Thunder vs. Pacers: How Indiana's bench beat OKC in Game 3 of NBA Finals — 'Our second group really won us the game'

Yahoo

2 days ago

INDIANAPOLIS — The Pacers are who they are because of Tyrese Haliburton — because of the way his predilection toward frenetic and decentralized possessions produces one of the NBA's most efficient and effective offenses; because of his swashbuckling swagger; because of his growing highlight reel of unbelievable late-game shot-making.
The Pacers are who they are because of Pascal Siakam — because of the matchup nightmare he presents opponents on offense; because of the gap-plugging boost he offers Indiana's defense; and because of how perfectly his ever-revving motor fits within the Pacers' offensive ecosystem.
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But throughout this postseason, as Indiana's All-Stars have received praise for their roles in propelling and prolonging a magical run that now sits just two wins away from an NBA championship, those stars — and head coach Rick Carlisle — have refused to accept too much individual acclaim. Instead, they've repeatedly insisted that it's something else that makes them special:
The Pacers are who they are because of their depth — because of how many damn good players they have; because of how their ability to contribute has allowed Carlisle to avoid overloading his stars and starters in Indiana's frenzied and fast-paced two-way approach; and because of how consistently they've tilted the run of play in Indiana's favor.
T.J. McConnell energized the Pacers on both ends of the floor in Game 3. (Photo by Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE via Getty Images)
(NBAE via Getty Images)
'Look, this is the kind of team that we are,' Carlisle said after Indiana scored a 116-107 win in Game 3 of the 2025 NBA Finals on Wednesday. 'We need everybody to be ready. It's not always going to be exactly the same guys that are stepping up with scoring and stuff like that, but this is how we gotta do it, and we gotta do it as a team, and we gotta make it as hard as possible on them.'
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Which is precisely what Bennedict Mathurin, T.J. McConnell, Obi Toppin and the rest of Indiana's reserve corps did against the Thunder on Wednesday night at a raucous Gainbridge Fieldhouse.
'Honestly, our second group really won us the game,' Haliburton told NBA TV.
In a game decided by three possessions, Indiana's bench outscored Oklahoma City's 48-19. Twenty-seven of those 48 points belonged to Mathurin — a career playoff high, tied with Jalen Rose for the most ever scored by a Pacer off the bench in a playoff game, and tied with Manu Ginóbili and Jason Terry for the third-most ever by a reserve in a Finals game.
The third-year swingman has seen his effectiveness, minutes and opportunities wax and wane in this postseason, but he was absolute nails from the second he checked in at the start of the second quarter on Wednesday.
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'I think he was great being aggressive,' Siakam said. 'That's who we want him to be — when he's aggressive, he's active on defense, he's picking up full-court, he's cutting. Like, when he's doing that … I mean, it looks easy out there for him.'
Mathurin met the Thunder's vaunted athleticism and physicality with plenty of his own, attacking the paint, finding opportunities to get to his spots, and never once wavering on a night that saw him go 9-for-12 from the field, with five of those buckets coming in the paint — more than any Pacer scored on the interior in Game 2 — and a couple more coming between the paint and the arc.
'I thought he did just a great job of playing within what we do so well,' Haliburton said. 'He did a great job of coming off handoffs, reading the pocket, rising up from the midrange. This is a defense that will give that [midrange shot] up — analytically, that's not the best shot — but I thought he did a great job of hunting that and getting downhill.'
And when he got downhill, he did what he does better than all but a few wing players in the NBA: hunt contact, drawing seven fouls in just 22 minutes of work and going 7-for-8 from the free-throw line — vital points in a series where Indiana has often struggled to consistently generate offense in the half-court.
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'That's kind of what he does: He's a scorer,' said Thunder guard Alex Caruso. 'We let him get to his fastball for the night, which is impact the game by scoring the basketball. Granted, he made a couple of tough ones, but we probably didn't make it tough on him to start initially.'
