Maybe the real miracle amid the Indiana Pacers’ charmed run to the NBA Finals was that, prior to Thursday’s do-or-die Game 6 at home, we hadn’t caught an actual glimpse of the dark arts that have clearly guided the team through every conceivable obstacle. That was, until ABC cameras in a pregame huddle caught Pascal Siakam mid-séance, his eyes searching the beyond. With every buzzer-beater, with every impossible come-from-behind victory, murmurs of the occult grew among opposing fan bases who were in disbelief that a team could be this much greater than the sum of its parts. It’s been the dominant meme of the Pacers’ run, a way of explaining the inexplicable. A way to chalk it up to forces beyond comprehension. But there on the screen, we saw the whites of Siakam’s eyes. We saw proof of … something. Life imitating art imitating life, perhaps.
Whatever was communicated, whatever was summoned, it worked. In the most important game in franchise history, the Pacers conjured a different kind of miracle than the ones that have become their trademark over the past two months. This was utter domination, a 108-91 blowout win against an Oklahoma City Thunder team that had grand designs of coronation flash before their eyes in the opening minutes as they took a 10-2 lead. But then, a master class in Indiana basketball took hold and never quite let up. In 2016, LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers defied the odds, winning Game 7 of the NBA Finals against the greatest regular-season team of all time; exactly nine years later, the Indiana Pacers have forced a Game 7 of their own, in the best Finals series since.
On Thursday night, all eyes were on Tyrese Haliburton, who entered Game 6 as a game-time decision due to a calf strain that doctors reportedly deemed a multi-week injury. Haliburton received round-the-clock treatment on his calf, which, by his own admission, would have sidelined him if this were still the regular season. Massages, needles, hyperbaric chambers—all to give him a fighting chance at making an impact on the most important game of his life. Flashbacks to 2019, of Kevin Durant tearing his Achilles after playing through a calf strain in the Finals, were unavoidable—Haliburton recognized the risk involved in playing Game 6. But he had to give it a try.
In some ways, the Pacers have always been prepared for this particular challenge. It’s never just been Haliburton with the ball in his hands for this team—that’s not how he operates, and it’s not necessarily what powers the Pacers’ magic. Siakam has been one of the most versatile offensive players in basketball for more than half a decade. (His poster dunk off a no-look Haliburton pass damn well might be the highlight of the series.) T.J. McConnell is endlessly pushing the tempo and has been the most effective player on the team at getting into the paint against an OKC squad that has committed to locking that part of the court away. Andrew Nembhard understands what it means to step up; he gave the eventual champion Boston Celtics all they could handle last season in the Eastern Conference finals as the de facto lead guard for the Pacers when Haliburton missed the final two games with a hamstring injury.
Under those presages, even in obvious discomfort, Haliburton operated on instinct, reverting to a past form: the connective off-ball weirdo who could create plays for others in unconventional ways without taking up much space. Haliburton’s strategy given his mobility concerns? Making synaptic, split-second decisions, putting the ball on the floor as sparingly as possible. On Thursday night, he was simply the basketball’s conduit, an ambient force redirecting it where it needed to go. Never mind that Haliburton has been an elite catch-and-shoot threat from deep his entire career, seamlessly shifting between roles as initiator and release valve on any given possession. Haliburton knows how to galvanize his team, even when compromised. (Hali was a game-high plus-25 in just under 23 minutes of play.) His two first-half steals were simply a matter of hustle, as he jumped into passing lanes and dislodged the ball from the blind side. Teams take on the ethos of their leader; in Game 6, that meant running a perfect fast break in which four players touched the ball without a single dribble between them:
It was clear from the onset that the Thunder were keen to involve Haliburton on defense, putting him in various guard-guard screening actions, but the Pacers knew the objective at hand and busted their asses with help and recoveries. The ghosts that the Thunder had their opponents seeing all season were suddenly redirected at them. (Thanks, Pascal!) Lost in the flurry of the Pacers’ egalitarian offensive attack is how reliant the Thunder have become on their two main stars to take them home against a defense that has been every bit OKC’s equal. Indiana neutralized the bulk of the Thunder roster on Thursday, placing the onus entirely upon Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jalen Williams to create for themselves and offset another catastrophically bad shooting night from the rest of the team. But the Pacers play the numbers. Even with a compromised Haliburton, the Pacers move quickly. There are too many possessions for only two players to cover by themselves. More than ever, Gilgeous-Alexander had no answer to the ball pressure thrown at him all game—he committed just two fewer turnovers (eight) than the Pacers had all game (10).
The Indiana crowd played its part, too. At the podium after the game, Pacers coach Rick Carlisle noted that Thursday was the loudest he’d ever heard Gainbridge Fieldhouse get across his two stints in Indiana. “T.J.!” chants rained down when McConnell entered the game halfway through the third quarter. They love the man. Absolutely adore him. He is a spin doctor with the shooting range of an 8-year-old. He is a flush-faced chimera, combining Steve Nash’s live dribble, digging catacombs along the baseline; Shaun Livingston’s 2016 NBA Finals Game 1 performance that will forever be only one YouTube query away; and Peyton Hillis’s downhill insistence, before the Madden curse felled him in 2011. McConnell is the kind of folk hero people build altars for. If there are any remnant Pacers fans who still ponder an alternate timeline in which the franchise drafted Steve Alford over Reggie Miller, well, relinquish that fantasy. It no longer serves you. Hoosier god? McConnell is. McConnell is your god now.
This is who the Pacers are, and they’ve shown us over and over again. They invite miracles by remaining true to the chaos that permeates their actions on both ends of the floor. But there is a method in the madness, a consistency in the unpredictable. They’ve stayed true to themselves long enough to introduce moments of fracture and indecision and staleness in the best team in basketball. There’s no guidance when random rules. We’d grown accustomed to seeing the Pacers claw their way back from certain defeat, not recognizing the possibility of their having a blowout win. But it’s Indiana that’s most consistently dictated the terms of this series. There’s nothing left but one final bout in OKC. Perhaps there’s one more miracle in store in this matchup that has been closer than anyone could have ever predicted. Everything is on the table; everything is on the line. And if the Pacers’ entire run has been any indication, we won’t be able to call it until the final frame.
