OKLAHOMA CITY — Tyrese Haliburton ambled into a dribble handoff from Tony Bradley, and even though he was only going about three-quarters-speed at best on a flat right rear tire, the Pacers’ premier playmaker still merited enough respect with a live dribble to draw a second defender.
Haliburton read the help and kicked to the corner, where Andrew Nembhard was waiting to launch a 3-pointer over a screaming closeout from Thunder reserve Cason Wallace. Nembhard’s triple clanged clear, but the ball finds energy, they say, and Pascal Siakam, a 6-foot-9, 230-pound source of coursing current, rose up over the top of 7-footer Isaiah Hartenstein to high-point the offensive rebound and give Indiana a second chance.
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A second later, Siakam lofted his own long ball over the outstretched right arm of Oklahoma City stopper Luguentz Dort. When it found the bottom of the net, the sound that emanated from the stands at Paycom Center was something like 18,203 souls leaving 18,203 bodies.
These friggin’ Pacers, man. They’d done it again.
Despite being down 18 late in the first half of Game 5 of the 2025 NBA Finals … despite looking absolutely dead in the water after again sputtering up a sinful seven first-quarter turnovers to stake Oklahoma City to an early lead that Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jalen Williams seemed intent on expanding … and despite Haliburton clearly hampered by a right calf issue that he seemed to aggravate after slipping on a drive to the basket midway through the first quarter …
… they’d clawed all the way back, with Siakam’s 3 capping an 11-3 run that drew Indiana within one stinking bucket, 95-93, with 8:30 to play.
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“Even with the game that we had, we still put ourselves in position [to win] at that point,” said Siakam, who scored 18 of his team-high 28 points in the second half, adding 6 rebounds, 5 assists, 3 steals and 2 blocks in yet another monster game from him in this 2025 postseason.
Eight-and-a-half minutes is an absolute lifetime in an NBA game. An eon of possessions with which to regain control — of the game, of the Finals, of a golden opportunity to put the fear of God into the favorite. A chance to make a 68-win juggernaut’s life flash before its eyes, and see if it blinks.
But chances come, and chances go.
“They got a second-chance opportunity and scored, and then we had an uncharacteristically bad turnover that turned into a dunk,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. “We called timeout. Came out, I think Myles [Turner] got fouled. Got it back to five. But then, I don’t remember — I just looked at part of that sequence to see what happened. Didn’t make enough plays, pretty clearly.”
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“Yeah,” Siakam said. “Just that fast, it kind of, like, went away from us.”
That’s how fast it can happen against the Thunder, who refused to let Game 5 turn into a repeat of Game 1. They battled back from the brink, answering Indiana’s 11-3 run with a 10-4 jolt of their own to push the lead back to eight. And then Oklahoma City’s season-long “superpower” — its league-leading, historically larcenous defense — broke Indiana’s back, snaring four straight steals leading to eight straight points to double the Thunder advantage, reach escape velocity … and finally allow those 18,203 true believers in white and blue T-shirts to exhale.
Five minutes later, the Thunder had put the finishing touches on a 120-109 victory to take a 3-2 lead in the best-of-seven NBA Finals, and a Pacers team that had prided itself all year on taking care of the basketball knew it had let that golden opportunity slip through its fingers.
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“We had 23 turnovers for 32 points,” Carlisle said. “I mean, that’s the game. We gotta do a heck of a lot better there.”
The four turnovers that effectively ended the game came off the fingertips of starters Haliburton and Nembhard, Indiana’s two best guards all season long. They were not, however, the Pacers’ best backcourt options in Game 5.
As he did in Indiana’s Game 3 win, T.J. McConnell completely shifted the energy of the game on Monday night, scoring 13 points on 6-for-8 shooting in the third quarter and assisting on five more to turn a 15-point deficit into a two-possession game heading into the closing seconds of the frame … before Williams, for the third straight game, hit a tough final-possession shot to give Oklahoma City a little more breathing room.
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“I found a rhythm and my teammates kept finding me, so I’ve got to give credit to them,” McConnell said after the game. “Just trying to put some energy in the game, like I always do, and get us jumpstarted.”
Putting that energy into the game came at a cost, though — one that Carlisle said he saw almost immediately after keeping McConnell in to start the fourth quarter.
“He was great in the third. Put him back in earlier than normal,” Carlisle said. “He was very tired. That’s why we got him out. And I think there was a play early in the fourth where it looked like fatigue had set in there.”
Haliburton checked back in for McConnell, and while he clearly couldn’t summon the same zip off the dribble to create his own shot, he was still able to orchestrate the offense effectively enough to set the table for that 11-3 run.
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“Just trying to keep pace in the game, impact whatever way I can,” said Haliburton, who finished with four points on 0-for-6 shooting, but did add seven rebounds and six assists in his 34 minutes. “Just trying…
Dan Devine
