INDIANAPOLIS — After a disappointing Game 5 loss where Tyrese Haliburton scored just eight points on seven shots, the temptation was to call for the Indiana Pacers to adjust their game plan for Game 6 by over-indexing on aggression in the box score. However, head coach Rick Carlisle had a different approach in mind.
“As a team, we have to be aggressive, and we have to have a level of balance,” he said after Game 5. The Pacers needed to play their own brand of basketball, which is built on the many-hands-make-light-work approach that has produced one of the NBA’s most potent offenses and the insistence on full-court ball pressure that has made them one of the NBA’s most improved defenses.
In Game 6, the Pacers showed their commitment to running 12 deep and to all 12 of them running off makes and misses, making them tough to handle on the second night of a back-to-back in February but an absolute nightmare to deal with every other night for two weeks in late May.
Eleven Pacers played before garbage time in Saturday’s 125-108 win, and seven of them scored in double figures. Andrew Nembhard changed the game with his defense on Knicks star Jalen Brunson, snatching six steals and getting his offensive game unstuck with 14 points on 6-for-12 shooting. Backup center Thomas Bryant, who’d seen his minutes dwindle in favor of Tony Bradley’s ability to battle Knicks center Mitchell Robinson on the glass, got an opportunity to return to the fold and made the most of it, drilling three huge 3-pointers, blocking a shot, and finishing with 11 points in 13 minutes. Obi Toppin provided his trademark irrepressible energy and above-the-rim finishing against the team that drafted and then traded him, chipping in 18 points, six rebounds, and three blocks.
Haliburton didn’t get many good shots early, going without a field goal until he sprinted into a pull-up 3 four and a half minutes into the second quarter. But he kept reading the game, kept moving the ball and his body, and kept trusting that the deposits he and the Pacers had put in over the course of the game and the series would eventually pay off.
In the fourth quarter, Haliburton sliced the Knicks’ pick-and-roll coverage to ribbons, repeatedly getting into the paint to either finish for himself or set up a rolling Obi Toppin for a layup or dunk. Haliburton scored or assisted on 19 points in the fourth quarter, capping it with a 32-foot bomb in the final minute to push the lead to 20 — a coup de grâce to pack up the Knicks and send them back to New York while sending the Pacers to the NBA Finals.
“I'm so proud of Tyrese, bro,” said Pacers center Myles Turner. “From how the season started, to how he was getting trashed, and everybody was basically trying to turn their heads to him, he just kept his head down and kept working.”
The Pacers’ playmaking and pace, Siakam’s ceaseless sprinting and gap-filling offensive play, and their strength-in-numbers approach carried the offense. What killed the Knicks was Indiana repeatedly forcing them into costly mistakes — 17 turnovers leading to 34 Pacer points. The team’s season-long commitment to cranking up the tempo and maintaining vise-grip pressure eventually claimed yet another victim.
The Pacers will now face off against
