D's Notebook

Tag: basketball (Page 1 of 60)

More Hoops Notes

June 24, 2025 /

A day later I still have a lot of Pacers thoughts. And I still need to catch you up on a very busy weekend. So this may turn into two posts, depending on how long I yap about the first topic.

Pacers Followup

I became a Pacers fan when we moved to Indy in 2003, but they have never been at the top of my sports fandom rankings.[1] Although they have climbed a lot over the past year! Still, when they lose I’m not as mad or upset as I am when KU loses, or when good Royals teams have lost. So I was a little surprised how emotional I was when Tyrese Haliburton went down Sunday. For the Pacers season to end like that was devastating. To get so close and then it end not just because the other team was better, but because your best player’s body failed him was a massive gut punch. I was kind of in shock when it happened, saying “Oh no,” over and over when he hit the crowd, hoping he would get up.

But it really hit me after the game was over. Seeing Haliburton on crutches, waiting for his teammates as they walked to the locker room was tough. We invest all this time and emotion into sports, and it becomes a huge part of our lives when a team goes on a run like this. I know Haliburton is a mega-millionaire, as are most of his teammates. And no one “deserves” a result in sports. But in those moments it feels grossly unfair.

That said, his injury made the actual loss easier to take. Although they fought hard, the second he went down, most of us knew the Pacers had no chance to win. It was sudden and resolute. A loss is a loss, but something about the drama being stripped away made it suck less. It shouldn’t matter but to me, at least, it did.

I found it funny in a morbid way that some people accused the Pacers of gamesmanship for the way they reported Haliburton’s calf injury after game five. Like they were exaggerating to throw the Thunder off. Add that to the list of weirdness in the conversation about Hali.

Big props to Rick Carlisle. I did not appreciate what a great coach he was until this year. He coached the Pacers when we first moved here and had one great team, and another that was poised to be great until it flamed out in epic fashion. At the time it felt like he was just doing what everyone else is the league did: play power basketball based on toughness and size and defensive excellence.

He won a title in Dallas, but that was a year when the playoff bracket opened up for a variety of reasons and riding one of the best players in the world going on an epic hot streak.

I was not super excited when the Pacers hired him for the second time in 2021. That was because I had no idea of the coaching journey he’s gone on through his career, always open to new ideas and perspectives, learning to match what he asked his teams to do to the talent they had. The past two years have been the culmination of that. A year ago the Pacers were this insane offensive team that couldn’t guard a high school roster. In time Carlisle made adjustments both in set and what he asked his players to do. To their credit, they bought in. Eventually, when the team got healthy this year, they settled into a withering style on both ends. In retrospect, as good as that system was for the regular season, it was perfectly suited for the postseason, where half the goal is just to wear down your opponent over seven games. Podcaster Zach Lowe said Monday that he spoke to a player who faced the Pacers this postseason who told him that the Pacers are an awful team to play against.

Carlisle also seems like a genuinely curious and empathetic human being. I’m sorry I didn’t appreciate him sooner.

Also deserving of credit are the players for buying into Carlisle’s system. It is based on constant motion, on pressuring all 94 feet, on fighting over screens rather than switching or going under. Basically killing yourself every minute you’re on the court. That only works if everyone buys in. It took some time – Pascal Siakam has admitted he had no idea how fast the Pacers played and how much he’d have to improve his fitness to fit in when they acquired him a year ago – but eventually that happened. In the process it unlocked players like Aaron Nesmith, TJ McConnell, and Obi Toppin, who had struggled to find their NBA footing. And it elevated Andrew Nembhard from role player to starter.

And props to Kevin Pritchard and Chad Buchanan for deciding to build around Haliburton’s unique skill set. A lot of front office’s are reluctant to buck trends or ask players to sacrifice for the greater good. For at least two seasons it has worked for the Pacers.

The Pacers made an interesting trade a week ago, swapping some draft picks with New Orleans. It was an odd time to make a deal, in the middle of the NBA Finals, but it was primarily viewed as an effort to unload picks this year when the Pacers are facing a salary crunch. It didn’t seem super important at the time but they also re-acquired their first round pick next year which had been traded around a few times. With Haliburton out for the coming year, suddenly that looks like a great move. I think the Pacers should still be decent next year, mostly because they play in the Eastern Conference. But swapping the #23 pick this year for one that could be in the teens next year seems smart. Hell, depending on other roster decisions and the health of other players, that could turn into a very nice pick/trade asset.

Ah what to do this summer. Myles Turner is a free agent. There are not a ton of teams that have the need nor salary cap space to sign him, which may reduce his value. The Pacers have said they would love to keep him, but to do so will push them into luxury tax territory for the first time in franchise history. He just turned 29 and seems to be declining just a little. With Hali missing next year, is it worth the cap hit to keep Turner around and hope he can still be as effective in two and three years as he enters his 30s? Tough decision. I think I would lean to letting him go, as emotionally painful as that might be to a guy who has spent his entire career in Indianapolis. But is a reduced Turner in ’26–27–28 better than trying to develop some young guy over that same span? Seven footers who can shoot the 3 don’t grow on trees.

That choice is tougher since the Pacers have no backup centers under contract. They lost their two opening day backups in the first 10 days of the season to achilles injuries, and playoff role players Thomas Bryant and Tony Bradley should be third options at best.

Do you move any other pieces to clear space to keep Turner? Bennedict Mathurin has two years left on his rookie contract. As much as his change-of-pace is perfect off the bench, I’m not sure he totally fits in with what the Pacers want to do when their starters are on the court. With Haliburton out, will Mathurin defer to players he probably thinks he’s better than? I like his potential but the fit has always bothered me. This could be a sell high moment for chemistry alone. Or maybe Carlisle relishes the chance to make adjustments that cater to Mathurin’s skill set.

The post-Finals discourse has been interesting. At least in the pods I listen to and the articles I’ve read, it’s been as much about how this Pacers team captured the attention of the NBA world as the Thunder winning and potentially kicking off a dynasty. Some of that was because of Hali’s injury, but it was also an appreciation of how ridiculous the Pacers were over the last two months.

I also think it’s funny that there is a lot of hate for the Thunder among hardcore NBA fans. How can you hate a team from a small market that just won their first NBA title? There are complaints about their playing style (the constant fouling on defense combined with the foul hunting on offense), their lack of interesting personalities, their whole “we do interviews together” bit, the way their front office has both stacked up tons of future drafts picks and lucked into some good players they may not have deserved, and the fact the franchise was stolen from Seattle. I say wait until they’ve won another title or two before you start hating them. Every franchise should want to be like the Thunder.

Kid Hoops

OK, L had a very busy week last week. Also a concerning and frustrating one.

Last Monday she had a PT appointment that went very well. Her activity got amped up and she got through the session without any pain. She was cleared to play up to 20 minutes per day for the coming week.

Wednesday night we were back at action in the local summer league. She played about five minutes in the first half against an experienced, tough team and held her own. Then she never came back in. I was keeping score so couldn’t see if she was having an issue, so I wondered if maybe the coach was saving the rest of her minutes for game two. After the game she said she was having intense pain in her foot and could barely walk.

