Forsberg: Celtics' health is ‘vital' to championship run
How Celtics are using Pacers-Cavs ending to better prepare
Payton Pritchard explains how the Celtics learn from teams around the league to be better prepared for in-game scenariosHow Celtics are using Pacers-Cavs ending to better prepare originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston
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New York Times
an hour ago
- New York Times
The Pacers are showing who they really are — and that they're for real
INDIANAPOLIS — Their superstar has a crooked jump shot and disappears too often, stirring nonsensical chatter on the debate shows about whether he's even a superstar in the first place. 'I couldn't care less' was Tyrese Haliburton's response late Wednesday night, fresh off another sterling playoff performance that will quiet his critics for at least another 48 hours. Advertisement Their biggest spark stands 6-foot-1 but plays like he's 5-10. Speaking of jump shots, T.J. McConnell owns one that's even uglier. The 10-year veteran has probably lasted nine years longer in the league than anyone ever thought he would. He also happens to embody everything the Indiana Pacers are about. 'The great White hope,' Haliburton calls him. Their O.G. has been fighting a cold for days, couldn't buy a bucket for stretches Wednesday night and probably won't be able to practice with the team Thursday. No matter. Myles Turner made no mention of it. There wasn't a chance the longest-tenured Pacer was going to miss the first NBA Finals game the franchise has hosted in a quarter-century. This team can be both electrifying and exasperating, an endless fastbreak that's been known to fall asleep on defense a little too often (see: a 140-110 loss to the Spurs in January). They're stubborn about their style, refusing to slow the speed and find the perfect shot and protect possessions at all costs. The rotation isn't going to shrink — this team goes 10 deep whether it's a five-day road trip in February or the championship round in June. They're going to wear you down, with their pace and their depth and their grit. They're going to share the ball and stretch your defense. 'That's one of the things that attracted me to this place,' Pascal Siakam said. 'And since I got here, that's who we've been.' They're going to cripple your spirit, no matter the odds, whether it's a seven-point deficit to the Bucks with 35 seconds left in Round 1, a seven-point deficit to the Cavs with 44 seconds left in Round 2, a 14-point deficit to the Knicks with 2:41 left in the Eastern Conference finals or a 15-point deficit in the fourth quarter of Game 1 against the Thunder in the NBA Finals. This is who the Pacers are. Advertisement And this is where the Pacers are, 12 days into June: two wins from the franchise's first NBA championship. If their stunning Game 1 comeback last week spoke to this team's late-game guile — a recurring theme amid this magical playoff run — Wednesday's 116-107 victory in Game 3 revealed what the Pacers look like at their best. Dogged. Determined. And dominant when it matters most. 'This is how we gotta do it,' coach Rick Carlisle offered after his team jumped to a 2-1 lead in the series. 'We gotta do it as a team. And we gotta make it as hard as possible on them.' Carlisle's team is now 14-0 when they score 110 points or more in the postseason. They're 14-0 when the shoot 46 percent or better from the field. They're 14-0 when they make 40 field goals or more. They have a formula. It works. 'Hard things are hard' is a phrase Carlisle likes to lean on with his players. Over the last two years, he convinced his team this was how they had to play: full throttle, no brakes. It was difficult and demanding and maddening at times. But it's also changed the trajectory of a franchise that's on the doorstep of a title. 'Things that make sense aren't a hard sell for our guys,' the coach added. 'It's a difficult system, and it just requires a lot of sacrifice. But when you execute it the right way, whether it's two years ago in some game that doesn't seem very meaningful in mid-January or Game 3 of the finals, these guys see where important things are important. 'Our guys have made the investment. It's like a Greek marriage. It's a lot work.' That was the Pacers Wednesday night. They absorbed the Thunder's early punch, then kept swinging for three full quarters. OKC never had enough to respond and never found an answer. McConnell (10 points, five assists, five steals) was too much of a menace. Turner (five blocks) was too resilient. Haliburton (one rebound shy of a triple-double) was too damn good. Advertisement There was more, as there always is with this team. Siakam's 21 points. Obi Toppin's juice off the bench. (Indiana's reserves outscored Oklahoma City's 49-18.) Andrew Nembhard's stingy defense. Aaron Nesmith's big 3 late in the fourth. And Bennedict Mathurin — who spent last year's playoff run sidelined with a labrum injury, counting the days until he could return to the court— erupting for a game-high 27 off the bench. All night long, the Pacers met the moment. And for a city and state that's craved a championship run like this for years — decades, even — this team's arrived at the perfect time. Mathurin, the lone top-1o pick by the Pacers on this roster, said he's never heard the Fieldhouse as loud as it was Wednesday. The fans are hungry. The team keeps delivering. 'The state of Indiana is about basketball, and that was the first time I really felt it,' Mathurin said. 