Entering Game 1 of the 2025 NBA Finals, the Indiana Pacers were already having probably the most miraculous playoff run in NBA history. You figured, if any shred of statistical and/or basketball logic still existed in the world, the luck would run out.
Tyrese Haliburton, who is on some kind of magical carpet ride right now, had other ideas. With three tenths of a second on the clock, Haliburton capped another furious Indiana comeback with a game-winning jumper as the Pacers shocked the Oklahoma City Thunder, on their home floor, 111-110 to take a 1-0 lead in a series in which few picked them to even be competitive.
Perhaps now we’re all going to finally learn our lesson. These Pacers are for real, as ridiculous as that sounds to be making such a statement about a team that is in the NBA Finals.
But how can you blame the naysayers? The Pacers are pulling things off in these playoffs that are less likely than the asteroid hitting. That’s not really an exaggeration. In the play-by-play era, teams were 1-1,640 in games in which they trailed by at least seven points with less than a minute to play entering this postseason. You got that? One time, in 27 years, had a team made a comeback like that.
The Pacers have done it three times in these playoffs. I’ve tried to talk to one of our CBS Sports statistical gurus about this, and he keeps shutting me down. He says the numbers don’t even work based on any sort of historical precedent. He calls it “incalculable.”
This rally on Thursday wasn’t from seven down inside the final minute, but the Pacers were down by 15 in the fourth quarter, which ties the mark for the biggest fourth-quarter comeback in Finals history. The biggest lead Indiana had the whole game was the one-point margin by which it won. The last time that happened was last century.
Can they honestly keep getting away with this? Can Haliburton, specifically, keep doing this? Since 1997, only Michael Jordan has made a game-winning shot in the Finals with less time on the clock that Haliburton’s 0.3 on Thursday. Guys go their entire life without hitting even one of the shots that he’s starting to make look routine. Four times in these playoffs Hali has made a shot to tie or take the lead with less than 1.5 seconds remaining.
CBS Sports
Honestly, this is unbelievable. The guy is only playing in his second postseason and he already has more shots to tie or take the lead in the final three seconds of a playoff game than anyone not named LeBron James.
CBS Sports
It’s legit mind-blowing how many “never been done before” chapters there are to this Pacers story. For instance, do you realize they have won four playoff series over the last two years as the lower-seeded team? That’s never been done before, and now they’re three wins from doing it for a fifth time.
Want more? Guess how many times a team has overcome a 15-point fourth-quarter deficit on the road to win a conference finals or Finals game in the play-by-play era. Four. Guess who was the coach of all four teams that pulled it off. Rick Carlisle.
|
2011 |
WCF Game 4 |
Dallas |
OKC |
15 |
7 |
|
2011 |
NBA Finals Game 2 |
Dallas |
Miami |
15 |
2 |
|
2025 |
ECF Game 1 |
Indiana |
New York |
17 |
3 |
|
2025 |
NBA Finals Game 1 |
Indiana |
OKC |
15 |
1 |
Are you honestly kidding with this? There’s absolutely no way to make sense of this. If you calculated the odds of not just one of these things happening in a single postseason but all of them? Your calculator would break. Put it into ChatGPT and watch your computer burst into flames.
We can talk about how the Pacers committed 19 turnovers in the first half on Thursday but managed to cut that number to six in the second half, or 18 3-pointers Indiana made at a 46% clip, or the 39% overall shooting mark that OKC put up, or the nine Pacers who hit at least one 3-pointer, tying an NBA Finals record, but again, what’s the use in looking at in-game numbers when none of the historical ones make any semblance of sense?
At some point, we just have to ask ourselves if the Pacers, who are now 8-1 in clutch games in these playoffs, are simply a team of destiny. It’s the only explanation. This is divine intervention stuff, and we are all witnesses. Which history will need. Otherwise, nobody would believe this ever actually happened.
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