Oh shit.

Fortunately the pain was on the opposite side of where her surgery was. She was wearing new shoes and I wondered if that was the cause, but she claimed they fit her fine. She managed to play a few minutes in game two but was still struggling. We also lost both games and the girls got a long “talking” to after the second one from their coach. I put talking in quotes because there was a lot of yelling.

Friday morning they got on a bus and drove down to Lexington, KY for a team camp at Transylvania University. Calling it a camp was a little silly: this was just an excuse to play up to eight games in three days. There were no skills sessions or anything.

I told her to let me know how things went Friday, but never heard anything. I didn’t know if that was good or bad.

I drove down Saturday morning and when I walked into the gym, she was on the court in their first game of the day. That seemed good. When I reached our other parents they said she had just scored on a nice layup. She had another one later.

After the game, though, she came up and was limping badly. Still opposite of where her surgery was. She was beside herself and eventually dissolved into tears. I told her again that I really thought this had more to do with her foot struggling with overloading because of rehab and her new shoes than anything serious. I also said if she was in that much pain she did not have to play, and would be happy to talk to her coach about it. I think that was part of her worry, talking to the coach.

They had three hours until their next game so she went back to the dorm to rest while us parents went downtown for lunch. I checked in on her an hour later and she said she would talk to her coach on her own. After she messaged me that the coach was nice about it and told her it’s more important to be healthy in the fall than now.

When I went back to the gym for game two, L looked much happier, like a weight had been lifted. She ended up sitting out the rest of the games over the weekend. We’re going to give the foot a few days to heal and then try going back to her old shoes to see if it is just a fit issue. She doesn’t have PT this week but when we go in next week we’ll see if her therapist has suggestions about getting everything to fit properly.

As for the team, they played really well. In fact they won the “tournament,” which was great given they were down to seven players after L sat out. If our best player, who wrecked her knee a week ago, had played I think we would have destroyed all the teams we played. None of them were very good. But it was a good chance for the girls to learn how to fill roles they haven’t filled before. A couple of L’s classmates who were not very good last year played really well over the weekend.

Sunday’s game were rather strange. The games Friday and Saturday were all 20 minute, running clock halves. Sunday’s first knock-out round had 16 minute running clock halves. And then the semifinals and finals were both “overtime” games: played with a five minute clock that stopped on dead balls. I’m not sure if this was to save the girls after already playing so much or because they needed to gym for something else at 1:00 PM.

We won our first OT game 4–1. Then the championship game 7–4, the other team hitting an uncontested 3 at the final buzzer.

Us parents thought this whole concept was a little silly, but our coach told us after it was actually great from her perspective. It gave her a chance to work on late-game stuff that’s often hard to replicate in practice. You can tell girls there are 2:00 left and you are down two, but there’s no real pressure there. These two OT games were pretty sloppy, partially because everyone was wiped out, but also because you could tell the girls felt that pressure of the clock.

Lexington

Just being down there one night, and watching a lot of basketball, I didn’t get to spend much time exploring Lexington. One of the other dads and I decided to watch the Independent League Lexington Legends play some baseball Saturday evening. We got into the stadium for $11, got a burger and beer for another $12, and enjoyed about four innings of mediocre baseball before we ducked out. Pitching at this level is suspect, and it was already 5–2 Legends when we took our seats in the third inning. When we left in the seventh, it was 15–4. Lots of bad defense, too. But it was a really nice night at the old ballpark.

Rupp Arena was only a half mile from the Transylvania campus and my plan was to walk over in one of the breaks. But it was approximately 999° all weekend, and I didn’t want to die of heat exhaustion in Kentucky. We drove by on our way out of town and it was as had been described to me many times: a massive, nondescript building on the outside that is attached to shopping and hotels. There is a large parking lot across the street that I was hoping I could pull into to at least take a quick picture. But even on a Sunday morning with no activities scheduled, the gates were down and I was going to have to pay to get in. I’m sure it’s nice on the inside. But it has zero character on the outside and is not in the middle of campus. Allen Fieldhouse it ain’t.

  1. I actually wrote nearly 1000 words on my history as a Pacers fan and decided none of you wanted/needed to read that.  ↩

Crushing

June 23, 2025 /

 

Sports can be unbelievably cruel sometimes. They can step up and make the worst possible thing happen in the worst possible time.

That’s how the Indiana Pacers’ dream run through the postseason ended last night. Not because the favored Oklahoma City Thunder dominated the third quarter to turn a close game into a comfortable win, clinching their first NBA title. That was just normal sports, not an unexpected result at all.

What was cruel was what Pacers fans had been fearing since the end of game two: Tyrese Haliburton’s achilles tendon rupturing as he attempted to drive past a defender midway through the first quarter. The Pacers were up 14–10, Hali accounting for nine of those points on three 3-pointers. Unlike the careful manner he played in game six, he looked fully engaged, fast, and intense, screaming at the crowd after his third 3 forced an OKC timeout. And then he was crumpled on the ground, hitting the court repeatedly with his fist as the Thunder ran the other way for a dunk. The Pacers’ title hopes were on the floor with him.[1]

Just like Dame Lillard and Jason Tatum earlier this postseason,[2] the cruelest of modern sports injuries seems to have taken Hali, too.[3] Not only did it cost him game seven, but most likely all of next season. We probably won’t see him in uniform again until October 2026.

Brutal. Unfair. Cruel. Sports.

(A quick aside about what a wild run the narrative around Haliburton has been the past year. First it was “Why is he on the Olympic team if he isn’t playing?” Then, “Why did he accept a spot on the Olympic team if he was injured?” And, “He’s ruined the Pacers season by selfishly playing in the Olympics rather than rehabbing.” By April he was the “Most Overrated” player in the game, based on a poll in which nine players voted for him. Then he was Mr Clutch Shot. Then he was “not a true superstar” because he didn’t score enough. Which became louder when the non-basketball focused national writers started paying attention, claiming he needed to do more when they had not watched the Pacers all year to see the Pacers were successful because Hali was far more likely to have a 19 point, 12 assist night than ever score 30. Then he was hurting his team by playing injured, only he had to play because it was the Finals. Exhausting. I only paid a little attention to all this, usually just getting what was included in the game broadcasts, but it reinforced my decision to ignore pretty much everything ESPN says about basketball when the ball isn’t in play. And sometimes ignoring the in-game commentary, too.)

Haliburton’s teammates honored both him and the collective character they’ve shown this entire postseason by not giving up. They fell behind by six then charged back to take the lead a couple times. They were somehow up one at halftime after a long 3 by Andrew Nembhard. Despite the bleakness of Hali’s injury, we were all wondering, “Could they pull off one more miracle?” Could they find a way to survive the OKC pressure for 24 minutes, find a way to manufacture and make shots, find a way to contain SGA and J-Dub and the Thunder role players?

