OKLAHOMA CITY—The Indiana Pacers face off against the Oklahoma City Thunder tonight in Game 1 of the NBA Finals. 4 wins away from their first NBA Championship with an historically great team with the MVP standing in their way as the final boss battle.
“We know this is a great team. If we were to win a championship, I don’t want to win any other way,” Tyrese Haliburton said of the challenge of facing OKC. “I don’t want to go around or over. I want to go through. You want to go through the best team, the best challenge. This is the best challenge. This is the best team in the NBA. It’s been the best team in the NBA all year. They’re well-coached. They just do everything so well.
“There’s no shortcuts to beating this team. We know the odds are stacked against us. It is what it is. We want to be here. We want to play against the best. This is the best. We look forward to the challenge as a group.”
The Thunder defense doesn’t have obvious flawed defenders to attack like each of the Pacers first three opponents which were relentlessly hunted. This is one of the league’s best defenses in history.
“They’re super physical — they’re annoying,” Obi Toppin said with a smile about the Thunder defense. “But they’re young. They’re young and they’re just in your … mess. Like, I don’t want to say S-H, but y’all know what I want to say. They’re just in you, the whole game. It’s annoying.”
While the Pacers are massive underdogs, they feel like that’s been the case throughout the playoffs with many experts picking against them every step of the way against the Bucks, Knicks, and especially the Cavaliers. Just three of 23 ESPN experts picked the Pacers to win this series against the Thunder with 11 having the Pacers with just one win.
“I don’t think we expect anyone to pick us,” All-Star forward Pascal Siakam said at NBA Finals Media Day. “It’s been that way the whole playoffs, the whole season. I think nothing for us changes. We just continue to be ourselves, focus on us. It’s always been us against everyone.”
While the Thunder had the league’s best record, the Pacers have been second in the NBA since December 13th including the playoffs. Once they recovered from their poor start fueled by Haliburton’s poor start to the year, injuries to all their best point of attack defenders, and got a backup center to replace their pair that tore their Achilles’ in the first week of the season, they’ve been one of the league’s best teams and proved they were the cream of the crop in the Eastern Conference by going 12-4 in the first three rounds.
Still, the doubts persist for this group from those outside the locker room, thinking the team has no chance to make the upset.
“We’ve all been doubted at some point in time in our lives,” Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle said. “You’ve got to look in the mirror and you’ve got face the doubts and you decide how you’re going to go forward. Are you going to fight through and find a way or are you going to find an excuse? Our team is a bunch of guys that have found a way in many, many different kinds of situations.”
There’s certainly a reason the Pacers are seen as highly unlikely to upset the Thunder. As iPacers contributor Kyle Taylor pointed out, this is the largest net rating difference in an NBA Finals matchup in history per data from Cleaning the Glass.
The biggest upset here is the Dallas Mavericks over the Miami Heat in 2011 when Rick Carlisle’s squad with Dirk Nowitzki beat the Heatles in their first season together. It’s also many Pacers’ players most memorable Finals from when they were kids. Myles Turner, who was born and raised in the Dallas area, remembers how much it meant to the city as he cheered for Dirk and the Mavs. Tyrese Haliburton and Aaron Nesmith were both rooting for LeBron James to win his first championship at the time.
“That’s the first one where I really sat down and truthfully remember. I hated Rick for that,” Haliburton said after practice on Tuesday. “The fact that I’m here with him is pretty full circle so it’s exciting.”
Nesmith said that Carlisle has used that Mavericks run to tell stories to the team and draw similarities between the two groups at times. The Pacers have reached a point where they no longer have a ton of experience to draw from and are relying on those that have been here to guide and prepare them for the highest stakes games of most of their careers.
“He’s been through a lot of playoff series, a lot of Finals series,” Ben Sheppard said of Carlisle’s experience. “So what he brings advice-wise, what he’s been able to go through helps us out a lot. Yeah, it’s definitely encouraging to have someone leading our ship who has been through what we’re going through.”
Carlisle has now been a part of six NBA Finals teams. Three with the Celtics as a player, winning one championship, and now three as a coach, winning with the Mavs in 2011 and losing as an assistant with the Pacers in 2000.
“This is the greatest stage in sports,” said Carlisle of the Finals after practice Tuesday. “This will be the greatest opportunity. It’s also the greatest challenge because we’re going against an opponent on metrics that has really changed the game.”
Outside of their coach, they have two players with championships on their roster: Pascal Siakam with the 2019 Toronto Raptors as the rising star next to Kawhi Leonard and Thomas Bryant, who rarely played, with the Denver Nuggets. Siakam has been open throughout the playoff run about keeping the Pacers focused on their next task at hand on his quest for another championship, knowing how difficult it is to get back to this level after thinking he would just be right back after winning in his third season.
“He’s a constant presence in our locker room,” Nesmith said of the Pacers All-Star forward. “He’s done a good job of keeping us all level-headed and our eyes on the prize.”
“Just his leadership means so much to us,” Sheppard said of the Eastern Conference Finals MVP. “Just having a guy like that in our locker room who has been in these situations helps us out a lot. He’s been more vocal this year than last year. Everything he says helps us, is positive for us. Super grateful to have him.”
As Siakam’s grown as a vocal leader with a group eager to learn from him, there’s many lessons that he’s learned from the Raptors run that he believes can help the Pacers as they try to finish their run the same way.
“I think one of the things for me I learned just from those guys is like no matter what, we just always felt like we had a chance,” Siakam said. “When we got down, I mean, we were down 0-2 against Milwaukee, we’ve had series where it was really tough. We had to go in Philly and win games on the road. I think all these experiences definitely stays with me. Trying to, like, transfer that spirit to my team in terms of being down or whatever in a game, or whatever happens, just always playing the right way and understanding that you always have a chance. That’s something I’d probably say I learned from those guys, for sure.”
That has certainly showed up for the Pacers this postseason with their three miraculous comebacks with one happening in every round. They’ve never stopped playing until the final buzzer with their confidence only building that they can achieve the impossible with each successive comeback. While the Pacers keep believing, they’ll keep being fueled by their doubters.
“It will never stop.” Haliburton said when asked if he’s stopped being fueled by people that doubt him or the team. “I think that’s part of my drive. Obviously, I want to be the best. I want to be great. I want to squeeze every ounce of God-given ability that I have to be the best player I can be. But any doubt is always good for me. I love to hear that stuff. I’ll continue to tell you guys in certain moments that it doesn’t matter what people say. But it matters and I enjoy it.”
Let the basketball begin.
-#31-
iPacers - Indiana Pacers News 