NBA Finals: Pacers feeling like a group of future after pulling off yet one more basketball miracle

Coming into Sport 1 of the 2025 NBA Finals, the Indiana Pacers had been already having in all probability essentially the most miraculous playoff run in NBA historical past. You figured, if any shred of statistical and/or basketball logic nonetheless existed on the planet, the luck would run out. 

Tyrese Haliburton, who’s on some form of magical carpet journey proper now, had different concepts. With three tenths of a second on the clock, Haliburton capped one other livid Indiana comeback with a game-winning jumper because the Pacers shocked the Oklahoma City Thunder, on their dwelling ground, 111-110 to take a 1-0 lead in a collection through which few picked them to even be aggressive. 

Maybe now we’re all going to lastly be taught our lesson. These Pacers are for actual, as ridiculous as that sounds to be making such an announcement a few group that’s within the NBA Finals. 

However how will you blame the naysayers? The Pacers are pulling issues off in these playoffs which might be much less seemingly than the asteroid hitting. That is probably not an exaggeration. Within the play-by-play period, groups had been 1-1,640 in video games through which they trailed by at the very least seven factors with lower than a minute to play coming into this postseason. You bought that? One time, in 27 years, had a group made a comeback like that. 

The Pacers have carried out it thrice in these playoffs. I’ve tried to speak to certainly one of our CBS Sports activities statistical gurus about this, and he retains shutting me down. He says the numbers do not even work based mostly on any kind of historic precedent. He calls it “incalculable.”

This rally on Thursday wasn’t from seven down inside the ultimate minute, however the Pacers had been down by 15 within the fourth quarter, which ties the mark for the most important fourth-quarter comeback in Finals historical past. The largest lead Indiana had the entire recreation was the one-point margin by which it gained. The final time that occurred was final century. 

Can they actually hold getting away with this? Can Haliburton, particularly, hold doing this? Since 1997, solely Michael Jordan has made a game-winning shot within the Finals with much less time on the clock that Haliburton’s 0.3 on Thursday. Guys go their total life with out hitting even one of many photographs that he is beginning to make look routine. 4 occasions in these playoffs Hali has made a shot to tie or take the lead with lower than 1.5 seconds remaining. 

Actually, that is unbelievable. The man is just enjoying in his second postseason and he already has extra photographs to tie or take the lead within the closing three seconds of a playoff recreation than anybody not named LeBron James. 

It is legit mind-blowing what number of “by no means been carried out earlier than” chapters there are to this Pacers story. For example, do you understand they’ve gained 4 playoff collection over the past two years because the lower-seeded group? That is by no means been carried out earlier than, and now they’re three wins from doing it for a fifth time. 

Need extra? Guess what number of occasions a group has overcome a 15-point fourth-quarter deficit on the street to win a convention finals or Finals recreation within the play-by-play period. 4. Guess who was the coach of all 4 groups that pulled it off. Rick Carlisle. 

Are you actually kidding with this? There’s completely no technique to make sense of this. For those who calculated the chances of not simply certainly one of this stuff occurring in a single postseason however all of them? Your calculator would break. Put it into ChatGPT and watch your laptop burst into flames. 

We are able to speak about how the Pacers dedicated 19 turnovers within the first half on Thursday however managed to chop that quantity to 6 within the second half, or 18 3-pointers Indiana made at a 46% clip, or the 39% general taking pictures mark that OKC put up, or the 9 Pacers who hit at the very least one 3-pointer, tying an NBA Finals file, however once more, what is the use in in-game numbers when not one of the historic ones make any semblance of sense? 

Sooner or later, we simply should ask ourselves if the Pacers, who at the moment are 8-1 in clutch video games in these playoffs, are merely a group of future. It is the one rationalization. That is divine intervention stuff, and we’re all witnesses. Which historical past will want. In any other case, no one would imagine this ever truly occurred.