No, they could not. But they sure tried.

The third quarter was a disaster. If not for another crazy TJ McConnell quarter the Pacers could have easily been down well over 20 points going into the final period. But too many turnovers, too much passive play, and, to give full credit, far too much OKC D overwhelmed the short-handed Pacers.

They kept fighting. The Thunder showed some nerves late, and after falling behind by 21, Indiana got it down to 10 points once, eventually losing by 12. Without Haliburton, though, and without anyone other than Bennedict Mathurin doing much on offense in the final period, there was never the feeling that they might steal the game and title.

The Thunder are worthy champions. They were the best team in the NBA this season. They have the best player. They probably would have won had Hali stayed on the court, even if he matched SGA shot-for-shot. It sucks the Pacers didn’t get that shot, though, because of the cruelty of sports.

Thus ends a hell of a ride, one that went back much further than just the last two months of playoff basketball. The Pacers, fighting injuries and rehabs, started the season 10–15 before winning five straight. Then they got blown out by OKC and Boston in back-to-back games after Christmas. The loss to the Celtics was by 37 points and the Pacers could not have seemed further away from the game’s elite. Two nights later they beat the Celtics by nine. That’s the moment I thought they might be finding themselves. A loss to Milwaukee on New Year’s Eve muted that a bit, but they followed that with six straight wins and were off, steadily climbing the Eastern Conference standings over the next three months. They wouldn’t lose consecutive games until early March, when they dropped three straight to bad teams, concerning for a team fighting for a playoff seed. Again they rebounded, going 15–4 over the last month of the regular season and checked in as the #4 seed in the East.

They weren’t just winning, though. They were winning CRAZY games. Scoring four points in 1.9 seconds. Coming from 12 down with a minute left. Every game seemed close – except when they hung 162 points on Washington – and the Pacers were always the team making the winning plays while their opponents cracked. I didn’t write about them much until April 14. Here’s what I said then:

In other words, I’m not sure if this team is quite as good as their record indicates. Or, on the other hand, maybe they’re a team that never gets down on themselves and are comfortable in difficult situations. Throw in the experience from last year’s conference finals run, and perhaps they are a super dangerous team?

I hedged my bets, but in retrospect super dangerous seems right.

In sports we too often focus on the end, and whether our teams win or not, the ring culture that LeBron James decried last week.[4] I did not give the Pacers much chance in this series. Then they stole game one, took game three, and were rolling in the third quarter of game four. They gave me hope and suddenly heartbreak was in play. It sure would have been great to take game seven down to the closing minutes and see which team buckled and which team’s culture and cohesiveness carried them to the title. But I can’t be too disappointed after the wonderful ride this team took the city on.

When the Royals won the World Series in 2015, I wrote that some champions remain anonymous, but that team would always be remembered for how they ran and caught everything and got key hits in the biggest moments and came back when their backs were against the wall. This year’s Pacers team did not win the title, but they also carved out an identity that will be recalled for years to come. They were the team that came together at the right time, that never let the odds faze them, that never withered when the pressure was the highest, that always thought they were the best team no matter who they were playing.

Pacers fans should be disappointed about Sunday night, but not about this season.

  1. They weren’t nearly as impactful, but in the past 15 years the Pacers have lost Hali, Victor Oladipo, and Paul George to terrible leg injuries.  ↩
  2. To be fair, the Pacers benefitted from these injuries, both directly and indirectly.  ↩
  3. Honestly shocked some idiot, like our current HHS Secretary for example, hasn’t suggested vaccines are responsible for all these achilles injuries.  ↩
  4. Is there a DUMBER opinion than LeBron complaining about players chasing rings? Irony is truly dead.  ↩

Three Down…

June 20, 2025 /

OMG OMG OMG!!!!

The Indiana Pacers are playing for the NBA championship Sunday night!

Thursday was a wonderful night of professional basketball. At least if you are a Pacers fan. They started out slow, missing like their first 100 shots, and trailed 10–2. From then on it really wasn’t much of a game. The Pacers destroyed the Thunder in pretty much every way. Their defense was suffocating. They were ferocious rebounders. Their offense was locked in. It was the proverbial snowball turning into an avalanche, and the best team in the NBA this season was powerless to stop it. The final margin of 17 points hides that the Pacers were up by 30 at the end of the third quarter, when OKC effectively threw in the towel, sitting their starters the entire fourth quarter. I’m not sure that has ever happened in the NBA Finals.

It was even more satisfying given every minute since game five ended was spent worrying about Tyrese Haliburton’s health. I was of the opinion that if he was not 100%, the Pacers had no chance. He was not 100%. The Thunder had no chance. Sports are weird.

What was great about this performance was that it embodied everything that the Pacers are about. Obi Toppin was the leading scorer with a modest 20 points, four of which came very late against the OKC scrubs. Pascal Siakam had 16 points, 13 rebounds. Andrew Nembhard scored 17. TJ Freaking McConnell, man. The reserve guard had a ridiculous 12 point, 9 rebound, six assist, four steal night. The Thunder know he’s coming and every game he does things they can’t handle. No one was incredible, but everyone pitched in. What is also crazy is that the Pacers had two long cold stretches. They could have easily led by 40 or more before the third quarter ended.

Haliburton played and was fine, scoring 14 points. He didn’t do anything spectacular. Well, other than this ridiculous pass to Pascal Siakam on the break just before halftime:

I yelled, too.

The huge lead allowed Hali to sit most of the second half. I’m not sure if we can count on him being fully healthy Sunday, but at least he should be available.

The series will be decided in Oklahoma City. This was a perfect final game of the season in Indianapolis, an extended celebration for a team that has brought this city a tremendous amount of excitement and pride during the postseason. It’s been fun for the national media to discover, or re-discover I guess, how great a venue Gainbridge Fieldhouse is. That place was rocking every minute of each of the three games it hosted over the past week.

Anything can happen in a game seven. Given how this series has swung, and how much it swung Thursday, it’s hard not to fear a hard correction back towards the Thunder. SGA might score 45. Jalen Williams might score 45. They BOTH might score 45. The Thunder may find their defensive mojo and keep the Pacers from getting into their offense before there are five seconds left to shoot. They might run Indiana out of the building, flipping the script from last night. But as I’ve been saying for two months, never count this team out.

All that matters is that the Pacers have a shot. Forty-eight minutes left on this wild ride that began back in March on a crazy Haliburton shot in a regular season game against Milwaukee. The crowd chanted “‘Cers in Seven!” as the clock ran out Thursday. That’s not as ridiculous as it sounded two weeks ago.

BTW, S and I watched outside on our porch, probably the first time we’ve ever watched a Pacers game there. They don’t play many games in June so we don’t get this opportunity often. C had a bunch of friends over and they were kind of loud in the basement, the weather was nice, so we decided to stick to the outside TV. Same spot I watched the Gold Medal game in last summer’s Olympics. Yes, I am hoping for good weather Sunday so I can watch outside again.

A Bummer Of A Game Five

June 17, 2025 /

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.

