OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla.\u00a0 \u2014 The game plan was the obvious one. Just chip away, the Indiana Pacers said, because there was no other option that would have made any sense at that point.<\/p>\n
They were down by 15 points with 9 minutes, 42 seconds remaining. They were turning the ball over about once every three possessions, couldn\u2019t stop Thunder point guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and had the Oklahoma City crowd in a deafening fury.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just said, \u2018Hey, let\u2019s just keep chipping away at the rock’,\u201d Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. \u201cGot to keep pounding the rock and just chip away and hang in.\u201d<\/p>\n
With 0.3 second left, there was no more rock left to pound.<\/p>\n
Not for Game 1, anyway. Tyrese Haliburton scored with that much time left, and the Pacers stunned the Oklahoma City Thunder 111-110 in the opener of this year\u2019s NBA Finals on Thursday night.<\/p>\n
Here is a look inside the comeback:<\/p>\n
The run<\/p>\n
The Pacers outscored the Thunder 32-16 in that final 9:42, with only six players getting used for those final minutes and all of them figuring into the scoring column.<\/p>\n
Forward Obi Toppin took two shots. Both were 3-pointers. Both connected.<\/p>\n
Center Myles Turner and guard Andrew Nembhard each scored eight points to lead Indiana during the flurry. Forward Aaron Nesmith led the Pacers with four rebounds in that stretch. And Haliburton provided the exclamation point with the jumper at the end.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve worked my entire life to get to this stage, so there\u2019s no holding back,\u201d Turner said.<\/p>\n
The collapse<\/p>\n
The Thunder shot 4-for-16 in that closing stretch. Gilgeous-Alexander went 2-for-4; everyone else on the Thunder combined to shoot 2- for-12. The MVP had 10 points; everyone else on the Thunder combined for six.<\/p>\n
The reasons for all that?<\/p>\n
\u201cA little bit of everything,\u201d Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. \u201cThey made some plays. On some of those plays, they made some shots. They got a couple that you wish you\u2019d get back. We had bonus fouls, which were costly. Then offensively, we didn\u2019t move the scoreboard as well as we could have. So you just add all that up, and that\u2019s how you get that sort of comeback.\u201d<\/p>\n
The reactions<\/p>\n
There was no choke sign from Haliburton, no celebratory dance, just a bunch of hugs with teammates and a big hug with his father, John Haliburton, in the hallway near the Pacers\u2019 locker room afterward.<\/p>\n
The Pacers, Carlisle said, haven\u2019t engaged in a ton of raucous postgame victory laps during this playoff run.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is going to be a long journey and a lot going on,\u201d Carlisle said. \u201cSo, we\u2019re just going to have to keep our eye on the ball and keep focusing on one another.\u201d<\/p>\n
The big plays<\/p>\n
Here were some of the key moments:<\/p>\n
Carlisle subbed in five new players \u2014 Haliburton, Nembhard, Nesmith, Toppin and Turner \u2014 with 9:42 left and Indiana trailing 94-79.
\nTurner hits a 3-pointer with 7:47 left, cutting the lead to 96-88 and forcing an Oklahoma City timeout.
\nToppin and Turner made 3-pointers on consecutive possessions (Turner keeping the second one alive with an offensive rebound) to get Indiana within 98-94 with 6:16 left.
\nGilgeous-Alexander\u2019s two free throws with 2:52 left pushed the Thunder lead to 108-99. Nesmith and Nembhard connected on back-to-back 3s, and Indiana was within thee with 1:59 left.
\nThe Pacers got a stop with 11 seconds left and didn\u2019t call timeout, having taken advantage of a challenge stoppage 11 seconds earlier to map out scenarios. The clock kept running, and Haliburton hit the winner with 0.3 second left.<\/p>\n
The final word<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know what you say about it, but I know that this group is a resilient group and we don\u2019t give up until it\u2019s 0.0 on the clock.\u201d \u2014 Haliburton<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla.\u00a0 \u2014 The game plan was the obvious one. Just chip away, the Indiana Pacers said,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":82419,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3774],"tags":[1981,1970,1977,2097,7,420,113,126,3866,6,67,475,47,114,1979,66,83,12324,1974],"class_list":{"0":"post-82418","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-indiana-pacers","8":"tag-app-professional-sports","9":"tag-app-sports","10":"tag-app-top-stories","11":"tag-associated-press","12":"tag-basketball","13":"tag-florida","14":"tag-indiana","15":"tag-indiana-pacers","16":"tag-indianapacers","17":"tag-nba","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-oklahoma-city","20":"tag-orlando","21":"tag-pacers","22":"tag-professional-basketball","23":"tag-sports","24":"tag-sports-news","25":"tag-tampa","26":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114640575753335871","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82418","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=82418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}