Coming up with a game this big on a stage this big — the youngest player to score 25 in a Finals game since Kawhi Leonard in 2014, the youngest player to score 25 off the bench in a Finals game since they started tracking starters and bench players in 1970 — had to feel particularly sweet for Mathurin, who missed all of Indiana's run to the 2024 Eastern Conference finals after suffering a torn labrum in his right shoulder about five weeks before the start of the playoffs, and who'd been counting the days until he could have his moment.
No, like, literally.
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'After he sustained the injury — it was either in February or early March — you can order these calendars that start on a specific day, and then they count days,' Carlisle recalled Wednesday. 'And so — I think it was Dr. [Neal] ElAttrache that did the surgery — there was a calendar sitting in our training room. And every day, he would come in and take one off, take one off. He was counting the days down to being cleared sometime in August, and then be able to begin training camp, begin 5-on-5 with our guys in September, and then be in training camp, really, with his eyes firmly set on an opportunity in the playoffs.'
'As much as this is a dream right now, I'm not trying to live in my dream,' said Mathurin. 'I'm trying to, like, live in the present and make sure the dream ends well, which means winning [the] next game and winning a championship.'
Joining Mathurin in wreaking havoc in the second unit: backup point guard McConnell, who became just the 16th player to score 10 points, dish 5 assists and snag 5 steals in a Finals game since the NBA started tracking steals in 1973 … and the first to ever do it off the bench.
Three of the five steals came in the first four minutes of the second quarter, a stretch that saw the Pacers rip off an 11-2 run to erase Oklahoma City's early lead and put themselves in position to actually play with the advantage for the first time in this series.
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'We didn't start the game the way we wanted to,' Haliburton said. 'I thought our first quarter was poor. But our second unit did a great job of giving us energy to start that second quarter, and we just rode the wave from there.'
Three of the five also came on inbounds passes, a longtime McConnell specialty, with two leading directly to Pacers scores — which, again, in a game that wound up being decided by just three possessions, were massive plays for Indiana, ratcheting up the intensity on the bench and in the stands to a hysterical degree.
'Yeah, I mean, I feel like that's my job, the job of people that come off the bench,' McConnell said in the Pacers' locker room after the game. '… It's the NBA Finals. We've got to bring that energy — all of us. Because if we don't, it's doing a disservice to these fans and this organization. We've got to continue to bring energy to the highest level.'
'When T.J. is playing with that type of energy — I mean, obviously, the crowd loves him,' Siakam said. 'So it's great for us, because every time he does something good, they go crazy.' (Haliburton joked about McConnell's, um, special connection with the Indiana fanbase: 'I call him the 'Great White Hope.'')
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Those momentum-swinging steals are also, in turn, massively deflating for Oklahoma City.
'Yeah, those plays hurt, especially because they're very controllable,' said NBA MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
'They sucked,' added Thunder forward Jalen Williams.
Mathurin's downhill aggressiveness, McConnell's mix of defensive playmaking and pedal-to-the-metal attacking, Obi Toppin's exceedingly athletic two-way contributions (which included a couple of slick passes in the second quarter) and what Carlisle praised as Ben Sheppard's 'absolute, full-capacity effort all the time' in teaming with Andrew Nembhard to guard Gilgeous-Alexander gave the Pacers exactly what they needed on Wednesday to bounce back in a big way from their Game 2 loss, get back on top in this best-of-seven series — and put Oklahoma City in an exceedingly uncomfortable position heading into Game 4 on Friday.
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Whether all of the Pacers' reserves can replicate that production remains to be seen. Given the array of options to whom Carlisle can turn, though, Indiana will enter Game 4 feeling pretty good about the chances that somebody, and possibly several somebodies, will come through with precisely what the team needs once again.
'That's the great thing about the Finals, great thing about basketball,' Haliburton said. 'When you have a team with this much depth, it can be anybody's night.'