  1. The Thunder were, in fact, one ping pong ball away from owning the #3 pick in this year’s draft. Kevin Pritchard has done a terrific job building the Pacers, but Sam Presti has done an all-time job turning the Thunder into the franchise with the best and longest path to sustained excellence in the league.  ↩

Weekend Notes

June 16, 2025 /

A full, fun weekend that had healthy doses of sadness and even a little fear.

KC Trip

As mentioned Friday, I headed back to Kansas City for the weekend to attend the memorial service for Jack N, the father of one of my closest friends. We’re at the age where these are happening more frequently, but no matter the circumstances they are never easy. It was a fine service and honored the deceased in a way I think he would have appreciated.

That was the reason for the trip. I obviously did more than just attend the memorial.

I flew in Friday afternoon, my buddy Dave picked me up, and we headed directly to Joe’s Kansas City Barbecue, where I knocked out a jumbo Z-Man, fries, and a frosty Boulevard Unfiltered Wheat. Joe’s never disappoints.

On our way to Dave’s house, which was my home base for the weekend, we stopped at a liquor store. I was thrilled that they still had some Boulevard Irish Ale not only in stock but in the cooler. Where it was once kind of easy to find in Indy before St. Patrick’s Day, it has disappeared in recent years. An unexpected bonus!

That evening Dave and his wife had plans, so I took my Irish Ale to John N’s house. Despite having just returned from an overseas trip and planning for his dad’s services the next day, he was gracious enough to invite me out not just to visit but so I could avoid having to watch the Pacers game in a bar. I figured KC drinking holes would lean heavily towards the Thunder.

Anyway, John and his family and I had a good conversation while watching a little of the Royals game and all of the Pacers game. More on that in a bit.

Dave let me borrow his car, a 2019 Audi Q5. Fitting the theme for the weekend, it was like being with an old friend! I found it interesting that despite being just two years older than my Q5, his drove very differently. I’m no mechanical expert but I think his engine was tuned slightly differently, making it feel smoother than mine had been. However, his media screen was not touch capable, so I drove myself a little crazy trying to tap the screen to have Siri read texts to me without any success. There’s your mini car post for the month.

Saturday morning Dave and Maureen took me to Gram & Dun for brunch. I ate what was, without a doubt, the best breakfast burrito I’ve ever had. It was amazing.

After the service and reception, our friends the Murrays hosted a small gathering, which eventually moved to Waldo Pizza for dinner. I’m almost positive I had not been to Waldo Pizza in 22 years, so that was excellent.

Saturday also just happened to be the 22nd anniversary of the day S and I got married in KC. It was kind of wild to be back there, sadly without her, when that day rolled around. I was pleased to hear the lady who guided us through our pre-marriage classes is still active, and our good friend Ann remains close with her. I was also glad that it wasn’t 102° like it was the day we got married.

Sunday morning Maureen, despite it being her birthday, made sure to send me off with a wonderful breakfast. I was on the mid-morning flight back home. When the weather is right, there may be no easier trip in the world than flying between Indianapolis and Kansas City. Two new airports that are super easy to navigate and don’t get super busy. I was door-to-door in exactly three-and-a-half hours. Had I driven, I wouldn’t have been to St. Louis yet in that time.

One other travel note, the Racing Louisville FC women’s soccer team was on both of my flights. Apparently there are no direct flights between the ‘Ville and KC, so they must have bussed up to Indy. They lost to the KC Current Saturday evening. I did not mention the result to the players who were next to me in the boarding line Sunday.

I know a lot of the people I saw this weekend are readers of this site. It was great to see you all, although sad it took a funeral to get me back there this summer.

Pacers

Man, the NBA Finals were on the Pacers racquet, to use a tennis term. Up 2–1 in the series and leading by 10 points late in the third period, with Obi Toppin going to the line for two free throws. I had a bad feeling when he missed both, which turned out to be a key moment in the Thunder coming back to even the series at two games.

I watched the entire game, as already noted, at the N’s house. And while I was paying attention, we were also catching up. So my attentions were, at best, split 50–50 all night. For example, the play when SGA pushed off, traveled, and then got an and-one that gave OKC the lead barely registered. Had I been watching that play at home in my normal seat, I would have been screaming and yelling, possibly punching things, and maybe had to take a walk outside. For sure I would not have been able to sleep after the game. I shared this with a non-KC friend and he said, “That might be the healthiest move: force yourself to watch games with people who will make you unfocused on the result and less stressed.” Only took me (almost) 54 years to figure that out!

You hate to say the series is completely over after how good three of the first four games have been, but the Pacers have certainly blown their advantage and put themselves in a tough spot. At least they get to come back home for game six regardless of what happens in Oklahoma tonight. Never count them out, but they are running out of chances.

HS Hoops

It was an open recruiting weekend for high school sports – there were a bunch of college softball coaches on my flight Sunday who had been in Kansas City for a big tournament – and CHS played four games in an annual event here in Indy. Friday they went 2–0, including waxing a team that beat them last year and has one of the best rising juniors in the state. She scored 30+ but our girls kept the rest of the team in check. L didn’t play much in the first game, but got in for most of the fourth quarter of game two. Her travel coach was there and sent me a picture of her inbounding the ball. I shared it with S and she noted that L’s legs are back to being the same size! She’s got her muscle back after the weeks of cast and boot.

Saturday S went to the games and sent me some good updates. That might have been the highlight of the weekend; I’m not sure she’s ever sent me updates before! L played a little more, and a little better in each game. She got to the rim and scored while faking a defender in one. In the other, she scored, got fouled, and swished the free throw.

They beat a good team in the morning game, and then played the team they lost to in sudden death overtime a week ago in game two. We were waxing them, up almost 20, when things got bad. Like seriously bad.

S sent me a message saying our best player had suffered a “devastating” knee injury, probably tearing her ACL. S said the girl was screaming, other players were looking away, and it was just a terrible situation all around. A little later she updated me that it seemed like she had actually dislocated her knee, and the on-site trainer had popped it back into place. OK, 😱🤮

Then another five minutes went by and S texted me that one of L’s best friends had just broken her finger and left the game.

Obviously our girls were a little shook by all this, and tried their hardest to blow all of that lead. L got a lot more minutes and admitted to me later she was not ready to handle the ball against pressure yet. Glad I missed all of that.

But our girls hung on to go 4–0 for the weekend.

We don’t have an update on our star. S was concerned that despite just being a dislocation she could have also torn ligaments as well. I guess we’ll find out soon. That’s a serious bummer for her and our team. And our other injured girl will have surgery on her finger and be out the rest of the summer. The girls have 10 games this week and just eight healthy players, one of whom is still rehabbing her dumb foot and not in full basketball shape yet.

I thought summer was supposed to be fun.

Oh, and L was up in the air trying to block a shot when she got sideswiped by a teammate and knocked to the floor. She has a massive bruise on her hip and actually got some whiplash when she hit the ground and her head snapped back, so her neck is super sore and tight.

