1: Pacers' earlier playoff comebacks were improbable. This was absurd.
Old theory: An NBA coach should shorten his rotation in the postseason. No back-to-back games. Longer TV timeouts. More adrenaline, less excuses. Players can handle it.
Carlisle's response: Pbbbbbbbbt.
The Pacers' super powers are their connectivity, their unselfishness, their pace and effort. But the secret to all of that is their depth, because the Pacers can play 10 or even 11 players, all of whom get along, all of whom share the ball and enjoy everyone else's success.
The Knicks, meanwhile, are coached by that mad meathead Tom Thibodeau, a great tactical coach but old school in a stubborn way that will get you fired if you're not careful. He'd play seven players if he thought he could get away with it, and went just eight-deep on Saturday night.
Is there any reason the Knicks, like the Cavs and Bucks before them, keep caving late — in game after game, comeback after comeback — against the Pacers? Probably has something to do with the way Carlisle deploys his bench like a weapon, seeing your tired Jalen Brunson and raising you a fresh Ben Sheppard. All things being equal, Sheppard is no match for Brunson. You know that. But all things are not equal in the second half of an NBA playoff game on a night Brunson will play 39 minutes after averaging 40 minutes in the first round against the Pistons and 38 minutes in the semifinals against Boston.
Sheppard has averaged just 12 minutes per game in the past five, but he helped spark the Pacers' comeback in Game 1 when he made his debut in the fourth quarter, giving the team a lift and Aaron Nesmith a rest, and you remember what a fresh Aaron Nesmith did late in the game, right?
Sheppard made Brunson work for everything he got in Game 2 when Sheppard was on the floor, and maybe that contributed to the normally clutch Brunson missing the game-tying shot with six seconds left. In this game Carlisle gave Sheppard the minutes he normally gives high-scoring wing Bennedict Mathurin, because Mathurin got off to a slow start — no points, no rebounds, one assist in 11 minutes — and Sheppard defends at a higher level.
Sheppard over Mathurin is unusual, if not shocking, but Carlisle went for shocking in the second quarter when he played somebody named, let me see … Tony Bradley? That the guy from North Carolina? Pretty sure it is. Says here he had played a total of 15 garbage minutes in four lopsided Pacers postseason games against the Bucks and Cavs, totaling zero points and two rebounds. No wonder I missed it.
Couldn't miss this, though: With the 6-11 Turner not grabbing his first rebound until the third quarter, and high-energy Thomas Bryant committing a turnover within seconds of entering the game and grabbing zero rebounds in 4½ minutes, Carlisle had Bradley on the floor to start the second quarter. Yes, Friday night! And Bradley, bless his heart, hit a free throw and grabbed two rebounds and was a plus-one in his eight minutes on the court.
'Our bench did a really good job,' Carlisle said. 'We're going to need everybody…'
Yes?
To do … what?
He didn't say. Wouldn't go there. But there is some historical precedent here, and if it's OK with Carlisle, I'll share it with you now:
In the history of the NBA playoffs, only two teams have started on the road and returned home with a 2-0 lead twice in the same year, as the Pacers did in Cleveland and now in New York. The other team? Houston in 1995.
Guess who won the NBA title in 1995?
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.