We thought the Indiana Pacers were underdogs. But this team is a juggernaut
With each thrilling win, and with each step they take closer to achieving the first NBA title in franchise history, the Indiana Pacers are slowly testing our ability to consume and analyze the game of basketball.
For so long, we've been conditioned to look at champions and great teams a certain way, with a certain formula and infrastructure. There has to be at least one superstar. There has to be a second star, capable of reaching All-NBA levels. There has to be a supporting cast around two or three players capable of making big plays and big shots at the same time. Even the 2011 Dallas Mavericks, for all of their talk about equal opportunity glory, featured Dirk Nowitzki, and his 2011 playoff performance qualified as one of the best individual runs in the history of the league.
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Should the Pacers turn their current 2-1 NBA Finals lead over the Oklahoma City Thunder into a championship, they could be the most unique champion since the 2004 Detroit Pistons. And even that Pistons team had more star power, if we count the defensive brilliance of Ben Wallace and the all-around point guard artistry of Chauncey Billups. Those Pistons had four players make the All-Star team that season.
These Pacers aren't built around superstar talent, although Tyrese Haliburton and Pascal Siakam are better than many of us gave them credit for entering these playoffs. They are built around depth, versatility and shooting, and a legendary head coach figuratively running circles around his counterparts, one eye-opening series at a time. They are built around having a roster full of players useful in playoff situations — there is a difference between just putting players on the floor and putting players on the floor who can contribute in the playoffs. They are built around the tenacity and ability to wear teams down with their speed, all the while finding defensive stops when needed.
In five or 10 years, championship or not, this Pacers run will age well, because this is the new way to build a team in the new collective bargaining agreement era. The days of top-heavy rosters winning titles are gone. The Pacers and the Thunder proved that this season. The Boston Celtics proved that last season. The road to titles going forward is paved through having dynamic depth.
That being said, because we aren't used to the Pacers, we call them an underdog. This series has all but been labeled as David deploying his slingshot at Goliath. With the Pacers winning two of the first three games, the word 'plucky' has been thrown around with the same ferocity of Myles Turner throwing Chet Holmgren around in the waning stretches of Game 3.
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We need to stop. And we need to face reality.
The Oklahoma City Thunder are fully capable of rallying to win this series. They were a great team in the regular season with 68 wins. They proved themselves a great team in the postseason by running through the Western Conference, with the Denver Nuggets their lone speed bump.
But the results of this series shouldn't diminish that two things can be true: OKC is a great team, a basketball giant. And the Indiana Pacers are a great team, a basketball giant. We have to start thinking of this series as two phenomenal teams going at each other, and a series that has the potential to reach six or seven games. We have to stop thinking of this series as one great team against a team trying to pull off a gargantuan upset.
This isn't that.
This isn't Villanova trying to slay Georgetown in 1985.
This isn't Jim Valvano and the 1983 North Carolina State Wolfpack taking down the Houston Cougars.
Maybe the odds say so in Vegas. But, when you watch the Pacers, the narrative around them simply doesn't fit.
I can understand why things are talked about in this manner. Getting used to change takes time, especially in basketball circles. It took us a few years to figure out we were watching an all-time great in Stephen Curry.
And, frankly, the Pacers didn't give us much of a reason to pay attention in the first two months of the season. They were 10-15 in their first 25 games. That's usually a pretty decent sample, so, understandably, Indiana slipped off the radar, especially with the Cleveland Cavaliers' dominant regular season. But the Pacers have gone 54-22 since that start. They were 12-4 in the first three rounds of the playoffs. And nothing proves dominance more than dominating an entire conference during an entire postseason run.
The Pacers rounded into a great regular-season team. But they have become an absolutely elite playoff team. Haliburton and Siakam are All-Star level players who have been better in the postseason. Indiana checks every box when you look for a potential champion.
You need point-of-attack defenders to deal with the guard play the league has to offer: Andrew Nembhard is one of the best around at that.
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You need an elite wing defender who can effortlessly switch through a lineup: Aaron Nesmith has rounded into that, after a rough start to his NBA career with the Celtics.
A shooting big man unique enough to protect the rim is the dream: Turner is one of the prototypes.
You need shooting up and down the rotation: Other than T.J. McConnell, the Pacers don't put a subpar 3-point shooter on the floor. And even McConnell is unique in his ability to break the paint off the dribble.
Ideally, you need scoring off the bench. Bennedict Mathurin changed Wednesday night's Game 3 with 27 points. And Indiana's collective athleticism, which has jumped off the screen, even against an elite Oklahoma City team, is rarely discussed.
The Pacers were the best team in the Eastern Conference since the start of the year for good reason. The talent was always there, but they became a unit on both ends of the floor. They have stayed relatively healthy, and the confidence they gained from a run to the Eastern Conference finals a year ago has clearly translated to this current run. Offensively, they consistently create pace, create open shots and make the open shots they create. Defensively, they have been stingy and difficult to crack. And that's why they find themselves two wins away from an NBA title.
Whether they get there, they aren't an underdog. In retrospect, the 2011 Dallas team that current Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle took to the promised land wasn't. In real time, we should respect the Pacers, and the Thunder for that matter, a lot more than depicting Indiana as the little engine that could.
The Indiana Pacers are a juggernaut. And we should recognize them as such.
(Photo of Myles Turner: Maddie Meyer / Getty Images)
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