Doyel: This series is absurd, and maybe over. It's no fluke. Pacers are better than Cavs

Indianapolis Star

12-05-2025

INDIANAPOLIS – Pacers guard Tyrese Haliburton is waving Cleveland's Max Strus to the bench, telling him to just go, but Strus isn't listening. Strus is complaining to officials about something or other, and soon he's getting whistled for a technical. The Pacers are leading by 31 points in the first half and Haliburton is rubbing it in, making the 'T' signal with his hands and then strutting to the foul line, where he's jawing with the Cleveland bench before hitting the technical free throw. Now Haliburton is talking some more to the Cleveland bench, then hitting a 3-pointer and waving three fingers their way.
The Pacers lead by 35 and it's only the second quarter and of course this is what happened Sunday night in Game 4 of their Eastern Conference semifinals. Of course the Pacers, after their Game 3 debacle of a loss, tied an NBA playoff record with a 41-point halftime lead before settling for a 129-109 victory that gives them a 3-1 lead — and a chance to finish it off Tuesday night at Rocket Arena.
Maybe it's in everyone's best interest that it ends Tuesday. How much more is anyone — the Cavaliers, the Pacers, fans, officials, you, me — supposed to take?
The theater of the absurd that is this 2025 NBA playoff series hit a crescendo, unless it was the nadir, when Cleveland star Donovan Mitchell injured himself doing absolutely nothing during halftime warmups. One minute he's on the perimeter, shooting, and the next he's hunched over and a Cleveland staffer is approaching him and Mitchell spends about 15 seconds doubled over in pain before limping to the locker room.
On social media, where the atmosphere is even uglier than this brutally violent series, people were deciding Mitchell had quit on his team. Cleveland coach Kenny Atkinson was saying Mitchell would have an MRI on his left ankle, but sure, why not: He quit!
Anything seems possible after four games of this bizarre series. Game 4 was perhaps the strangest game yet, 24 minutes of controlled violence and genuine nastiness, of punching and flopping, followed by 24 minutes of can this game please end?
Does Mitchell come back for Game 5 Tuesday night in Cleveland? He'd better, or this series could end that night. It could end Tuesday night anyway. The fourth-seeded Pacers have already shown they can beat Cleveland at Rocket Arena. Twice, in fact: Game 1, and Game 2.
Add this 20-point blowout, and the Pacers — yes, the Pacers — clearly seem to be the superior team. Feels a lot like the last series, doesn't it? The Pacers didn't like the Bucks and the Bucks didn't like the Pacers, same as we've seen in this series with Cleveland. The Bucks had injury issues (Dame Lillard), same as we've seen in this series with Cleveland (Darius Garland, Evan Mobley, De'Andre Hunter), but over time it didn't seem to matter: The Pacers were simply better than Milwaukee.
That's how this Eastern Conference semifinal feels:
The Pacers are simply better than Cleveland.
Hey there, Pacers coach Rick Carlisle was saying afterward, slow down.
'We haven't done anything yet,' Carlisle was cautioning afterward, then using his postgame news conference to send a message to his team.
'This game is now history,' he said. 'We know a big haymaker is coming Tuesday.'
And he said: 'We had a lot of guys who did a lot of good things, and now it's over.'
And he said: 'Our guys responded well, but like I said: It's over.'
He means Game 4. But you wonder about this series. Carlisle was disgusted by what he saw in Game 3, including some things he'd seen in the first two games, mainly this: Cleveland was outfighting the Pacers on the boards, creating 40 extra shots over the course of those three games, and Carlisle used the day off Saturday to send a message.
'Our film sessions are always pretty ugly after a loss,' Haliburton was saying after Game 4, noting Carlisle tends to start in on him first, and Carlisle made clear to reporters in his pregame comments his team needed to rebound better.
'We've got to do a better job on the boards — that's obvious,' Carlisle had said before the game. 'It's a thing where you've got to hit first.'
The Pacers hit first Sunday night. The final scorebook shows the Cavaliers with a 41-37 rebounding edge, but the final scorebook can tell lies. The Cavs made their hay on the glass in garbage time — Cleveland won the fourth quarter by 12, and the second half by 21 — but in the first half the Pacers outrebounded the Cavs 22-15.
