Yahoo Sports senior NBA analyst Kevin O’Connor is joined by Caitlin Cooper to discuss the NBA Finals and what Tyrese Haliburton, Pascal Siakam and the Indiana Pacers need to do to have success against the Oklahoma City Thunder‘s defense. Hear the full conversation on “The Kevin O’Connor Show” and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen.
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Video Transcript
Everything about him is quirky, really.
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He’s such a fascinating player.
He’s a one of one.
There’s only one Tyrese Halliburton in the NBA.
And with him, like his importance to the team, the, the game was really lost in that late 1st quarter, early 2nd quarter.
He checks out.
He’s out for 6 minutes and 43 seconds.
Pacers are a -12.
We saw Siakam plus the bench lineup against that Oklahoma City double big lineup.
You had neither of the bigs defending Siakam.
It was usually Gilda Alexander or sometimes Isaiah Joe, if I remember correctly.
What went wrong in that situation for Indiana against OKC’s double big in those non-Haliburton minutes.
Yeah, and I know, and this is where, like, I’m sure most of the attention after game 2 is gonna go to Tyrese and many of the things that we just talked about in terms of his overall level of aggressiveness.
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But for me, this is a cleaner matchup for Siakam than it is for Tyrese, and the ball needs to be finding him more often than it has.
He can’t finish a game where he has one post touch by tracking data.
That shouldn’t be happening, especially with how often he was sealing in the first half of that game where touches either weren’t coming to him or weren’t being entered.
In the most ideal manner to him, so the Thunder were the only team I saw during the regular season to the point when the Pacers played them in March that it attempted to cross match a big on to Aaron Naismith, and I wondered, is that something that they’ll do because Siakam’s so effective against centers with his ability to maintain a live dribble in the middle of the court?
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They went to that during those double big minutes where Harenstein’s on.
Naismith and or even when he wasn’t outright assigned to him, they were off ball switching him to keep him on to Naismith in the corner.
The Pacers needed to be looking to involve Siakam in those possessions more, and Siakam probably could have been involving himself.
But then there’s other actions that they are running to try to get him clean post touches and seals against some of the smaller defenders and to OKC’s credit, you know, they’re swarming the ball.
Everywhere.
So if OKC’s gonna help from the corners as much as they do, and they’re gonna send another Dort’s gonna go to Siakam in addition to Siakam having the mismatch with J Gil to Alexander, then the reed needs to go to Tyrese coming off the flare.
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That’s gonna be a 2 on 1 with Naismith.
But if you’re gonna jam it into Siakam, you can’t lead him toward the rim in the direction of where the help is coming.
Like, OKC’s going to be bringing that extra guy from the corner.
If Siakam’s sealing that direction, you have to send it to his outside hand and then let him get to the spin against Shay.
Too often the time they’re, they’re thinking about how they would enter it against most switching defenses, not an Oklahoma City defense that is very unconventional in the places and the ways that they’re willing to send the help.