'As much as this is a dream right now, I'm not trying to (soak) in the present. I'm trying to make sure the dream ends well.' Reggie Miller sat courtside, next to another Indiana icon, Oscar Robertson. Edgerrin James was on hand. So was Caitlin Clark. And same as he did in the Knicks series, Pat McAfee revved the crowd into a frenzy late in the contest — his trademark profanity included. At that moment, it felt like the arena was about to explode. It wasn't just loud on Wednesday night; it was RCA Dome-loud. Hoosiers old enough to remember those days know what I'm talking about. 'They were everything we hoped for,' Carlisle said, a few days after challenging Pacers fans to be as boisterous as the Thunder fans had been in Oklahoma City. 'Especially in the fourth quarter. They just went up a few decibels.' This isn't your typical championship contender, led by an all-world talent picked at the top of the draft or lured to town via free agency. The small-market knocks have dogged the Pacers for years. This team was built the old-fashioned way, then made the climb from perennial also-ran into powerhouse. Indiana was 25th in the league in payroll last season. This year, they're 22nd. Advertisement More than anyone else on the roster, Haliburton hears it. The critics. The doubts. The nonbelievers. He's become somewhat of a lightning rod of late, praised one minute for his late-game heroics, then criticized the next when he has an off night. It comes with the territory. He's the face of the franchise, one that's worked its way into the spotlight. 'The commentary is what it is at this point,' he said late Wednesday, putting a bow on the nonsense before reminding the room what's really at stake. 'It doesn't matter,' he added. 'We're two wins from an NBA championship.' (Photo of Tyrese Haliburton and Reggie Miller:)
Indianapolis Star
an hour ago
- Indianapolis Star
How Pacers' Tyrese Haliburton shut out the noise and found a way to beat the Thunder
INDIANAPOLIS -- Pacers point guard Tyrese Haliburton knows what to expect from the online and television discourse every time he has a performance like he had in Game 2 of the NBA Finals -- when his scoring and field goal attempt numbers take a dip and he doesn't make the impact he wants to. During the regular season it's more of a local phenomenon, but once the postseason hit, the discourse became more national with every round. How is it possible someone capable of so much magic in a historically improbable late-game comeback such as Game 1 of this series when Haliburton hit a game-winning jumper with 0.3 seconds to go to be so quiet in games the Pacers lose. They say he's not aggressive enough or too inconsistent to be considered a superstar and wonder why the 2023-24 NBA assist leader hasn't figured out that he should just shoot more. The narratives are overly simplistic, but Haliburton knows at this point there's only so much he can do to change that. He admits that he is "chronically online" and has a better sense of the NBA and how it's covered than just about any other active player, but at this stage he's actively trying to avoid the social media that he usually drinks in. "I think the commentary is always going to be what it is, you know?" Haliburton said. "Most of the time, the talking heads on the major platforms, I couldn't care less. Honestly, like what do they really know about basketball?" Re-live the Pacers unbelievable run to the NBA Finals in IndyStar's commemorative book Haliburton is aware there's a correlation between his scoring and the Pacers' success. He averaged 21.2 points in wins in the regular season on 14.6 field goal attempts per game and 14.3 points per game on 12.4 field goal attempts in defeats. But he views his scoring less as a cause of the Pacers' wins and more of a connected effect. He scores more and the Pacers win more when he's getting two feet in the paint, and that happens when he's orchestrating the Pacers whirling, ball-movement oriented offense the way that he wants to. The wispy 6-5, 185-pounder who was raised on Magic Johnson highlight videos is neither physically nor mentally built to doggedly drive into the lane to pile up shots and draw fouls in an effort to score 30 or 40 points every night. But when he gets the offense spinning, he can put up big scoring and assist numbers by letting the game come to him. Usually when he doesn't score much, that's a sign of a deeper dysfunction in execution, and Haliburton looks to find that issue rather than focus on his field goal attempts. And in Game 3 he made the adjustments he needed to make. After scoring 17 points in Sunday's Game 2 with 12 of them coming in the fourth quarter after the Pacers had faded too far to come back, Haliburton dazzled in Game 3 with 22 points, 11 assists and nine rebounds to help lead the Pacers to a 116-107 win over the Thunder on Wednesday in their first NBA Finals home game since 2000. Twenty-five years to the day after the Pacers' Game 3 win over the Lakers in the 2000 Finals, they took a 2-1 lead in this NBA Finals with Game 4 coming up Friday at Gainbridge Fieldhouse. Haliburton didn't view the performance as a triumph of aggression or will but of an adjustment in mindset and strategy against a Thunder defense that he told ESPN he considers to be the best he's played against. In Game 2, Haliburton believed he allowed the Pacers' system of randomized movement to become too predictable and too predicated on high ball screens -- usually Haliburton's bread