It might be time to get her some golf clubs.

US Open

With the travel I did not watch as much of the US Open as I normally would. I was home in time to see the wild final three or four hours Sunday, which included a long weather delay, a moment late in the tournament when six guys were tied for the lead, some epic meltdowns and classic US Open destroying the best golfers in the world stuff, and then JJ Spaun rolling in a ridiculous 60-foot putt to ice his first major victory. Conditions had eliminated most of the best and best known golfers, but the final two hours were a lot of fun to watch.

Royals

They stink.

I’ve not written much about them this year. I’m not watching them as closely as I did the back half of last season, but I am tracking scores each night. There have been a lot of bad Royals teams over the years. This one may well be the most frustrating because they get good-to-great starting pitching almost every night and just cannot hit the ball. It doesn’t matter whether I check the score early or late, I’m almost certain the Royals will have no more than two runs, and most likely none. It’s really uncanny how poor they are at scoring. I guess this is balancing how great they were last year at getting runners in scoring position home.

A Night Of Hoops

June 12, 2025 /

A full evening of basketball with some big moments worth sharing.

Pacers

WOW! Up 2–1 on the massive favorites thanks to two amazing quarters.

Oklahoma City was the better team for two periods Wednesday, the first and third. Sadly for them, the Pacers were even better in the second and fourth and now lead the NBA Finals.

I only saw the second half – more on that momentarily – but that was a fantastic game. The teams made runs at each other all night, neither able to land a knockout punch until the closing five minutes or so when the Pacers strung together makes and stops while the Thunder all seemed to whither under the pressure of the pace, moment, and crowd.

Bennedict Mathurin has driven me crazy this postseason. It has often seemed like he’s trying to do too much, and he’s had several moments (especially in the Cleveland series) when he let his emotions get the best of him. He was magnificent Wednesday. 27 points, from every part of the floor, and always within the offense. He’s the only guy on the Pacers roster who can play the way he does, getting his shot when the offense breaks down, so it is a massive bonus that he seems to be locked in for the moment. Now we just need him not to try to force things Friday night.

TJ McConnell did TJ McConnell things. In one sequence he got two steals and accounted for four points in about 15 seconds. Those four points tied the game before the Pacers took over. Obi Toppin had some more rough moments early, but he was fantastic in the closing run. So good that Rick Carlisle sat Pascal Siakam for the final four minutes, not because Pascal wasn’t playing well but because Toppin was so good.

It was a mature, big boy, classic NBA Finals win. It may not mean a thing in the end, but if the Pacers win this series, standing up to the Thunder in game three will be as important as their game one comeback.

It was so fun seeing the NBA Finals played here in Indy. The crowd seemed lit, and the parts of podcasts I’ve been able to listen to so far raved about how great the environment was. There’s been grousing from some about two small market teams playing each other in the final. That ignores both that these are two of the most fun and interesting teams to watch – way more fun than the Knicks, Lakers, or Celtics – and that these are two super passionate fanbases in insanely loud arenas. Everyone worried about the names on the fronts of the jerseys and airport codes is missing a series that is everything you can ask for on every other level.

High School Ball

I missed the first half of the game because it was week two of high school summer ball. And the most important aspect of that is that L was back on the court last night for the first time in nearly five months.

She was not cleared to play a week ago, so sat out a close loss to the defending 4A champs and a nice win against another 4A team on Wednesday, then a 2–1 trip to a shootout in Lafayette last Friday.

But this week she was cleared to play 10–15 minutes. She ended up playing the lower side of that across two games, partially because that’s how the rotations worked and partially because they practiced and then lifted weights in the morning so she was sore all over.

She did ok.

In the first game she played the last four minutes of the first half. For her only shot attempt she found herself open on the wing, stepped into a long–2, and drained it. Her only other scorebook entry for that game was a turnover when she waited a little too long to pitch it ahead on the break and a girl made a fantastic play to pick her pass off.

We won that game, against the team that lost in the 3A state title game last season (we would have played them to go to state had we won our first semi-state game), in overtime. That team immediately played again and lost that game in overtime as well. Their best player is this amazing junior. She scored 18 in the first half against us. I didn’t see the official book from either game, but she had to have scored close to 60 points for the night. And these are 40 minute games with running clocks.

In our second game L played the first six minutes of the fourth quarter. She had a rebound and nothing else. She and one of her travel teammates were battling for a loose ball and apparently she cussed, sending them both into giggling fits. After the game I mock yelled at them both for not taking the game seriously.

She looked slow, sore, and out of shape. While she’s been watching practice the past two weeks, she wasn’t a full participant until Monday, so she still needs to integrate into what her teammates are doing. I told her not to push things, not to get frustrated when things are hard, and not to worry when she fails. Rehab is a long process and we’re not to the end yet. The important thing is to get back on the court, start getting her body back in basketball shape, and give us a base to work over the second half of summer. The goal is that she’s back to 100% and ready to fight for minutes in October.

Weekend Notes

June 9, 2025 /

Pacers

Well, the Thunder showed up Sunday evening. As has been routine in these playoffs, the Pacers missed a ton of open looks early as they fell behind. The difference in game two was that I don’t think it would have mattered. OKC was absolutely locked in from the beginning and once they took the lead on a 10–0 run the result was never in doubt. The 42–21 run in the second quarter was too much for the Pacers Devil Magic to overcome.

What amazes me most about the Thunder’s D is how it is actually good defense. With one exception, they don’t foul a ton. They are just in your shirt through effort, speed, and talent. They refuse to let you get by, doing so because they move their feet faster than you move yours. They get their chests into you and leave their hands off, saving those to swipe at the ball rather than grab and hold like so many other teams do. Which makes it even tougher because you can’t complain to the refs in hopes of getting some calls to ease their pressure.

As I said, there’s one exception, and that is Alex Caruso. That dude fouls 15 times on every play. His hands are always on whoever he is guarding, wrapping them up, pulling them, etc. The Thunder might not be in the Finals had the refs called him even occasionally for how he beat up Nikola Jokic in the Denver series.[1]

That wouldn’t have made a difference last night, either. The Thunder were better and more focused while the Pacers missed their chance to stay close early then let OKC’s pressure get most of them sped up.

Tyrese Haliburton was a little passive early. Which brings me to my complaint about the announcers, especially Richard Jefferson. He kept ranting about how Hali needed to be more aggressive, take more shots, insert himself into the action. Which I agree with a little bit. At the same time I wondered if Jefferson had watched the Pacers/Hali at all during the regular season. That is never their game. Hali gets on hot streaks but it almost always happens in the second half. Not because he’s passive, but more because he’s a pass-first point guard and the Pacers spend first halves spreading the ball, getting everyone involved, breaking down the defense, and then Hali pounces when they get tired and either over-help or get lazy. I agree the Pacers need to play a little out of character if they want to win this series. But you can’t be something you’re not. Hali taking 35 shots is not a recipe for winning in OKC. Still, he probably needs to take more than three shots by the mid-point of the second quarter.

