The Benedict Mathurin Game

 I am getting a sick thrill watching this NBA finals. On one hand I love Shai and want to see him succeed, on the other I've enjoyed these Pacers all playoffs and they've got a couple of Canadians worth cheering for on their squad as well. When the series was decided, the NBA universe at large predicted OKC in 5. Nobody gave Indiana a sliver of a chance. I wrote in my series preview that I thought this treatment was unfair. I still picked OKC but I picked them in a nice competitive 6 game series. A competitive series we now have, to the shock of everyone else! The Pacers took game 3 fairly convincingly to take a 2-1 series lead giving me something easy to write about today. Also before I get into it, shout out to Nav Bhatia who was sitting courtside at the baseline last night. Nobody supports Canadian basketball as much as Nav Bhatia, I love to see it. 

Whole Team Effort

I titled this post "The Benedict Mathurin Game" but that's unfair to the rest of the Pacers. This was a complete team effort from Indiana. You can go up and down the roster and everyone who played tonight contributed something to the game. TJ McConnell came off the bench and was electric, getting to the paint on every possession, being a total pest on defense, and just out hustling every player on the court. He had 2 plays where he stole the inbound pass after a made basket, that's some BS that happens on 2K not in the NBA finals. Andrew Nembhard made Shai's life difficult all game and came through when his number was called to knock down some clutch shots. Myles Turner was a force on defense. If I haven't said it on this blog I've definitely said it in group chats, I've always thought of Turner as a fake good defender. Today he proved me wrong. The play that stands out to me was Chet Holmgren had the ball at the 3 point line trying to get back into the game. He puts up a shot that gets blocked by Turner, Chet gets the rebound. Chet drives at Turner into the paint and gets blocked again. Absolutely embarrassing, exactly what you want if you're looking to get into their heads. Haliburton was unreal with his floater game working. I am not smart enough to understand the schemes that Rick Carlisle ran to get Hali more open looks in this one, but you could see he was getting free for more jump shots and controlling the flow of this one more than any other game this series. Obi Toppin was instrumental in the second half popping off for putbacks and hustle plays all over the court. Then there was Benedict Mathurin who straight up went shot for shot with Shai last night scoring 27 points in 22 minutes on 9/12 shooting from the floor. He's such a spark plug when he's on, I love players like that. On any given night you could tune into a Pacers game and think Mathurin is the best player in basketball, but it's only once every 10 games or so. He picked the right time to have one of those games that's for sure. Overall, the Pacers spend the entire game playing at 100mph and dare you to catch up to them. We already saw in their other series that their conditioning gasses teams who try and match this energy, and we just saw it again here. 

OKC Side of Things

Despite the Pacers entire team playing on a string for the full game, OKC went into the 4th quarter with a 5 point lead. Nembhard and Nesmith were making it really difficult for Shai to get into the paint, but he was still scoring at will by just stopping on a dime and pulling up from mid range. JDub was awesome on both ends of the floor hitting tough buckets, driving all the way to the paint and showing off his play making skills. Chet had it going early on producing on cuts, hitting shots and being a strong deterrent at the rim on defense. A hilarious comp I heard on the Hello and Welcome podcast was Chet Holmgren is like you're getting a good Chris Boucher night every night. It's so funny because if you don't watch the Raptors you'd think that's slander, but if you do you know that once every 20 games or so Chris Boucher has an out of body experience and becomes the best player on both ends of the court. Even with these 3 guys going early, the Pacers were able to hang around because OKC and their elite defense couldn't get any stops. This was my prevailing thought going into the series as well. OKC may have a great defense, but the Pacers don't play through any 1 guy, it's so hard to just zero in on someone and shut them down completely. On top of that, OKC was sloppy with the ball and it really cost them. Similar to how OKC kills teams on fast breaks with turnovers, the Pacers have the exact same advantage and have done so all playoffs. OKC had too many careless passes that were picked off by the Pacers and converted for points and you just can't win doing that against a team this fast. By the end of the game, OKC looked exhausted, but the Pacers were still going at full steam. The minutes leader for the Pacers last night was Haliburton with 36, nobody else played more than 33. I can't remember the last finals game that featured a bench that could come in and give their team a spark allowing their stars to rest as much as Indiana's did. On OKC's side, their bench gave them nothing. They had 18 points off the bench and 6 of those were 2 threes hit in 4 minutes of Isaiah Joe, not exactly buying his team much time. The Pacers had 49 bench points. 49-18 off the bench is the difference in this game, and not at all unsustainable for the Pacers. 

What Now?

Now we've got a series! I still think OKC has this one. The Pacers got a lot of contributions from inconsistent contributors last night and the Thunder got nothing from their inconsistent contributors. Shai was just good not great in this one and I expect that to be different next game as well. Stealing game 1 and then winning game 3 is huge for the Pacers though. It would not surprise me now if we see a game 7 in this series which is not what anyone was expecting. As a Canadian basketball fan, this is a dream come true. In all 3 of the games I could've spent an entire post praising a different Canadian player and that's so cool. As a neutral basketball fan this is also awesome. We're sneakily getting one of the best finals ever. Because it's 2 small market teams, the media is not going to hype it up as such, but 2/3 games have been thrillers and so far the series has gone against what everyone predicted. I can't wait for game 4 on Friday, which is now an absolute must win for the Thunder.