Before the game Carlisle had said the Pacers needed to rebound better, and take care of the ball better. That, he said, would allow them to close the gap on the shot differential. Then comes the first half, when the Pacers dominated the glass and had 25 assists to just four turnovers, compared to three assists and 14 turnovers for Cleveland.
Result: That 41-point halftime lead.
It's almost like Rick Carlisle was onto something It's almost like he's a…
'Savant,' Haliburton said.
'Coach is a savant when it comes to adjustments,' is the full quote from Haliburton. 'We just follow his lead.'
Which brings me back to the idea, as Carlisle was saying, that 'it's over.'
Because if Game 4 wasn't a fluke — if Carlisle can get his team to rebound and protect the ball like it did in Game 4 — this series ends Tuesday in Cleveland.
Whatever happens Tuesday, whoever wins, it will be chippy. It will be personal. Those are Rick Carlisle's words, and no, he wasn't referring to me and Tyrese Haliburton! Although…
Look, this happened after Game 4. Haliburton, who didn't talk to reporters after Game 3 and was critiqued rather thoroughly for it by one person — fine, it was me — had some things to get off his chest Tuesday night.
'Oh good,' he said when he entered the postgame interview room and looked around and saw … something. 'What I wanted to see.'
What was he talking about? No idea. These were the next words out of his mouth:
'What's up guys. I'm Tyrese Haliburton. I'm here to do media. I hope that's worthwhile information. Let's get to it.'
Asked again about skipping interviews after Game 3 — not by me — Haliburton said the Pacers PR folks held him out. He suggested he'd have done it differently, if he had to do it all over again. He pointed out that someone who doesn't go to every game was the person who had the most to criticize about it. Pretty sure he meant me. But who knows?
'Mike (Preston) and the (PR) staff tried to protect me a little bit,' he said. 'Maybe I should have overruled it and come out here. I wasn't in the mood to speak.'
He kept going, and it got a little chippy — because he thinks the criticism was a little personal — and again, those had been Carlisle's words moments earlier to describe the playoffs in general, and this series in particular. And it did get chippy. It was personal.
Something personal definitely seems to be happening with Pacers guard Bennedict Mathurin and Cavs guard De'Andre Hunter, who were called for a double technical foul for talking during Game 3. That came after Mathurin blocked a Hunter dunk and looked at him dismissively as Hunter was on the ground with a thumb injury that would knock him out of Game 2.
Then came Sunday night, when Mathurin hit Hunter in the sternum with a closed fist. Hunter responded by walking him down and shoving him to the court. Myles Turner raced over and shoved Hunter. Mathurin was ejected, while Hunter and Turner received technicals.
That was just one of the incidents officials reviewed on the replay monitors. Cleveland's Max Strus and Indiana's Pascal Siakam banged shoulders early, with Strus going down. Each blamed the other. Officials studied the replay for about three minutes but couldn't decide. Later Strus received that technical for arguing, with Haliburton enjoying it right there in his face. Then Turner was called for an offensive foul on Strus, who reached as if he'd been shot in the face, which is interesting considering replay showed he was hit in the chest. Can someone flop from the neck up? Because Strus appeared to do that.
Then a stray hand from Darius Garland to Aaron Nesmith's face, combined with Strus' simultaneous shoulder check on a screen, sent Nesmith to the floor, after which Nesmith floored Cleveland's Sam Merrill with a hard foul on a layup that had Kenny Atkinson wanting referees to check the monitor for … something.
By then it didn't matter. The Pacers were leading by almost 40, and this game was over. Soon, Carlisle was looking ahead.
'You've got to try to know the things to ignore, and just stay in the moment and stay in the process,' he said. 'Playoff series are physical, they're chippy, they're personal. We've got to stay out of the weeds of things that take us away from what we do best.'
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.