No More Doubting the Pacers

I am making a 6th post this week for the first time ever. Cheating a little cause I wrote like 3 sentences about Aaron Rodgers, something I'll be back to when there's more of a lull in the NBA schedule. Last night's finals game left me no choice but to post a quick reaction here though. How on earth did the Pacers do it again!? As I was watching it happen I was laughing to myself thinking there's no way they pull it off again right? Then of course they did and of course it was Haliburton with the game winner again. I don't even know of a player with this many playoff moments in his entire career let alone one playoff run. Anyway, lets get into it. 

OKC Dominates for 47 Minutes

 Honestly, I was bored watching this game for almost the entire 4 quarters. In the first half, the Pacers looked like they were playing out of control and nervous. They were making uncharacteristic turnovers, a lot of it was forced by the insane OKC defense but a lot of it was just sloppy play. We saw this in the Timberwolves series, if you stop and process for a second against OKC you best believe a defender is coming to swipe the ball, you have to make quick decisions without hesitating or else you're dead in the water against this defense. The Thunder didn't even wait to change their lineup, they immediately started with Chet at the 5 with Cason Wallace sliding into the starting lineup to replace Hartenstein. Starting with a 5 out lineup, Shai came out absolutely on fire. The Pacers strategy was to help off Lu Dort, who as I mentioned yesterday can be a streaky shooter, but yesterday he had it going knocking down 5/9 three point attempts, and doing it early too. This made it so Shai had all the space in the world to operate 1 on 1 and he was cooking. Getting to the rim and finishing through contact, stepping back and hitting mid range jumpers, pulling up from deep with a hand in his face, it didn't matter Shai was gonna score. Similar to the Minnesota series too whenever the Pacers would go on a mini run, Shai would calmly get to his spot and knockdown a jumper to nip it in the bud. By the 4th quarter, the biggest run the Pacers had all game was 6-0, which is saying a lot against a team with that much fire power. 

Defensively, Lu Dort was all over Haliburton for the entire game. You didn't feel Hali's impact at all for pretty much the entirety of this one. Dort wasn't just stopping Haliburton 1 on 1, he was doing a great job of denying him the ball entirely and forcing the Pacers to run their offense through other options. Similar to the Wolves series, when the Pacers went to the post, unless a shot went up right away the ball was stripped for a turnover and a fast break opportunity. It's crucial against this team that you get to your spot before you get the ball because if you take 1 second too long it's too late. At the 5, Chet didn't have a major impact with nobody to rove off of. Chet's one of the best help defenders in the NBA, but when you get him in a situation where he needs to actually guard his man, he's slightly vulnerable. Still though, with Shai dominating and Hali being locked down, the Thunder were fully in control of this game the entire way, until they weren't. 

How do They Keep Doing This?

 I mentioned above, OKC had Haliburton completely locked down. As a result, the Pacers went to Andrew Nembhard as their primary ball handler, and let me tell you, this guy is awesome. In the second half, Nembhard fouled Shai on a drive. Them being buddies from growing up in Canada basketball, Shai gave him a little playful shove after the foul. Nembhard made sure to brush Shai at the free throw line after in retaliation as Shai smirked. That's when I knew Nembhard was about to take this game personal. The first play I remember is Nembhard getting the ball calling for a pick, getting downhill, gets hacked by Caruso in the paint but strongly rises up through the contact to finish an and-1. In the dying minutes of the game with their hopes dwindling, Haliburton again was nowhere to be seen in the offense, so Nembhard was asked to create at the top of the floor. He takes a contested stepback 3 and nails it to cut the OKC lead to 1 point. This is a 29% three point shooter on minimal volume in the regular season, the balls it takes to attempt a contested step back with the game on the line in the finals is just insane. Then, with just over 30 seconds on the clock Nembhard was guarding Shai needing a stop to keep their hopes alive. He sticks with him as Shai rises up from the mid range and Shai misses the shot. I'll say that's a shot Shai can hit, but Nembhard's defense didn't make it easy that's for sure. 

The final play needs it's own paragraph. Something I didn't hear discussed as much as it should've is the Pacers opted not to call timeout with 8 seconds left. Usually I'd say that's crazy, but the way Lu Dort was guarding Haliburton I think Rick Carlisle wanted to get an opportunity with Hali cross matched onto someone else. Haliburton rushed down the floor and ended up with Cason Wallace on him. He danced, got to the midrange, rose up, and nailed a heavily contested shot with 0.3 seconds left to give the Pacers their first lead of the night. After disappearing for the entire game, Haliburton showed up in the last second and hit a game winner in his 4th straight series! I have never seen a clutch playoff run like the one Hali's on right now. I saw a stat that showed Tyrese Haliburton is now 6/7 in these playoffs in the last 90 seconds of a game when taking a shot to tie or take the lead. I saw the 1 he missed too, it was against the Knicks in overtime and Obi Toppin got the offensive rebound and put back. We call that a Kobe assist. Nobody gave the Pacers a chance in this series, but I'm not sure why. They've now proven it for the 4th straight series, they don't quit on games and are always going to keep pushing for a comeback. They stole game 1 on the road after being down for 47.7 minutes and now we've got a series.

And that's that! I love when the game is so exciting I can't help but write about it. I certainly missed a lot of aspects of this one, but I hope I captured the insanity of this Pacers run so far. I feel bad for Shai who was incredible in this one, he deserves his flowers. Will be interesting to see how OKC responds on Sunday!