On television debate shows and inside group chats, the question has been asked repeatedly since Wednesday night: Where did the Indiana Pacers’ 17-point rally in the fourth quarter to steal Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals from the Knicks rank among the NBA’s all-time playoff comebacks?
More telling about Indiana and its historic postseason, however, is that perhaps the better question is where it ranked among the Pacers’ playoff comebacks during just the past five weeks.
In that span Indiana has produced precedent-defying comebacks to clinch a first-round series against Milwaukee and knock off top-seeded Cleveland in the second round and now, in the Eastern finals in New York, to become the ultimate unkillable opponent.
“It’s a muscle — the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. “It’s not easy.”
Since the NBA began keeping play-by-play data 28 years ago, teams trailing by seven-plus points in the final 50 seconds of the fourth quarter or overtime are 4-1,702 — and the Pacers are responsible for three of the victories, all since mid-April.
“It’s to the point,” center Myles Turner said, “where I’m just used to it.”
Judging by history, Wednesday’s victory, in which Indiana trailed by 17 points with 6:26 left in the fourth quarter, 14 with 2:51 left and nine with 58 seconds to play, was the most improbable.
“I think that’s part of our identity,” star guard Tyrese Haliburton said. “Can we wear on teams for 48 minutes?”
Knicks big man Karl-Anthony Towns said: “We played 46 good minutes. Those two minutes is where we lost the game.”
The Pacers aren’t infallible; they just look like it when the game is on the line.
In the playoffs, they are 6-0 in games meeting the NBA’s definition of “clutch,” when the score is within five points in the last five minutes of the fourth quarter or overtime, by scoring at an almost unfathomable rate of 160 points per 100 possessions — for context, the NBA single-season record, set last season by the Boston Celtics, is 123.2 — while allowing just 56.
“You just can never let your guard down against them,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said. “No lead is safe.”
Indiana has done it by unlocking a ruthlessly efficient formula of gaining extra possessions and then converting them into points.
In 22 total “clutch” minutes this postseason, it has seven offensive rebounds, seven steals and just two turnovers while shooting 54% overall and 50% on 3-pointers. And its biggest strength has been a cool-headed confidence that has allowed it to execute that formula under even the most stressful situations by ignoring seemingly insurmountable deficits and instead breaking them down into their component parts.
When Knicks star guard Jalen Brunson checked out with his fifth foul with 10:05 left in the fourth quarter and New York scored the next 14 points to open a 106-92 lead with 8:01 to play in Game 1, “we were very much teetering on the edge,” Carlisle said. “We talked in the huddle about ‘Keep working the game, keep trying to make it hard on these guys. Find good looks.’ I mean, they had their best defenders out there during much of that stretch, and it was really difficult.”
To kick-start Wednesday’s huge comeback, said Turner, the Pacers’ center, Indiana focused specifically on small areas of improvement. New York built its lead in part through undisciplined Indiana fouls; the Pacers wanted to improve at defending without fouling while grabbing more rebounds.
In the final 6:26 of the fourth quarter, Indiana didn’t turn the ball over, compared with New York’s two turnovers. The Pacers also made 10 of their 11 shots in that span, including seven of their eight 3-pointers, with guard Aaron Nesmith responsible for six of them.
“Each shot that he made just kept giving us more confidence that we could really win this game,” Haliburton said.
Turner said Indiana “can’t depend on having to make hellacious shots for three minutes straight for the rest of the series, but I think we did a good job of just showing up.”
Only Cleveland, Houston and Golden State produced more “clutch” wins during the regular season than Indiana’s 24, and only Boston, Cleveland and Oklahoma City had higher winning percentages in such scenarios. Multiple Pacers said those reps had “battle-tested,” as Turner said, the team’s approach when it is trailing.
“‘Let’s get it to 10, let’s get it to five,’” Haliburton said of Indiana’s focus late in the fourth quarter. “There is no 17-point shot. I think we did a great job of just chipping away, chipping away, chipping away, and good things happened for us.”
Haliburton’s final-second shot Wednesday that forced overtime — after it first bounced high off the back rim, then fell through the net — joined two other instant-classic game winners he had made this postseason to beat Milwaukee and Cleveland.
Haliburton said that when the ball was still at the top of its bounce, yet to go in, he knew it would drop into the net.
Turner said: “He’s delivered again, again and again. He’s on a mission right now. We all are.”
