Tyrese Haliburton is the new Mr. Clutch, while Canadians star in epic Game 1 of NBA Finals
What the Pacers star has done so far in the playoffs is nothing short of astounding.
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If you skipped Game 1 of the NBA Finals because no big market teams are involved, well, let’s just say you messed up.
Thursday’s 111-110 Indiana Pacers win over the Oklahoma City Thunder was an instant classic.
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Tyrese Haliburton is the new Mr. Clutch, while Canadians star in epic Game 1 of NBA Finals Back to video
Other than the start, which saw the Pacers look a bit overwhelmed by the Thunder’s spectacular defensive pressure, it was, simply put, a down-to-the-last-second epic.
Here are some takeaways:
KING OF THE CLUTCH
What else is there to say at this point about Tyrese Haliburton?
His fellow players voted him most overrated and apparently they couldn’t have been more wrong. When he got around the defence and got off a long two-point shot with 0.3 seconds left — and nailed it — to win the game, Haliburton was just doing what he usually does.
It was the fourth time this post-season he either has won or tied a game with less than five seconds remaining in regulation. Jerry West might be known as Mr. Clutch, but Haliburton is right up there with anyone you’d want to take the last shot.
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This one gave Indiana its first lead of the game — the latest a team has taken a lead in a Finals game since 1971 — but he also forced overtime in Game 1 against the Knicks. That one saw the Pacers down 17 in the fourth and by nine with 51.1 seconds left (which is why Haliburton later directed a choke gesture toward the Knicks).
Haliburton also memorably missed a free throw on purpose in Game 2 against Cleveland, got the rebound, stepped back to three-point range and hit the winner with 1.1 seconds remaining.
In yet another comeback, Haliburton had rallied his team to victory for a series-winning layup in Game 5 against Milwaukee.
Does he have another one in him this year?
OH CANADA
Haliburton’s heroics overshadowed a banner night for three of the four Canadians participating in the series. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the NBA MVP, scored 38 points, tied for 10th all-time in Game 1 of a Finals. It was also the third-most in an NBA Finals debut, after Allen Iverson’s 48 in 2001 and George Mikan’s 42 in 1949.
Gilgeous-Alexander was the best player on the floor in the first half, scoring 12 points in the first quarter alone and had 10 in the fourth, but it wasn’t enough.
Teammate Lu Dort easily was the second-best Thunder player in the game. Dort had a spectacular block (one of two rejections plus four steals for the fourth-place finisher in defensive player of the year voting), added five three-pointers and had four rebounds in a dominant performance.
Indiana starter Andrew Nembhard was good too, but saved his best for last with eight points and three assists in the fourth. That included a dazzling dribbling package followed by a jumper over his good friend Gilgeous-Alexander.
As we predicted, Nembhard also took a lot of pressure off Haliburton by handling the ball and initiating the offence a lot, moving Haliburton off the ball.
The other Canadian, Pacers wing Bennedict Mathurin, was far quieter than usual offensively, but was much better than advertised defensively.
ALL THE MOMENTS MATTER
In a one-point basketball game, to paraphrase The Wire, all the pieces matter. Which made us think of two fourth-quarter plays in particular that might not have seemed to be crucial at the time, but ended up being just that for the Pacers.
One that really stood out was when Pascal Siakam secured an offensive rebound, was fouled and went to the free-throw line with 3:07 remaining and Indiana trailing by eight points.
One of the few knocks on Siakam’s game over the years, dating from his time with the Raptors, was a propensity to miss a lot of free throws at key moments (he shot 9-for-18, or 50% in clutch time from the line in the playoffs before this year, including 6-for-11 during Toronto’s championship run).
The issue surfaced again when Siakam missed both of his free throws, which should have allowed the Thunder to go back up by 10 when Gilgeous-Alexander hit a pair of free throws 15 seconds later. But Dort committed a lane violation (as the ESPN broadcast said, you can go weeks without seeing one called), giving Siakam a bonus chance, which he capitalized on.
How big was that extra point? It was the difference between a potential overtime and a Pacers regulation win.
Another moment that would prove to be important came a bit earlier, when a 15-point Thunder lead had been whittled to seven midway through the fourth. Pacers centre Myles Turner, who had been extremely quiet to that point other than his first three-point make of the game about a minute earlier, came away with an offensive rebound and was fouled, giving the Pacers another possession.
Turner, showing uncommon finesse for a man his size, pump-faked a defender to get himself open beyond the three-point lane, then stepped to a different spot to launch an awkward-looking three.
While Turner acted like he intended to bank it off glass the whole time, you can bet he definitely didn’t. The unlikely shot gave the Pacers a jolt of confidence and Turner would score eight of his 15 points in the fourth quarter.
STATS PACK
Per the NBA, this was only the third comeback of 15+ points in the fourth quarter of an NBA Finals game since 1971 and the first since Dallas over Miami in 2011 (also coached by Rick Carlisle, whose lead assistant was future Raptors coach Dwane Casey). That eventual Mavericks win over LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh and the heavily favoured Heat was one of the bigger series upsets we’ve seen over the years.
Only a year later, Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, James Harden and the young Thunder upset the again massively favoured Heat in Game 1 of the Finals. But that one didn’t carry over. LeBron would get his first ring when Miami won the next four games and OKC didn’t make it back this far until now.
What will happen this time around?
Another wild stat, this one from Ben Golliver of the Washington Post:
The Pacers have now cheated death FOUR times in this year’s playoffs.
– Bucks: 97.9 win% up 7 points in final 35 seconds
– Cavaliers: 95.9 win% up 7 points in final minute
– Knicks: 99.7 win% up 14 points in final 3 minutes
– Thunder: 96.4 win% up 9 in final 3 minutes.
The NBA’s three-point explosion has made a lot of things more possible than before, including absurd comebacks.
And one from stats guru Keerthika Uthayakumar:
“NBA teams were 0-121 when down by 7 or more points in the final 3 minutes of regulation in the NBA Finals over the last 28 post-seasons.
They are now 1-121.”
@WolstatSun
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