The Pacers lost far more because most of the other players stunk Sunday, regardless of what Hali did.

My other big takeaway: SGA is incredible. That dude hits shots that just don’t make sense all night long. Like from a physics standpoint. He’s not a small dude at 6’6”, but he is so wiry you don’t expect him to have the strength to hit turn-around, fade-away jumpers from 20-feet after putting three moves on his defender. It’s outrageous.

Thankfully the refs have yet to bail him out with the weak calls he tends to draw in the regular season. The Pacers have also done a nice job of being physical with him up until he throws his foul-drawing moves at them. I like that they’ve let both teams be physical without it ever getting out of hand. Let’s hope that continues and SGA isn’t shooting 15 free throws a night the rest of the series.

Bummer of a game, but the series is tied coming back to Indy, which is the best the Pacers could have hoped for. Just as the Thunder have bounced back from each of their playoff losses, so too have the Pacers. They’ll have the crowd the next two games, along with the comforts of home. They need to find a way to better attack the Thunder and withstand their pressure if they want to go back to Oklahoma with a chance to still win the title.

French Open

I was an occasional watcher of the French Open over the past two weeks, but Saturday I watched every minute of the fantastic Coco Gauff – Aryna Sabalenka final. It was an intense and entertaining match. Just like when they played in the US Open final two years ago, Sabalenka was dominant early before Coco righted herself and stole the match. One of the things I found most fascinating about the match was that the older, more experienced player was the one who lost her shit while the younger one played almost without emotion. It’s like Coco knew Sabalenka would crack if she could stay in the match long enough. She just keeps living up to the crazy hype that accompanied her arrival on the scene seven years ago.

I was in-and-out for the mens match Sunday. I was passing through the room when Jannik Sinner was sitting on three match points, so I turned the TV off and went outside to deal with a pool issue. Several hours later when I glanced at ESPN I was amazed to see that Carlos Alcaraz had come back and won. HOW?!?!?! And he won the closing tiebreak 10–2??? Holy shit! An NBA writer said that was like opening an overtime period with seven straight alley-oop dunks.

Pool

I thought I was having one pool issue late last week. It turned out to not be an issue, but rather a sign that a much bigger one was slowly presenting itself.

The bottom of our pool started looking green last week. Slowly, in the corners of the deep end, but getting bigger each day, and spreading to an area in the shallow end, too. I assumed it was green algae, something I’ve never had, so took a water sample to the pool store and got a diagnosis. They put me on a 36-hour schedule of intense sanitization to kill off the algae.

By Sunday the green was still there, but seemed contained a bit. So I decided to vacuum all the crap on the bottom of the pool out into the yard, bypassing the filter in hopes I could kick it back on and the water would return to normal quickly. As I vacuumed I thought it was strange the “algae” seemed very thick and heavy. And still very green. Shouldn’t all those chemicals have killed it, and shouldn’t it be kind of light and amorphous? I vacuumed it all out, backwashed my filter, and kicked things back on. Green material immediately started pouring out of the return jets. There were already large deposits on the pool floor. WTF???

I killed the system and decided to scoop out whatever was in the bottom of the pool for a closer look. That wasn’t algae. Instead it was the glass media we use in our filter. I had no idea it was green. Had I known that I would have realized a week earlier something in our filter was slowly failing and allowing the glass to return to the pool with the filtered water. And that failure was getting bigger each day. And I shot a couple hundred bucks of brand new filtering media into our grass.

It also should have been a clue that despite these fields of green on the pool floor getting larger, the water was remaining clear.

I texted back-and-forth with our pool guy, who seemed confused by what was going on until I sent him pictures of the glass I had removed from the pool. That’s when he confirmed something in the filter has failed. He’s going to do his best to get here today to take a look, then hopefully it’s a quick/easy/cheap fix that doesn’t involve ordering parts that take a week to get here or, God forbid, replacing the entire filter.

We’ve been pretty lucky with our pool over the six seasons we’ve had it. Eventually, though, they are like boats and become money pits. We already knew this was likely the last season for our current liner. Looks like that won’t be the only cash we’ll be pouring into the system this year.

Grad Parties

Saturday was C’s biggest day of grad parties of the year. She had seven on her calendar.

She began the day heading 45 minutes south to a co-party by two of her closest friends. When she returned home S and I joined her for the next four. The first was 35 minutes east of our house. The second 10 minutes west of that one. The third 15 minutes back east. Then the fourth was back near our home. We did quick pop-ins at the first two. We aimed to do the same at the third, but as there weren’t many people there we felt kind of bad and spent more time chatting with the parents than we expected to. They are nice, that was fine, but it meant we only had 15 minutes or so at our last one, which was the one S and I wanted to go to most. We hustled home and then C realized she didn’t have time to make the next one, so we called it a night and ordered sushi. Had we known that was the case, we would have stayed longer at that last party. There were a bunch of families we love from St P’s there, all of whom sent their kids to different high schools so we don’t get to see them very much.

After dinner C was off to one more grad party and then a normal party. She has one or two more on her calendar later this month, but the bulk of her friends are now out of the way.

  1. Listening to Bill Simmons’ pod while taking L to the dentist this morning, he made this same point: Caruso is a hack and it is inexplicable how/why he gets away with it.  ↩

Playoff Miracle, Vol. 186

June 6, 2025 /

I have a very busy day, but still want to squeeze in some quick words about game one of the NBA Finals.

It started about how I expected: the Pacers were sped up and nervous and when they could get shots, were missing thoroughly makable ones. The Thunder were also nervy at the beginning, but their defense found its footing and began shutting down everything the Pacers wanted to do. At times it looked like a mismatched college game, where the Pacers had three guys standing 40 feet from the basket trying to figure out how to even begin the offense, let alone get decent looks. Obi Toppin was truly awful. Myles Turner only marginally better. Tyrese Haliburton quiet. The only good thing was that the Thunder were also missing shots, otherwise the margin could have easily been 20+ at halftime.

I wasn’t worried, though. I didn’t think the Pacers had much of a chance to steal a game in OKC to begin with. I expected game one to be rough. I just wanted to see if they could settle and find something in the second half to build on going forward.

Boy did they!

It was the same playbook we’ve seen over-and-over from this team since Christmas. Trailing by 15 early in the fourth quarter, the Pacers finally found some comfort on offense. They never had that quick, 10–0 in 30 seconds run that flipped the game. The Thunder hit at least three shots that seemed to have wiped out any Pacers momentum. Turner missed a wide-open 3 that would have cut it to one with around 4:00 left and that seemed like it might be the ballgame as the Thunder stretched it back out to a 9-point lead.

And then Aaron Nesmith and Andrew Nembhard hit consecutive 3’s to make it a 3-point game. Nembhard hit two free throws and Pascal Siakam got an offensive rebound and scored to cut it to one. Could the Pacers get a stop? Well, they got two, sandwiched around a dead ball rebound for the Thunder. And then it was Tyrese Time (Tyme?).

