won Game 2 123-107<\/a>, tying the championship matchup at a game apiece.<\/p>\n\u201cAny time you\u2019re the lower seed in a playoff series, you know your job is to go split or go try to get one on the road,\u201d Pacers guard Tyrese Haliburton said. \u201cWe got Game 1, you know, but it felt like we really let the rope slip there in the second quarter.\u201d<\/p>\n
That they did: A 19-2 run in that second quarter put the Thunder in control \u2014 and the final margin was 16.<\/p>\n
The Pacers were trying to join the 1986 Boston Celtics, 1987 Los Angeles Lakers, 1996 Chicago Bulls and 2017 Golden State Warriors as teams that won Games 1 and 2 in all four rounds of a single postseason. All four went on to win the NBA title.<\/p>\n
Those teams all did it with home-court advantage in every one of those series. The Pacers haven\u2019t had home court since Round 1 \u2014 taking the first two of that series against Milwaukee, then winning the first two of Round 2 at Cleveland, the first two of the Eastern Conference final at New York, and Game 1 of the finals in Oklahoma City.<\/p>\n
So, in the end, the Pacers have to settle for going 7-1, tying for the fifth-best record in Games 1 and 2 in a single postseason. They also became the third team to win five of those games on the road in a playoff run.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think you want to win every game you play,\u201d Pacers forward Pascal Siakam said. \u201cSo, we are not happy with how the game went today, and that\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Houston went 5-3 in Games 1 and 2 on the road on its way to the title in 1995 and Miami went 5-3 in road games over the first two games of series in 2023 on its way to the NBA Finals. (The Heat were 6-2 in \u201croad\u201d games in Games 1 and 2 of their series in the 2020 bubble playoffs as well, but those games were all in Lake Buena Vista, Florida.)<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not interested in talking about the past,\u201d Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. \u201cEach day, as you are on a playoff run, is like a new day. I find that looking back is a dangerous thing. We\u2019ve got to keep our eye firmly where it needs to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
If the Pacers had won Sunday, they likely would have been overwhelming favorites heading home with a 2-0 lead. Only two teams \u2014 the 1993 Chicago Bulls and 1995 Houston Rockets \u2014 won the first two games of a finals on the road, and both went on to win the NBA title in those seasons. And teams that open the finals with a 2-0 lead go on to win the series 86.5% of the time (32 times in 37 chances).<\/p>\n
\u201cKeep our heads. We know where we\u2019re at,\u201d Pacers forward Aaron Nesmith said. \u201cWe know what we\u2019ve got to do better and just execute our game plan better.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP NBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/NBA<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) \u2014 For the Indiana Pacers, a chance at being perfect in Games 1 and 2…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86435,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[280,7,329,588,113,126,6,446,1220,11,586,310,179,279,1714,66,278],"class_list":{"0":"post-86434","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba-playoffs","8":"tag-aaron-nesmith","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-chicago-bulls","11":"tag-in-state-wire","12":"tag-indiana","13":"tag-indiana-pacers","14":"tag-nba","15":"tag-nba-basketball","16":"tag-nba-finals","17":"tag-nba-playoffs","18":"tag-ok-state-wire","19":"tag-oklahoma","20":"tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","21":"tag-pascal-siakam","22":"tag-rick-carlisle","23":"tag-sports","24":"tag-tyrese-haliburton"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114652509855028264","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86434","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=86434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86434\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}