The sport plan was the plain one. Simply chip away, the Indiana Pacers mentioned, as a result of there was no different choice that might have made any sense at that time.
They had been down by 15 with 9:42 remaining. They had been turning the ball over about as soon as each three possessions, couldn’t cease Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and had the Oklahoma Metropolis crowd in a deafening fury.
“We simply mentioned, ‘Hey, let’s simply hold chipping away on the rock,‘” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle mentioned. “Bought to maintain pounding the rock and simply chip away and grasp in.”
With 0.3 seconds left, there was no extra rock left to pound.
Not for Sport 1, anyway. Tyrese Haliburton scored with that a lot time left, and the Pacers surprised the Oklahoma City Thunder 111-110 within the opener of this yr’s NBA Finals on Thursday night time.
A glance contained in the comeback:
The run
The Pacers outscored the Thunder 32-16 in that ultimate 9:42, with solely six gamers getting used for these ultimate minutes and all of them figuring into the scoring column.
Obi Toppin took two pictures. Each had been 3-pointers. Each linked.
Myles Turner and Andrew Nembhard every scored eight factors to guide Indiana throughout the flurry. Aaron Nesmith led the Pacers with 4 rebounds in that stretch. And Haliburton supplied the exclamation level with the jumper on the finish.
“I’ve labored my total life to get to this stage, so there’s no holding again,” Turner mentioned.
The collapse
The Pacers gained Sport 1 of the 2025 NBA Finals. (Photograph by Matthew Stockman/Getty Pictures)
The Thunder shot 4 for 16 in that closing stretch. Gilgeous-Alexander was 2 for 4; everybody else on the Thunder mixed to shoot 2 for 12. The MVP had 10 factors; everybody else on the Thunder mixed for six.
The explanations for all that?
“A little bit little bit of all the things,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault mentioned. “They made some performs. On a few of these performs they made some pictures. They bought a pair that you simply want you’d get again. We had bonus fouls, which had been pricey. Then offensively we didn’t transfer the scoreboard in addition to we may have. So that you simply add all that up and that’s the way you get that form of comeback.”
The reactions
There was no choke signal from Haliburton, no celebratory dance, only a bunch of hugs with teammates and an enormous hug along with his father John Haliburton within the hallway close to the Pacers’ locker room afterward.
The Pacers, coach Rick Carlisle mentioned, haven’t engaged in a ton of raucous postgame victory laps throughout this playoff run.
“That is going to be an extended journey and so much happening,” Carlisle mentioned. “So, we’re simply going to need to hold our eye on the ball and hold specializing in each other.”
The large performs
Right here had been among the key moments:
— Carlisle subbed in 5 new gamers — Haliburton, Nembhard, Nesmith, Toppin and Turner — with 9:42 left and Indiana trailing 94-79.
— Turner hits a 3-pointer with 7:47 left, reducing the result in 96-88 and forcing an OKC time-out.
— Toppin and Turner made 3-pointers on consecutive possessions (Turner maintaining the second alive with an offensive rebound) to get Indiana inside 98-94 with 6:16 left.
— Gilgeous-Alexander’s two free throws with 2:52 left pushed the Thunder result in 108-99. Nesmith and Nembhard linked on back-to-back 3s, and Indiana was inside thee with 1:59 left.
— The Pacers bought a cease with 11 seconds left and didn’t name time, having taken benefit of a problem stoppage 11 seconds earlier to map out eventualities. The clock saved working and Haliburton hit the winner with 0.3 seconds left.
The ultimate phrase
“I don’t know what you say about it however I do know that this group is a resilient group and we don’t hand over till it’s 0.0 on the clock.” — Haliburton.
Reporting by The Related Press.
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