and butter, but an action that plays right into the hands of a swarming Thunder defense. In Game 3, he mixed up actions well enough to create space which was beneficial not only for him but everyone else on the Pacers' roster. Their 116 points were the most they've scored in a game this series, they shot a series-best 51.8% from the floor and scored 50 points in the paint after scoring just 34 in each of the first two games. "We did a great job of just playing off the pitch, off handoffs, screening, all those things," Haliburton said. "I thought we did a great job of -- this is a defense that you can't consistently give them the same look. If you try to hold the ball and call for screens, they crawl into you and pack the paint. It's not easy. It's really tough. That's why they are such a historical defense. You just have to continue to give them different looks as much as you can. I thought we did a great job of just playing and continuing to play random basketball. Against a team like this, there's not really play calls. You've just got to play." That's what Haliburton did and he let his own offense come to him as the game went along. He didn't take a shot for nearly six minutes to start the game and he missed his first field goal attempt, a 20-foot step-back pull-up jumper with 6:10 to go in the first quarter. But he followed that by driving past Thunder All-NBA second team defender Jalen Williams to the right side of the foul line and hitting a 16-foot floater over Thunder center Isaiah Hartenstein with 5:10 to play in the first quarter. Then he hit his first 3-pointer in first-team All-Defensive Team pick Luguentz Dort's face with 3:00 to go in the period and suddenly he had his rhythm established early. Haliburton put faith in his floater -- a weapon he's admittedly sometimes too reluctant to use -- hitting three mid-range shots in that fashion over top of charging big men. He scored two buckets at the rim -- one an impressive finish on a drive through contact and the other an easy two-handed fast-break dunk off a steal. He was 4 of 8 from 3-point range, hitting his most 3s since he made five in his 32-point, 15-assist, 12-rebound triple-double in the Pacers' win over the Knicks in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Finals. But he didn't just look for his own offense. He helped get fellow All-Star Pascal Siakam started early as Siakam scored the Pacers first six points en route to a 21-point night. Haliburton still got center Myles Turner involved with pick-and-roll and pick and pop actions even though the Pacers tried not to live off those as much. He made plays "off the pitch," using give-and-go actions with bigs operating near the top of the key with their back to the basket catching his passes and tossing them right back to him and that got Haliburton downhill momentum that he could use to either go to the rim or pass and it helped keep the Thunder from loading up their defense quickly. The Pacers managed 41 field goal attempts in the paint after taking just 27 in Game 2. "Terrific," Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said of Haliburton. "Look, every game you're going to have to make adjustments against this defense. There's just going to be different looks. You're going to have different high-level defenders on you. You're going to see some different coverage stuff. It's going to be constantly changing. So I thought his approach tonight was exactly what it needed to be, a combination of spatial awareness and aggression, and you know, a real good feel for aggression to score along with getting his teammates involved at the right times." Haliburton moves forward knowing that solving the Thunder defense for a game isn't the same as solving it for a series. Oklahoma City led the NBA in defensive rating and allowed the fewest paint points, and they'll find more ways to keep the ball away from the rim in Game 4. He also knows that there will be games when he's successfully bottled up or scores fewer points because he's more focused on creating for others. "I think there's going to be ebbs and flows," Haliburton said. "I'm never going to be, you know, super great and shoot so many shots every game consistently. There's going to be games where I don't and I've got to be able to find the right balance between the two. But I mean, I think experience is the best way I can learn from it. So seeing where I can be better is important through the first two games and just trying to be better today. You know, taking what the defense gives me, trying to play the right way and watch film and see where I can get better and be ready to go for Game 4." Haliburton has a lot of voices telling him he needs to shoot more. His personal trainer, Drew Hanlen, is particularly explicit about it, and Haliburton acknowledges that he sees plenty of examples of himself passing out on shots he should take and make in the course of a game. But part of that is a product of focus on making the textbook right play and keeping in mind the importance of involving his teammates. In turn, they trust his judgment. "Ty's got to do him," Siakam said. "That's what he's got to do, he's got to be himself every time he's out on the floor. He can impact the game in so many ways. So I'm really not worried about his scoring. I just know that he's going to make the right play. But when he's intentional about doing that every single play, I know something good is going to happen. So as long as he keeps doing that, we're going to be all right."
