Knicks vs. Pacers: Indiana stays true to itself to punch ticket to NBA Finals

Yahoo

2 days ago

INDIANAPOLIS — The temptation, after Tyrese Haliburton scored just eight points on seven shots in a disappointing Game 5 loss, was to call for the Indiana Pacers to adjust the sliders for Game 6 by overindexing on the kind of aggression that's easy to see in the box score — to counteract the New York Knicks' stepped-up ball pressure with hunted shots and hero ball.
That's not what Indiana head coach Rick Carlisle called for, though.
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'As a team, we have to be aggressive, and we have to have a level of balance,' he said after Game 5.
Which is to say: They needed to play Pacers basketball.
The many-hands-make-light-work approach that has produced one of the NBA's most potent offenses. The insistence on pipe-bursting, full-court ball pressure that has made the Pacers one of the NBA's most improved defenses. The commitment to running 12 deep — and to all 12 of 'em running, off makes and misses — that makes them tough to handle on the second night of a back-to-back in February, but that makes them an absolute nightmare to deal with every other night for two weeks in late May.
It's a play style that elevates collective effect over individual impact — one that makes the Pacers different and special, has made them one of the best teams in the NBA for nearly six months … and now, has made them Eastern Conference champions.
Eleven Pacers played before garbage time in Saturday's 125-108 Game 6 win, and seven of them scored in double figures. Andrew Nembhard changed the game with his defense on Knicks star Jalen Brunson, snatching six steals and getting his offensive game unstuck with 14 points on 6-for-12 shooting. Backup center Thomas Bryant, who'd seen his minutes dwindle in favor of Tony Bradley's superior ability to battle Knicks center Mitchell Robinson on the glass, got an opportunity to return to the fold with Bradley nursing an injured hip; he made the most of it, drilling three huge 3-pointers, blocking a shot and finishing with 11 points in 13 minutes. Obi Toppin provided his trademark irrepressible energy and above-the-rim finishing against the team that drafted and then traded him, chipping in 18 points, six rebounds and three blocks. (That last stat drew a surprised smile after the game from Haliburton, who chided Toppin for having 'all that athleticism, but just [not using] it on the defensive end sometimes.')
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'We've preached depth this whole year,' said Haliburton, who didn't need to dominate the ball or the shots to bounce back from his quiet Game 5, tallying 21 points, 13 assists, six rebounds, three steals and a block. 'We keep talking about it, and it's not just a word we use for fun. This is our identity, and this is who we are, and I thought we did a great job of utilizing that. We had many different people step up.'
Including, of course, Indiana's superstars, who knew they had to turn in more forceful and productive outings back home in Game 6 than they had at Madison Square Garden in Game 5, and who answered the call.
Pascal Siakam kept the offense afloat early, scoring 16 first-half points to stake Indiana to leads after the first and second quarters of a tight, tense elimination-game first half contested entirely within two possessions, with neither team able to gain more than six points of separation. He tilted the run of play in the Pacers' favor shortly after intermission, having a hand in three straight buckets — a pick-and-pop 3, a setup for an Aaron Nesmith 3 in transition and a transition leak-out and beautiful reverse finish through contact — that amounted to a 9-0 run to put Indiana up 13 early in the third and giving it the separation it needed to push the Knicks past their breaking point.
Siakam would finish with a game-high 31 points, five rebounds, three assists, three blocks and a steal — another monster performance in an Eastern Conference finals where the Knicks never really found a great answer for him, where he made abundantly clear why Pacers brass felt he was the missing piece they had to go all out to get at the 2024 trade deadline and of which he was voted the Most Valuable Player.
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'It's cool,' Siakam said of the Larry Bird Trophy, which he brought with him to his postgame news conference. 'I didn't know they had a trophy for that, but I'm excited.'
Not as excited, though, as he is to get another chance to play for a much bigger gold trophy, six years after he hoisted it with the 2019 Toronto Raptors.
'I was telling the guys — I mean, like, for me, you know, I got there when I was in Year 3, and I thought I would get back there a lot. And it didn't happen,' Siakam said. 'So it's a hell of an opportunity, and you don't know when you're gonna get it again. So I think we have to have a mindset of going out there and, at the end of the day, just giving everything we've got and knowing that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity.'
Yep, the Indiana Pacers are going to the NBA Finals. (AP Photo/AJ Mast)
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Haliburton didn't get many good shots early, going without a field goal until he sprinted into a pull-up 3 four and a half minutes into the second quarter. But he kept reading the game, kept moving the ball and his body, and kept trusting that the deposits that he and the Pacers had put in over the course of the game and the series — all those miles they put on the Knicks' legs, all the mental and physical strain they'd put on New York's players with their frenetic, relentless motion — would eventually pay off.
