Indiana bags another big one
There are three great Pacer teams in Indiana's NBA history, they are all late risers, they do not go down easily.
The mid-1990s teams were very good, not great. The 1998 Pacers ran Chicago to seven games in 1998, they were great, the near-champions who lost the 2000 NBA Finals by a 4-2 score were great. And this team, the 2024-25 Eastern Champion Indiana Pacers, this is a great team.
Other teams were not: Larry Brown's Pacers, or the 2014 Pacer team which imploded because Lance Stephenson didn't make the All-Star team, and because Larry Bird added two vibe-killers down the stretch, Evan Turner and Andrew Bynum.
The 1998, 2000 and 2025 outfits all took off late in the season. In winter. While other NBA teams are freaked out over the trade deadline or next summer or last spring or whether or not Lance Stephenson made the All-Star team, the Pacers rolled. Rolled and hummed and stacked wins, away from national TV, nothing to do with the Lakers.
Austin Reaves, that's a story you can catch up on. He's on national TV twice a week, Brian Anderson parsing it out. Andrew Nembhard? You have to go out of your way to learn about Andrew Nembhard, listen to podcasts and pay for the newsletter. Nembhard is the famous No. 31 pick, the first selection of the second round in 2022, earned from Houston via Cleveland because the Rockets wanted Iman Shumpert in 2019, and the Cavs needed Caris LeVert in 2022.
The Pacers picked up another first-rounder in the LeVert loss: Ben Sheppard. A month later Indiana dealt for Tyrese Haliburton at the trade deadline. Freed from overwhelming cap commitments that summer, Indiana traded Malcolm Brogdon to Boston for Aaron Nesmith and signed DeAndre Ayton to that maxed-out, four-year, $133 million deal.
Phoenix? Thank you. The NBA Finals are an hour from my house, thanks to your ongoing commitment to DeAndre Ayton.
What did the Pacers do with that leftover cap space? Nothing. Sat on it like Kohl's Cash.
Extended Myles Turner, who delivered several tear-culling speeches on Saturday evening, some for the home crowd (and radio listeners at home) only, one for TNT, many in the locker room, another on the podium. There are stars to this show, but Myles is the guy behind the guy, the Wayne "Fatboy" Ewing of it all. This race don't run without him.
The Pacers are handling the attention well. They heard Stan Van Gundy credit Aaron Nesmith for slipping his way through screens and decided they'd like to try that themselves, and did. These are the things we can do with Myles Turner back in the garage. Bennedict Mathurin heard everything we said about padding stats with free-free throws late in Game 4 and responded.
Mathurin was the team's lone swing for the fence. A lottery pick earned when (head) coach Nate Bjorkgren didn't work and (late) lottery pick Chris Duarte didn't go and new/old coach Rick Carlisle agreed to rebuild for a year under personnel chief Kevin Pritchard. The Mathurin selection was made with Tyrese Haliburton already in place, Mathurin is up and down but the Pacers didn't biff on the pick.
They didn't hoard 'em, either. Traded future picks for a guy about to turn 30. A free agent guy!
With Nesmith also came a Boston selection (later, Julian Strawther) which Pritch traded for $4.3 million cash from Los Angeles and the rights to Mohave King. Though you and I and all of Hollywood knows Mohave King (working title: 'Eric Dane Desert Project') will forever be stuck in development hell.
The Pacers also earned a future Thunder pick (later used on Isaiah Collier) for the Strawther selection. Pritchard sent the OKC choice and two others (Ja'Kobe Walker, plus a Pacer selection in 2026 protected top-four) to Toronto for Pascal Siakam, whom on Saturday night I watched bring a child to bright-eyed tears after Pascal (and Pascal's Eastern finals MVP trophy and Pascal's big ol' smile) posed with the kid for a photo.
It was that sort of night, a Saturday night in Indianapolis. Revelers didn't build at the closed gates of the Pacers' arena as the win moved along, nobody strutted downtown to hang from a lamppost, and not because they're unmoved by a mere trip to the Finals. They're not waiting for Game 3.
In 49 states it is basketball, we get it, but as a native for two decades: Indiana has a long way to go in its trip toward NBA fandom, at least in comparison to its reputation. Colts they can handle, plus basketball kids in colleges, but professional basketball players always earn a local doubletake. In ways unaffected by what happened in Detroit 20 years ago.
What happened in Detroit 20 years happened, it is unavoidable and part of the story and it cost Indiana its best chance at an NBA championship to date. The Pacers were the better team than Detroit at the time, more composed than the Heat, deeper than anything out of the West. Larry Bird and Metta World Peace shared a 'Sports Illustrated' cover, it was supposed to be the season.
A smudge, something to acknowledge and grow and learn from, not an albatross, nothing to ignore.
Carlisle's first season with the club represented the team's most earnest rebuild since the days before Reggie Miller, the Simon Family always ensured entertainment because it had to, sneakily making wholesale changes behind the counter while maintaining the sheen on the storefront.
It worked. The Pacer crowds are so into the NBA that they don't even reflexively call for travels anymore. John Mellencamp stayed for nearly every second of Game 4, leaving his courtside seat early before doubling back, cat-like, to grab the free t-shirt the Pacers put on every seat. It was then, at the buzzer of Game 4, that I understood what Tony DeFries saw.
And Kevin Pritchard was more famous two decades ago while running the Portland Trail Blazers than he is today.
Rick Carlisle's charges betrayed nothing on Saturday night, none of those are we really doing this?-shots, shrugs. The Pacers knew they were good enough, knew it early last April, knew it in December while they watched what it took for Tyrese Haliburton to get his effed-up hips and hamstrings into playing condition.
"Part of mental toughness is belief," Tom Thibodeau reminded us after Game 6. The Pacers knew they were as good as the healthy Bucks last season, the healthy Knicks. This year? On par with a Boston team gasping its way through a title defense. Better than Cleveland.
What else do these guys believe in?
DAVID BENNER
I wasn't the only one thinking about him on Saturday night. And the ones that weren't thinking about him were busy, comfortable to create.
He did that for us, for me, for our readers. That's his building they're holding the Finals in.
SAVE THE OVERTIME FOR ME
Thanks for reading!
For the second night in a row I'm heading down to the Pacers arena, going with my better half to the Queens show, because of your contributions. Thank you! Even got to pay for her ticket.
Also, my Finals credential request just came back as "APPROVED" but that could mean anything. Thank you. We got our little emails into great, big thing.