 

They freaking did it again. The only lead of the night, coming on their last shot attempt of the game, a cold-blooded, pull up J over one of the best defenders on the planet.

Pacers up 1–0.

Crazy stuff. This Team of Destiny shit is getting hard to ignore.

This might have been a massive outlier, the game one upset that wakes up the Thunder before they win the next four to claim the title. For one night, though, that Pacers Devil Magic worked again and turned a blowout into an instant classic.

NBA Final Preview

June 5, 2025 /

The NBA Finals have arrived. I’ve been listening to podcasts previewing the series all week, and reading everything The Ringer has posted on the topic. Since I know most of you are 1) far busier than me and 2) don’t care as much about the result as I do, allow me to offer a summarization of all that content: the Pacers are a very good, super entertaining, resilient team that plays a style that is tough defend and absolutely deserves the full respect of every basketball fan and analyst. BUT, Oklahoma City has a historically stout defense that seems designed to offer matchup nightmares at every position for the Pacers (and just about any team) and will have the best player in the series, thus the Pacers have almost no chance.

It’s been funny to hear all these talking (and writing) heads repeat almost the same message, being very careful to make sure people understand they really like the Pacers.

I get it.

Even wearing my Gold-colored glasses it’s hard to find an angle that makes this series work for the Pacers. Not just because of the pure matchups between these two teams, but because true upsets are rare in the NBA Finals. The closest thing we’ve had to an upset in the past 20 years was when Toronto beat Golden State in 2019. The Raptors actually won more games than the Warriors that year, but were viewed as underdogs because, well, they weren’t the Warriors. And in that series it took Kevin Durant only playing limited minutes because of an earlier injury then blowing out his achilles and Klay Thompson blowing his ACL to clear the path for the Raptors title.

Before that you have to go back to 2004 when the Pistons knocked off the Lakers, in truly the biggest NBA Finals upset of my life. Those Lakers were heavily favored but were also getting old and dysfunctional and the Pistons were uniquely positioned to give them fits.

So we have one upset, that really wasn’t an upset, that came about because two of the best players of their generation suffered season ending injuries during the series, and the other was because a team was old and hated each other.

Sadly for the Pacers, the Thunder have neither of these issues. They seem to be completely healthy at the moment and are super young and project an image of everyone being on the same page. Maybe there’s an injury during the series that shifts things, but the Thunder aren’t the Knicks, seemingly always teetering on the edge of losing all their best players because of overuse. And the Pacers are the team that is more banged up at the moment.

Several folks have used last year’s Eastern Conference Finals as a model for this series. The Celtics swept the Pacers in four games, but the Pacers easily could have been ahead 3–1 rather than going home. It was a deserved sweep by a better team, but three of the games were decided in the last 10–15 seconds, one going to overtime. The Pacers battled, but they either weren’t good enough or made too many errors in the game’s biggest moments.

I’m not sure this series will be as exciting and tense as that one. It’s hard to look at the individual matchups and find paths for where the Pacers can keep games basically even until the closing minutes, when their crazy, late-game, devil magic can take over. I don’t think it will be a game of blowouts, but also I’m not sure the final result will be in doubt as long in each contest as it was in the Celtics series.

For the Pacers to have a chance their big two can have no slippage. Tyrese Haliburton can’t have the games where he’s passive and lets the Thunder dictate his pace or decisions on offense. He can’t have either bad shooting games, or games where he simply doesn’t shoot, something that has happened once in each of the Pacers first three playoff series. Pascal Siakam, quite simply, has to be exceptional every night. He has to get behind the Thunder defense for easy baskets like he’s done all year. He has to be efficient hunting mismatches and then punishing them in the half court. He has to stay on the court by not picking up cheap fouls.

Even if those two can stay locked in for every game, there can be no slippage by the supporting cast. Myles Turner will get open looks in this series; the Thunder’s defense is designed to allow those because of how they close off the paint. He needs to knock those down. Andrew Nembhard and Aaron Nesmith can’t get suckered into forcing things when the ball ends up in their hands late in the shot clock. Both tend to get into trouble when they have to drive and have limited options. The Thunder defense is set up to force exactly those situations, and then kill players who make bad decisions when faced with swarming defenders from all angles.

There aren’t a lot of weaknesses on the Thunder for the Pacers to attack. I think the biggest Pacers advantage will be forcing the pace, but the Thunder are fine playing fast. In fact, they play faster than the Pacers by some measures. The key will be to get the Thunder’s D overreacting to pressure and finding ways to get wide open looks in the secondary break, or in the early opportunities out of the half court when the Thunder snuff out Pacers breaks.

One other small measure of hope for Indiana fans is that Rick Carlisle and his staff are excellent tacticians. Each series they’ve found a new way to attack their opponent that was different from how the Pacers played during the regular season. The Thunder don’t have many flaws, but I’m confident Carlisle has found some and designed new ways to attack them. Are those series swinging adjustments or ones that will simply win a few possessions before the Thunder counter and regain their advantages? We’ll start to find out tonight.

My prediction has not changed: heart Thunder in six, mind Thunder in five. Which aligns exactly with almost every podcaster I’ve listened to. For the record, I had that locked in before I listened to any of them. So they’re copying me, not the other way around.[1] There aren’t many reasons to be confident the Pacers will capture their first NBA championship over the next couple weeks. At least they have the chance.

  1. I’m sure Bill Simmons, Zach Lowe, and all the other NBA guys at The Ringer checked into my site before going public with their own picks.  ↩

Hell Yes ‘Cers!

June 2, 2025 /

Holy shit, it happened! The Pacers are in the NBA Finals!

I gotta be honest, I was angry Friday morning. And worried. After the Pacers played like ass in New York Thursday it meant little to me that the series was coming back to Indy for game six. It seemed like the Knicks had figured out how to contain the Pacers offense with backcourt pressure, they were gaining confidence on offense, they were defying all the odds by staying healthy, and most infuriatingly the Knicks bench played better than the Pacers reserves on Thursday.

This did not bode well for Indiana closing out the series Saturday and avoiding what would be a monumentally stressful game seven in New York tonight.

All that stress and worry was silly. The Pacers took care of business and sent the Knicks home with a magnificent, cathartic win Saturday. The Pacers won every quarter, stretching their lead a little further each period. The Knicks made some runs but seemed to whither in the fourth quarter, which set up a glorious last seven minutes or so when the Pacers blew the game open.

Each Pacers win in this series was a specific player’s game. The unlikely, near miracle win in game one will forever be the Aaron Nesmith game. Pascal Siakam dropping 39 points in game two slapped his name on that one. Tyrese Haliburton’s ridiculous boxscore line claimed game four for him. And while the clinching game was a typically balanced effort by one of the most balanced teams in the league, that game will always be the Andrew Nembhard game for the way he made life a living hell for Jalen Brunson on defense and somehow managed to finally find his offensive game in the process.