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And then, in the fourth quarter, the dam burst, with Haliburton slicing the Knicks' pick-and-roll coverage to ribbons, repeatedly getting into the paint to either finish for himself or set up a rolling Obi Toppin for a layup or dunk. Haliburton scored or assisted on 19 points in the fourth, capping it with a 32-foot bomb in the final minute to push the lead to 20 — a coup de grâce to pack up the Knicks and send them back to New York and to send the Pacers to the NBA Finals.
'I'm so proud of Tyrese, bro. For real, man,' Pacers center Myles Turner said. 'Y'all seen — you know, when it comes to being a superstar, bro, you got to take everything that comes with it. The highs and the lows, the good and the bad. And you know, from how the season started, to how he was getting trashed, and everybody was basically trying to turn their heads to him, he just kept his head down and kept working, man. Even going into this playoffs, the whole 'overrated' thing — I mean, obviously, we know that's dead now. There's not much you can say now.'
Haliburton's playmaking and pace, Siakam's ceaseless sprinting and gap-filling offensive play, and the strength-in-numbers approach carried the offense. What killed the Knicks, though, was Indiana repeatedly forcing them into costly mistakes — 17 turnovers leading to 34 Pacer points, as the team's season-long commitment to cranking up the tempo and maintaining vise-grip pressure eventually claimed yet another victim.
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'Our defense is something we've been working on steadfastly for over a year and a half,' Carlisle said. 'I mean, really. The year started last year with, really, a different set of rules. We were playing small and even faster. It wasn't a team that had great defenders. But we've gotten better defenders, we've gotten bigger, we got Pascal, and the guys co-signed on the importance of defense, and everybody has participated in the growth.'
For Turner, the growth started in the summer of 2015, when he came to Indiana as a reedy 19-year-old. A decade full of ups, downs, trade rumors, frontcourt partners and frustrations later, the longest-tenured Pacer is on his way to his first NBA Finals.
'When the buzzer was sounding, it was just … nothing but joy, man,' Turner said. 'Just pure excitement. Just pure validation. Just all the years, all the hate, all the love — everything in between, bro. It just made so much sense in that moment. To be honest, man, I don't know what I was thinking. It was just pure exuberance and joy.'
The Pacers get to feel that exuberance and joy for a night. And, if their coach has anything to say about it, maybe not even that much exuberance.
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'This is no time to be popping champagne,' said Carlisle, who will participate in his sixth NBA Finals — three as a player on the mid-1980s Boston Celtics, one as an assistant on Larry Bird's staff with the 2000 Pacers, and now two as a head coach after winning the 2011 title with the Dallas Mavericks. 'You know, when you get to this point of the season, you know, it's two teams and it's one goal. It becomes an all-or-nothing thing, and we understand the magnitude of the opponent.'
That opponent — the Oklahoma City Thunder — has been nothing short of the best team in the NBA since the season's opening tip. They feature the MVP of the league in point guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, an All-Star running buddy in Jalen Williams, a fearsome two-headed monster on the inside in Chet Holmgren and Isaiah Hartenstein, and the NBA's most ferocious core of perimeter defenders. They're young, they're fast, they play with relentless intensity and apply incredible pressure.
Sounds familiar.
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'I think it's a new blueprint for the league, man,' Turner said. 'I think the years of the superteams and stacking is just not as effective as it once was, you know? I mean, since I've been in the league, this NBA is very trendy. It just shifts. But the new trend now is just kind of what we're doing. OKC does the same thing. You know: young guys, get out and run, defend, and you know, use the power of friendship.'
Whether that power will be enough to get the Pacers past the 68-win juggernaut they're about to face remains to be seen; they'll enter the series as serious underdogs. That's just fine by them, though. They're used to it.
From last year's run to the Eastern Conference finals being dismissed as a fluke born of injuries to the teams along its path, to a brutal injury-marred 10-15 start to this season, to largely being viewed by national pundits as merely the foil to the Cavaliers and Knicks in this postseason, the Pacers have plenty of practice being overlooked. They've learned not to concern themselves with the paltry predictions of others; they're not afraid to dream bigger.
'I thought we just did a great job of staying together as a group and not worrying about outside noise,' Haliburton said. 'Internally, we had expectations to be here. This isn't a surprise to any of us, because of what we wanted to do. … I just thought we did a great job, like I mentioned earlier, just being as present as possible — not living in the past, not worrying about what's next. Just worrying about what's now.'
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What's now, for Indiana, for the first time in a quarter-century, is the NBA Finals. They won't win it on the strength of overwhelming star power. Keep on maximizing the output of a group that's proven to be greater than the sum of its more-impressive-than-you-might-think parts, though — keep on playing Pacer basketball — and they've got a shot.
'You know, we're a team that is an ecosystem,' Carlisle said. 'We're very dependent on the collective ingredients for the whole team to function at its best.'