Earlier this week, Mark Daigneault was asked to reflect on Rick Carlisle’s staying power as one of the NBA’s most resilient and adaptable head coaches. “His teams play a clear identity [and] stay in character through all the ups and downs,” Daigneault said. “That identity has changed over the years, based on his teams, the league trends. But his teams are always in character.”
That last sentence rang painfully true for Daigneault’s Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 1 of the NBA Finals. Even after the Indiana Pacers committed a mind-boggling 19 first-half turnovers that are irreconcilable with their on-court personality, they never stopped playing or looking like the Indiana Pacers. It’s one of their more potent special powers: an unbreakable bond with their style of play. A level of trust that’s allergic to self-doubt.
This is, somehow, some way, their personality. In situations that would sink pretty much every other team that’s ever existed, or at least shake their bedrock principles and compel them to splinter, the Pacers thrive. Thursday night’s win was their fifth that came after trailing by at least 15 points, which is the most any playoff team has had in the play-by-play era. During this historic run, they’re now 8-1 in “clutch” games.
“I think as a group, like, we never think the game is over. Ever, honestly speaking. Ever. That never creeps in,” said Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton, who won it with his fourth go-ahead or game-tying shot in the fourth quarter or overtime of these playoffs—the most in a postseason since 1998. “This group never gives up. We never believe that the game is over until it hits zero, and that's just the God’s honest truth. That's just the confidence that we have as a group, and I think that's a big reason why this is going on.”
More on Game 1
The Pacers never deviate from their own game plan. They don’t stop running. They don’t stop generating good looks behind the 3-point line. They don’t stop sharing the ball, moving their bodies, setting screens, sprinting off dribble handoffs, and, as they’ve done for most of this season, executing it all at light speed without inflicting any avoidable harm on themselves. Their steadfast consistency applies to defense, too. They don’t stop pressuring the ball full court, hounding ball handlers, and making the offense (even Oklahoma City) attack a little sooner than it might want to. “This is all about keeping poise and at the same time having a high level of aggression,” Carlisle said after the game. “And those two forces fly in the face of each other a bit.”
Down double digits after two quarters, Indiana course corrected at halftime. “There were different areas,” Carlisle said. “I mean, they were getting to the rim a lot in the first half. The turnovers were the first thing that we talked about. It seemed like we were doing a good job on the boards, but they had [19] more shots than we did in the first half.”
Things started to turn around in the second: Indy committed just five turnovers, and four of them resulted in a dead ball, limiting OKC’s opportunities to capitalize in the open floor. (Here’s a clip of every point the Thunder generated from turnovers in the second half.) “I feel like you know that they're gonna pressure you, but you still get … not surprised … but it sets you back on your heels a little bit,” Pacers guard T.J. McConnell said. “How much they pressure you, force you to drive and speed up, and just make live-ball turnovers really hurt you.”
Some of the comeback came from Indiana’s refusal to slow things down and intentionally remove chaos from the equation. Doing so would’ve been antithetical to Carlisle’s vision. Instead, the Pacers simply became more aware of Oklahoma City’s swarm as the game went on. They were stronger with the ball, didn’t try to thread the needle with passes, and made even firmer decisions on drives into a crowd:
They pushed after made baskets and took quick shots that penalized Oklahoma City’s own aggression:
Here’s McConnell crossing half court with 21 seconds on the shot clock after Isaiah Joe drilled a 3. Everything about this play is fast and with purpose. Ben Sheppard fakes like he’s going to set a step-up screen along the sideline for McConnell, but then he decides to relocate on the opposite wing instead, momentarily misleading Cason Wallace and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander just enough to let him get a step past SGA and draw Isaiah Hartenstein’s help off Thomas Bryant (a.k.a. Ray Allen 3.0) in the weakside corner:
Going at SGA was a theme in Game 1 that worked well enough that the Thunder should expect more of it in Game 2. Near the end of the third quarter, Gilgeous-Alexander’s man (Bennedict Mathurin) went up to set a screen for McConnell. In a rare miscommunication, Alex Caruso tried to pre-switch and keep SGA out of the play, but both players went with Mathurin and left Pascal Siakam wide open in the strongside corner. The Pacers made them pay:
Here’s another example: Moments after SGA hit a pull-up jumper, Indiana raced up the court to exploit Obi Toppin’s obvious mismatch against Joe. Not every team in a spot like this would be so dedicated to finding the easiest bucket on the map. Indiana usually is, and it paid off more than once. “We just go out there and always do what we do,” said Toppin (whose five 3-pointers were one shy of the six he made in the last two rounds combined).