New York Times
an hour ago
- New York Times
Maybe the Pacers are just this good, plus a (scary) U.S. Open preview
The Pulse Newsletter 📣 | This is The Athletic's daily sports newsletter. Sign up here to receive The Pulse directly in your inbox. Good morning! Fact-check your dad today. Three games aren't enough to judge a series, but we have a pretty clear narrative already in these NBA Finals: While Oklahoma City may be a slightly better team by most metrics, there is no group more clutch than Indiana. Undoubtedly. The Pacers are up 2-1 in this series after a 116-107 win last night, and I'm still agape at what happened last night. Two reads: Our friends at BetMGM have Indiana at just +200 to win the series now. I might favor them at this point. This is just good basketball. Onward: The rough, the rough, the rough. Have you heard about the rough at Oakmont, site of this week's U.S. Open? Coverage on the ground suggests missing a fairway is akin to throwing a ball in the Mariana Trench. Bye bye, ball. The Open begins today, and golfers will start teeing off shortly. Let's try to stay in the fairway for this preview: It all sounds a little … chaotic, right? It will be entertaining, do not fret. But if you need some zen beforehand, just look at the grounds crew cutting the grass via an army of push mowers: Wait for the maintenance staff member at 23 seconds. Shout out to those getting Oakmont in mint condition. — U.S. Open (@usopengolf) June 9, 2025 Let's keep going: Dobbins addresses false Yankees claims Red Sox rookie Hunter Dobbins caused rancor last weekend when he told the Boston Herald he'd rather 'retire' than play for the Yankees — not just due to the rivalry, but because his father had been drafted by the Yanks twice and traded to the Diamondbacks. The thing is, per the New York Post, Dobbins' father never played for either New York or Arizona. Whoops. Dobbins seemed unfazed yesterday, saying he doesn't 'go and fact-check my dad.' It's all pretty funny. Read his explanation here. Advertisement More news 📫 Love The Pulse? Check out our other newsletters. Many things make me feel like we live in a simulation these days, but seeing the pope wearing a White Sox hat during his weekly general audience in Rome might be the new No. 1 in my simulation power rankings. That's all. Almost done: 📺 Golf: The U.S. Open at Oakmont 6:30 a.m. ET on USA and Just keep it on in the background all day. 📺 NHL: Oilers at Panthers 8 p.m. ET on TNT/Max It's difficult to ever dismiss this Edmonton team, but going down 3-1 in this series, the way Florida has played of late, would feel like a death knell. I just hope it's a closer one than Game 3. Get tickets to games like these here. Politics and sports can often be inexorably intertwined. A new investigation from The Athletic reveals the latest surprising intersection: the charter airline that flies sports teams across the country … and does deportation flights for ICE. Read it here. Fresh off the digital presses this morning: Andrew Marchand went inside the world of Pat McAfee, including his banishment of Adam Schefter from his show. Wild stuff in there. This year's MLB anonymous player poll is finally here. I love seeing these unvarnished opinions. No, I would also not want to face Chris Sale in a tough spot. Read all the answers here. As silly as it sounds for people making seven and eight figures per year, raising a family while playing Major League Baseball can be extremely difficult. The relief? Summertime. As a dad, I found this fascinating. The best women's soccer player you don't know is Evelyn Shores, who has only won a national title this year, made a $1 million goal and scored for the USWNT U-23 team. Get to know her before she becomes a superstar. NBA coaches have quickly gone from a sharp-dressed group of suits to a cadre of quarter-zipped dudes. Will the league ever go back? Most-clicked in the newsletter yesterday: Our story on the Bengals and their weird fight with first-round pick Shemar Stewart. Most-read on the website yesterday: Rustin Dodd's story on that Roger Federer commencement speech, again.