Nembhard was simply brilliant. The refs let both teams play, so while he was using his entire body to guard Brunson, Brunson was also getting away with his forearm shivers, grabbing of arms, slamming his shoulder into Nembhard’s chest, and even flat-out headbutting Nembhard without getting whistled for a foul.[1] Funny thing happened in that process: I think Brunson wore himself out as much as Nembhard wore him down. Brunson, the league’s reigning Clutch Player of the Year, looked thoroughly wiped and ineffective when the Knicks needed him most. Meanwhile Nembhard was keying the Pacers final surge to put the game away.

This might have been the biggest surprise in a series full of surprises. In last year’s playoffs, Nembhard could not guard Brunson at all. In brief moments on Brunson earlier in the series, he continued to struggle. When Nesmith wasn’t on the court the Pacers resorted to either Bennedict Mathurin or Jarace Walker to try to slow Brunson knowing Nembhard would not be effective. But when Nesmith got two early fouls Saturday, and appeared to be hobbled by the leg he injured in game three, Rick Carlisle had no choice. And Nembhard delivered. It was a season-saving performance.

Siakam was, again, great. Hali took some time to get going, but dished out over 10 assists and cracked the Knicks defense in the closing run. Thomas Bryant, who had been benched earlier, hit the first three 3’s he took.

Hey, big props to Carlisle. He made terrific adjustments during the series, both in scheme and personnel. More importantly, after the Pacers traded for Haliburton during the ’22-’23 season, he focused on building around Hali’s skills first, embracing the chaos that the point guard’s unorthodox style lends itself to. That produced an incredibly fun team on the offense, but one that also rarely put in any effort on the defensive end. Winning 140–138 is fun during the regular season but not a recipe for advancing deep into the playoffs. Only they did last year, benefiting from injuries to opponents in the first two rounds before Haliburton himself was injured and the Celtics swept the Pacers out of the conference finals.

I’m not sure how he did it, but somehow this year Carlisle turned them into a better-than-average defensive team. The offense wasn’t quite as efficient, but the improvement on the other end made them a better team, a tougher team to match up with, and better suited to win in the postseason.

Carlisle also deserves series credit for trusting his players to fill their roles. I hadn’t really noticed this until a national writer mentioned it, but Carlisle is fine with mistakes, as long as they are made with maximum effort and within the team concept. Sometimes it drives me crazy when TJ McConnell overdrives, like he did often this series as the Knicks refused to collapse on him with help, or when Bennedict Mathurin forgets he has teammates and goes one-on-one. Carlisle is fine with that because he knows giving players the opportunity to fail, again within the system, means they will play with confidence and be effective more often than not. McConnell might turn it over a couple times, but that is made up for when he finally gets the defense to overcommit and three teammates are open or he gets a wide-open layup when help does not come. Mathurin can be maddening when his ego makes him ignore/forget that he has four teammates on the court with him. But he’s the best “get the fuck out of my way I’m scoring no matter what” player on the team, and sometimes they need that in the moments the starters are resting.

I kept waiting for an injury or two to destroy the Knicks. Other than Karl-Anthony Towns acting like his knee had just blown apart every time he fell down, they somehow got through the series unscathed. Thank goodness the series didn’t go to a seventh game, because the Pacers were the team that seemed injury-struck. Nesmith was never 100% after his injury. I don’t know how effective he would have been in game seven. Walker might have done something very bad to his ankle Saturday. Tony Bradley, who went from unknown bench player to logging serious minutes early in the series, suffered an injury in game five that opened the door for Bryant to play again. Even with those injuries, the Pacers still played 11 guys before they cleared the bench late. Again, that’s all from the trust Carlisle has in his guys and the depth that Kevin Pritchard and Chad Buchanan built.

And now the Pacers are on to the NBA Finals for the second time in franchise history and the first time in 25 years.[2] As with last year’s run to the conference finals, there will be some critics who claim the Pacers had an easy road to the Finals. Dame Lillard crashed out of the Bucks series. Cleveland was battling several injuries in the second round. And the Knicks knocked out defending champs Boston before the Pacers had to play them.

That talk was valid last year, but is nonsense this year. The Bucks were a mess before Dame got hurt. Yes, Cleveland had injuries, but the Pacers took the #1 seed to the woodshed in the games the Cavs were 100%. And the Knicks were up on the Celtics 2–1 and leading by 9 points in game four when Jason Tatum blew out his achilles. They were winning that series whether he stayed healthy or not. The Pacers got a few breaks along the way, as every team that wins three series does. There’s no doubting, though, that they were the best team in the Eastern Conference over the last six weeks. Which is all that matters.

Now it’s on to the Finals, where we have two fun-to-watch, built via drafts and smart trades teams from the Heartland. Prepare for grousing by the coastal elites and casual fans about how Indy vs OKC is boring. Those people who focus on geography will miss that these are two of the most entertaining teams in the league, and if the exact same rosters were located in Boston and LA, folks would be salivating over this matchup.

I’ve been cautiously optimistic through every round so far, but it is tough to stretch that confidence to the next series. Oklahoma City is the best and deepest team in the league. They have this year’s MVP. They are the best defensive team in the league and a matchup nightmare for the Pacers. To me the only hope for Indiana is if Shai Gilgeous-Alexander were to get injured, something you can never rule out when playing Indiana in the playoffs,[3] or if the Thunder crack under the pressure. As good as they are, this is the first year they had advanced to even the conference finals with this roster, so this is as new to them as the Pacers.

My heart tells me OKC in six, but my mind says the Thunder will take care of the Pacers fairly easily in five. Like I said two weeks ago, if the Pacers can steal one of the first two games, they have a chance…

I stayed up late to watch all the postgame coverage on TNT. It sure was refreshing for a network to hang around for well over an hour after the final buzzer, showing all the on-court activities, interviewing players on the court and then on the TNT set, and letting the Pacers fans who hung around all that time to celebrate on camera.

It was, of course, a strange and surreal postgame show, being the final edition ever of Inside the NBA on TNT, a nearly 30-year-old institution..

If you don’t follow sports and/or sports media, this was strange because Ernie Johnson, Kenny Smith, Shaq, and Charles Barkley, along with most of their support crew, are taking their show to ESPN next year. They’ll even be in the same studio. Why are people noting the switch if the only thing that will be different is what channel you select to watch them? The fear by people who love the show, and clearly the cast as well, is that ESPN will find a way to destroy the best show in sports TV. I loved Shaq throwing down the gauntlet warning ESPN that they were not coming to fuck around. I wish I had any confidence that ESPN won’t mess up a perfect show pretty quickly.

And can someone please hire Kevin Harlan? I’m sure it will get done; it would be insane not to. Perhaps there is already something in place but he and/or ESPN or Amazon wanted to wait until his Turner obligations were complete before announcing it.

  1. On the other end of the court, Mikal Bridges was also allowed to mug Haliburton constantly. It wasn’t aesthetically pleasing basketball, but at least it was called evenly, I guess.  ↩
  2. S and I started dating the week after the Pacers lost to the Lakers.  ↩
  3. I am NOT wishing an injury on him.  ↩
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