A Bummer Of A Game Five

After a nearly two-month dream ride, the Pacers run might be over. It wasn’t just that they lost game five in Oklahoma City last night by 11, after trimming an 18-point deficit to two midway through the fourth quarter. It wasn’t just that they routinely threw the ball away. It wasn’t just that they missed open shots when they could hang on to the ball.

It was more that Tyrese Haliburton played most of the game hobbled by whatever lower leg injury he has been dealing with the past couple weeks. It was allegedly an issue late in game two, but in games three and four he showed no ill effects, at least none that were clearly visible on TV. But last night, after slipping and aggravating the injury early, he was never at full strength, and sat out a little longer than he normally would. Fortunately for the Pacers TJ McConnell might have played the best game of his life. That both wasn’t enough and isn’t likely to be repeatable, though.

Haliburton’s game is based on speed and changes of direction and jumping while knifing around defenders. If he is compromised in his ability to do that, the Pacers have no shot.

There is the hope that with two full rest days before game six he can rally and be close to full strength for that elimination contest.

My fear, though, was that each time he grabbed his calf we would see him crumple moments later after his achilles had given way. At this point there’s a part of me that hopes the Pacers get blown out early Thursday so he can sit without suffering a potentially devastating injury that would wipe him out for not just this series but all of next year, too. NBA players love to destroy their achilles in the playoffs. Ask Jason Tatum and Kevin Durant, among others.

Game five was a great, brief explainer of both of these teams to the casual fan. The Thunder are a remarkable collection of young talent. SGA is the current MVP and one of the three or four current best players on the planet. Jalen Williams is too good to be labeled as just a sidekick. Chet Holmgren, if he can stay healthy and get stronger, will likely be one of the 15 best players in the league soon. Yes, Oklahoma City might have three All-NBA caliber players. Then they have a nearly perfect supporting cast around those three. And they have like a billion draft picks in the coming years, so they are perfectly positioned to weather the eventual salary cap hell.[1]

The Thunder are very good, very young, and set up to be that way for a long time. You have to be careful declaring dynasties these days; a year ago at this time we thought there was a new Boston Celtics dynasty. If any team in sports is positioned to dominate for the coming future, though, it is OKC.

Then you have the Pacers who are also built around two remarkable, if slightly less exceptional players than SGA and Williams. There’s no one in the NBA quite like Haliburton. The same can kind of be said for Pascal Siakam. Those two are both in the top 25 players in the league. They also have a fantastic and near-perfectly suited roster built around them. Again, that collection of talent isn’t as exceptional as the Thunder’s, but they work in a way that makes them far better as a sum than you would expect.

The Pacers are also unfazed by falling behind, whether it is because they are playing dumb, out of control, etc or their opponent is just handing it to them. They keep doing their thing knowing eventually it will start working again and they’ll get back into the game. Last night the Pacers were terrible in the first half. Throwing the ball away constantly. Taking bad shots and missing easy ones. Yet the Thunder couldn’t put them away and in the third quarter the inevitable comeback began. They just didn’t have enough, either as a team or from their superstar, to pull off another miracle.

It’s funny how these series go. I didn’t think the Pacers had much of a chance when it began, knowing how good OKC was. Then Indiana stole game one and seemed to break the Thunder’s collective spirit in game three. Instead of admiring the Thunder I was learning to hate them, from SGA’s constant pushoffs and referee bailouts on touch fouls, to Lu Dort and Alex Caruso manhandling the Pacers in the middle of the court without ever getting called for it, to Holmgren’s constant whining and truly unfortunate aesthetics. This is what is supposed to happen in the NBA Finals: you end up despising the team you are rooting against. Had the Thunder won this thing easily I’m not sure I would have gotten there. But the Pacers made this a series, and if they don’t pull off a massive upset over the final two games, will honestly look back on it as one they let get away, not one where they were hopelessly overmatched.

I’m starting to get into eulogy territory and it’s too soon for that. Hopefully I can put it off one more game and save it for next week. Between Hali’s health and the Thunder starting to feel locked in, things don’t seem promising for Thursday. You just never know with these Pacers. Maybe they have one more amazing game left in them and can send the series back to Oklahoma where anything can happen in game seven.