In the first half, the Pacers didn’t give up on stuff that wasn’t executed with enough precision, either. When the Thunder kept switching Haliburton pick-and-rolls that involved a Thunder big, he didn’t take the bait and go one-on-one. In the play below, for example, Haliburton found an angle and fed Myles Turner, who made the play possible by ducking in, getting low enough to create a target, and sealing off Lu Dort:
When asked what felt sustainable about the Pacers’ performance going into Game 2, Pacers guard Aaron Nesmith cited their ability to take care of the ball while still getting into the actions they wanted to. He was also one of several Pacers who credited Andrew Nembhard’s aggression on both ends. “I thought Andrew really changed the game for us when he was very definitive about getting downhill and to the rim and just playing his game,” Nesmith told The Ringer. “I thought he kind of changed the game's trajectory.”
Nembhard’s aggression partly explains why Daigneault decided to take Chet Holmgren (who was very bad in Game 1) out with 3:23 left and close the game small. Carlisle answered by subbing Toppin in for Turner.
Not everything is decided by tactics, though. Sometimes a guy just makes Herculean stuff happen even against elite individual defenders who are prepped and ready for what’s coming at them. Before the game, Daigneault was asked about his team’s penchant for fouling and went out of his way to mention something about Nembhard that his own defense needed to be aware of. “A lot of it for us is learning which ones we don't want to give. A guy gathers the ball, we've got them about to take a tough shot. Nembhard is good at that; he knows how to get those calls. He deserves the calls.” And then, on one of the bigger-momentum plays of the entire game, they let him have it anyway.
The game was teetering in the fourth quarter, and OKC had just mounted its largest lead. Caruso was draped all over Nembhard, and two OKC defenders involved in the initial stagger pick-and-roll were staying home. Nembhard fought through OKC’s physicality, made the layup, and got the call:
How much of all this is sustainable? Game 1s are typically strange entryways into lengthy, complicated series—especially in the Finals. Weird stuff happens. Turner banked in a critical side-step 3. Siakam was awarded an extra free throw after a lane violation. The Thunder finished 23-for-54 in the paint (which is basically impossible?). All of it was bizarre—which is to say, all of it perfectly reflects the Pacers’ run.
“This game, if you look at all the numbers, it's not the recipe to win,” said Haliburton, who admitted afterward that he’d let his nerves affect him early on. “We can't turn the ball over that much. We have to do a better job of being in gaps, rebounding, all over the floor. But come May and June, it doesn't matter how you get them; just get them. We'll take it.”
There was plenty of weirdness across the board. The Thunder started Wallace over Hartenstein and never played Holmgren with another big man. The undersized Indiana team took advantage by grabbing 17 more rebounds. Joe and Ajay Mitchell combined to (strangely) play 15 minutes. And the Pacers finished a scintillating 10-for-16 on corner 3s—a ludicrous number inside a key battleground in the series!
Indiana controlled what it could. Its excellent transition defense showed up in a major way, allowing just 11 fast-break points off 14 Thunder steals. Nembhard did a great job of hounding Gilgeous-Alexander and forcing a bunch of tough shots off the bounce while also making help rotations that showed why he’s one of the most effective off-ball defenders in the entire league, height and position be damned. “If there wasn't the 65-game rule, he's an All-Defensive guy, plain and simple,” Haliburton said.
In Game 1, the Pacers made plenty of errors, stacking one poor decision on top of the next. But they also never let go of the rope. To go up 1-0 and shock Oklahoma City’s impossibly loud home crowd, Indiana embraced inconvenience, disregarded time and score, and rediscovered the persistent methodology that’s carried it this far, three wins shy of its first championship in franchise history.
“They went up 15, and we just said, ‘Hey, let's just keep chipping away at the rock,’ you know?” Carlisle said. “Got to keep pounding the rock and just chip away and hang in.”
It’s everything his opponents should expect. The last time a team successfully erased a 15-point fourth-quarter deficit in the NBA Finals was in 2011. Their coach? Rick Carlisle.
