Indiana\u2019s outlook for the immediate future<\/a> might have just become far grimmer. If the Pacers fears about a torn Achilles tendon manifest, Indiana would be at a disadvantage next season \u2014 assuming Haliburton is able to return next season.<\/p>\nThe third and fourth quarters Sunday night proved how challenging it will be if Haliburton misses extended time; he sets the pace of Indiana\u2019s offense, finds open players and became one of the all-time clutch players. If he\u2019s indeed out for several months, the Pacers will sorely miss Haliburton.<\/p>\n
Pacers turnovers cost them the game<\/p>\n
Indiana, simply put, lost the game because of turnovers. Credit the Thunder, a historically great defense, but the Pacers committed 23 turnovers, while Oklahoma City gave it away just eight times. That led to a massive 32-10 discrepancy in points off turnovers.<\/p>\n
It also started to tilt the balance in the third quarter; the Pacers committed eight turnovers in the period, leading to 18 Thunder points off turnovers in the third alone. The Pacers were outscored by 14 in the period.<\/p>\n
Some key Pacers fail to show up<\/p>\n
Any game in which a star player goes down early \u2014 let alone Game 7 of the NBA Finals \u2014 the path to victory was always going to require role players and reserves to step up. And while it\u2019s tough to blame a few players for Indy\u2019s defeat, Obi Toppin (who had posted some pretty big games these Finals), Aaron Nesmith and Myles Turner each struggled, combining to go 3-of-13 (23.1%), for nine points. Toppin was held scoreless and committed three turnovers.<\/p>\n
Hoops fans robbed of epic Game 7<\/p>\n
This was looking like the setup for an epic Game 7. Tyrese Haliburton had finished games strongly, but slow starts had been an issue. Not Sunday night. Haliburton was hyper-aggressive and sought his shot, draining three deep 3-pointers to score nine points through seven minutes before he got hurt.<\/p>\n
The Pacers hung in, but it was clear they were missing their star player to generate offense. Perhaps the Pacers still lose even if Haliburton finishes the game. In any case, it would\u2019ve made for a far more compelling watch.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou just hate to see it in sports in general, but in this moment, my heart dropped for him,\u201d Gilgeous-Alexander said. \u201cI couldn’t imagine playing the biggest game of my life and something like that happening. It’s not fair. But competition isn’t fair sometimes.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thunder beat Pacers in Game 7 of NBA Finals, win franchise’s first title The Oklahoma City Thunder beat…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":122835,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[260,280,407,328,740,7,1713,408,618,366,311,1501,623,257,619,113,126,832,364,70,85,6,1220,11,261,62,67,3305,3308,310,475,179,61,81,114,258,279,65,1712,1714,622,209,259,66,83,64,312,63,82,3306,256,278,833],"class_list":{"0":"post-122834","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba-playoffs","8":"tag-aaron","9":"tag-aaron-nesmith","10":"tag-alex","11":"tag-alex-caruso","12":"tag-analysis","13":"tag-basketball","14":"tag-carlisle","15":"tag-caruso","16":"tag-chet","17":"tag-chet-holmgren","18":"tag-city","19":"tag-finals","20":"tag-gilgeous-alexander","21":"tag-haliburton","22":"tag-holmgren","23":"tag-indiana","24":"tag-indiana-pacers","25":"tag-jalen","26":"tag-jalen-williams","27":"tag-national","28":"tag-national-sports","29":"tag-nba","30":"tag-nba-finals","31":"tag-nba-playoffs","32":"tag-nesmith","33":"tag-neutral","34":"tag-news","35":"tag-obi","36":"tag-obi-toppin","37":"tag-oklahoma","38":"tag-oklahoma-city","39":"tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","40":"tag-overall","41":"tag-overall-neutral","42":"tag-pacers","43":"tag-pascal","44":"tag-pascal-siakam","45":"tag-point","46":"tag-rick","47":"tag-rick-carlisle","48":"tag-shai","49":"tag-shai-gilgeous-alexander","50":"tag-siakam","51":"tag-sports","52":"tag-sports-news","53":"tag-the","54":"tag-thunder","55":"tag-to","56":"tag-to-the-point","57":"tag-toppin","58":"tag-tyrese","59":"tag-tyrese-haliburton","60":"tag-williams"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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