Did the Indiana Pacers Just Fumble Their Best Shot?

Did the Pacers just fumble their best shot in this series … or did their commanding pre-collapse performance in Game 1 redraw the battle lines in their favor?

In a brilliantly tense Eastern Conference finals opener punctuated by mind-numbing human error from practically every angle, perhaps it’s best to dwell on a moment of objective beauty, for the sake of everyone’s sanity: Jaylen Brown’s game-tying 3-pointer with 5.7 seconds remaining in regulation. A real stunner. To pump-fake from the bleeding edge of the left corner with Indiana Pacers star Pascal Siakam crowding his airspace, to swivel and gather the ball on his right side with Siakam shading his left, to rise from a standstill and readjust his contorted frame in midair, falling away from Siakam, whose mere presence ought to have been enough to sap the remaining probability from such a difficult attempt. It was, in a sense, a pure and timeless play, a mastery of the moment that rises above the chaos that emerged before and after.

It was a vindicating shot in spiritual commune with one of the best of the decade: a game-winning buzzer-beater by former Raptor OG Anunoby in Game 3 of the 2020 second-round series against the Boston Celtics—one that put Brown in roughly the same ignominious position that Siakam found himself in on Tuesday night. If only Jaylen had thought to say, “I don’t shoot trying to miss” after the game—a 133-128 Celtics overtime victory wherein the jaws of defeat seemed all-consuming, victory snatched away by the team that has more experience with the whims of entropy and frayed nerves that can define postseason basketball.

There aren’t enough satisfying answers to all the hows and whys that littered the final five and a half minutes of Tuesday’s thriller. How did Tyrese Haliburton absent-mindedly dribble the ball off his knee when bringing the ball across half court with less than 30 seconds remaining in regulation and the Pacers up three? Why did Jayson Tatum, who had a remarkable game overall, instinctively rise up for a one-legged 16-foot fadeaway on a put-back attempt when the Celtics were down by three with 14 seconds remaining? Up three points with 10 seconds remaining in regulation, how did Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle not call a timeout when he recognized Andrew Nembhard’s frantic indecision as a five-second violation neared? Why did Siakam go under Derrick White’s screen, which freed up Brown for his heroic shot? (Which is about as far as I’ll go on that particular possession—there was no clear and present opportunity to foul up three points, as Carlisle had instructed the team to do, given how quickly Brown rose for the shot upon catching the ball in the corner.) With less than two minutes remaining in overtime, why did Tatum throw the ball away on an awkward jump pass out of a pick-and-roll when Jrue Holiday was still holding his ground on the pick? How did Haliburton once again lose his mind-body connection with just over a minute remaining in overtime, stumbling out of bounds when trying to get a step past Holiday? Wait, how, amid all the game’s myriad embarrassments, did Tatum end up scoring 10 points in the extra frame?

“A lot of things had to go wrong for us and right for them,” Carlisle said after Game 1, with his eyes still searching, his mind still reeling. “They did.”

Indiana lost a game in which it shot markedly better than Boston but had 50 percent more turnovers (21 to the Celtics’ 14) and attempted 20 fewer free throws (10, compared to the Celtics’ 30). The Pacers were underdogs on the road coming off a Game 7 and were able to overcome double-digit deficits in both halves on Tuesday. Their style was imprinted on the game: Boston—the slowest-paced team remaining in the postseason—was goaded into playing up to the Pacers’ blistering regular-season standard. Indiana’s bench, a strength across the first two series, once again came through. They attacked Al Horford (who was verbally assaulted on the ESPN broadcast, repeatedly called an “old man” by the 63-year-old Mike Breen) in the pick-and-roll.

The synaptic current of Indiana’s pass-heavy offense had Celtics defenders engaging with holograms of alternate realities. The threat that Haliburton would pull up from the logo, the calculus involved in guarding an offensively liberated Myles Turner, who could dive to the rim or space out from beyond, the unnerving persistence of Siakam’s playmaking from the free throw line. It all presents the Pacers with a clear energy map for where the ball should land. And it’s an offensive language far more intricate than what the Celtics have deciphered in the previous rounds. The Pacers had an astounding 38 assists in Game 1—only three teams this century have produced more in a postseason game (and they all recorded 39). Their shooting numbers feel like they ought to be a fluke, especially after historic efficiency against the Knicks in Game 7 on Sunday, but they’re arguably the realest thing about this entire run: The last team to have shot at least 50 percent from the field throughout a playoff run that’s gone on as long as the Pacers’ has? The 1990-91 Chicago Bulls. With Kristaps Porzingis expected to be sidelined for at least the next two games in the series, the Pacers still have a path to make the Eastern Conference finals truly compelling.

In the afterglow of Game 1, I found myself thinking back to the grueling five-hour 2019 Wimbledon final between Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic, wherein Djokovic managed to claim victory despite losing in just about every statistic recorded. In that moment Djokovic became the first men’s player since 1948 to win Wimbledon after facing multiple championship points. “Federer dominated the game of runs,” my colleague Brian Phillips wrote then. “But couldn’t keep Djokovic from seizing control of the game of moments.”

The flow of Tuesday’s game felt like it was in Indiana’s command until it wasn’t. The numbers favored the Pacers until they didn’t. It’s impossible not to wonder whether—at this level of competition, against this caliber of opposition—Game 1 was the Pacers’ biggest shot at this series. The Celtics are a great team that also happens to be riding a fine streak of luck, a departure from Indiana’s previous opponents. The Pacers’ resilience throughout these playoffs has been heartening, but it’s also come largely against teams with crumbling infrastructure; how does that resilience interface against a team that seems too big to fail? Where this leaves the Pacers, now down 0-1 in their first conference final in a decade, depends on the strength of their imagination and the speed with which they can regulate emotional highs and lows. Either the team blew its best shot at stealing home-court advantage, or it has redrawn the series’ battle lines in its favor.