{"id":8687,"date":"2025-05-04T19:59:14","date_gmt":"2025-05-04T19:59:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/8687\/"},"modified":"2025-05-04T19:59:14","modified_gmt":"2025-05-04T19:59:14","slug":"watch-indiana-pacers-vs-cleveland-cavaliers-game-1-nba-playoffs-free-live-stream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/8687\/","title":{"rendered":"Watch Indiana Pacers vs. Cleveland Cavaliers Game 1: NBA Playoffs free live stream"},"content":{"rendered":"

The second round of the 2025 NBA Playoffs gets underway on Sunday, May 4 when the Cleveland Cavaliers host the Indiana Pacers<\/a> at Rocket Arena in Cleveland.<\/p>\n

The game is scheduled to start at 6 p.m. EDT and will be broadcast on TNT and truTV<\/a>. Fans looking to watch this NBA game can do so for free by using DirecTV Stream,<\/a> which offers a free trial or with SlingTV, which doesn\u2019t offer a free trial but has promotional offers available<\/a>. MAX<\/a> has plans starting at just $9.99 a month, and also has a bundle with Disney+ and Hulu for $16.99<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Cavaliers made short work of the Miami Heat, winning their series in four games and by the largest margin in NBA history thanks in large part to a 55-point win in Game 4, the largest ever margin of victory in a closeout playoff game.<\/p>\n

The Pacers didn\u2019t need much longer to dispatch of the Milwaukee Bucks, defeating them in five games with the clincher going to overtime.<\/p>\n

In four regular season meetings, Indiana walked away with wins in three, but two of the games came after Cleveland wrapped everything up.<\/p>\n

WATCH THE GAME FOR FREE HERE<\/a><\/p>\n

Who: Indiana Pacers vs. Cleveland Cavaliers<\/p>\n

When: Sunday, May 4 at 6 p.m. EDT<\/p>\n

Where: Rocket Arena in Cleveland<\/p>\n

Stream: Sling<\/a>; DirecTV Stream<\/a>; MAX<\/a><\/p>\n

What is DirecTV Stream?<\/p>\n

DirecTV Stream<\/a> offers practically everything DirecTV provides, except for a remote and a streaming device to connect to your television. Sign up now and get three free months of premium channels including MAX<\/a>, Paramount+ with SHOWTIME<\/a> and Starz.<\/p>\n

What is SlingTV?<\/p>\n

SlingTV<\/a> offers a variety of live programing ranging from news and sports and starting as low as $20 a month for your first month. Subscribers also get a month of DVR Plus free if they sign up now. Choose from a variety of sports packages without long-term contracts and with easy cancelation.<\/p>\n

What is MAX?<\/p>\n

MAX<\/a> is a streaming service that combines the catalogues of HBO and the various channels that make up the Warner Bros. Discovery Networks like CNN, Discovery Channel and TLC. The service is also partnered with Bleacher Report to provide sports coverage for anything covered by Turner Sports such as the NBA on TNT, the NHL on TNT, college basketball games on TNT and TBS and the Unrivaled 3×3 basketball league. You can also bundle your MAX subscription with Disney+ and Hulu<\/a>.<\/p>\n

HOW TO WATCH THE NBA PLAYOFFS ON truTV<\/a><\/p>\n

RELATED CONTENT:<\/p>\n

Appreciation: Gregg Popovich had a view of the world, and it changed both the Spurs and the NBA<\/a><\/p>\n

By TIM REYNOLDS AP Basketball Writer<\/p>\n

Gregg Popovich understood the world.<\/p>\n

That goes back long before the basketball world knew who he was. It probably can be traced to at least Popovich\u2019s time at the U.S. Air Force Academy, where he majored in Soviet studies and was on his way to becoming a spy.<\/p>\n

He became an icon instead.<\/p>\n

Popovich\u2019s time as coach of the San Antonio Spurs ended Friday, six months after a stroke essentially ended his tenure \u2014 in that capacity, anyway \u2014 without him knowing it. He stepped down, Mitch Johnson was promoted from acting coach to head coach, and just like that, the Spurs started a new chapter.<\/p>\n

Popovich isn\u2019t going anywhere. He\u2019s still the team president. He\u2019ll be around. He\u2019ll have influence. His role going forward is probably largely up to him, a right that he\u2019s earned over the last 30 or so years. His view of the world shaped many of the things that the Spurs are today. Same goes for the rest of the league as well, and as proof, look at any roster these days.<\/p>\n

Some of the best players in the game \u2014 Nikola Jokic, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Luka Doncic, Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Spurs\u2019 own franchise player in Victor Wembanyama among them \u2014 were born outside the United States. Would they have been in the league without Popovich? Almost certainly, yes. But did Popovich and the Spurs help create the path that saw more international players get into the league? Most definitely.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were a pioneer around the international game,\u201d NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said of the Spurs \u2014 specifically Popovich and his longtime right-hand man, team CEO R.C. Buford \u2014 earlier this year. \u201cThey were scouting internationally in a deep way long before many other teams.\u201d<\/p>\n

Basketball is played all over the world, and Popovich \u2014 forever the student \u2014 wanted to learn about all of it. He was finding players in Europe in the late 1980s, long before it became common. As the stories go, Popovich still can\u2019t walk around places like Belgrade without being recognized. That\u2019s probably not much of an exaggeration, either.<\/p>\n

Just look at the roster of all-time Spurs greats: France\u2019s Tony Parker and Argentina\u2019s Manu Ginobili formed one of the league\u2019s all-time Big Threes with Tim Duncan \u2014 another player whose view of the world was perhaps a bit different, having grown up in the U.S. Virgin Islands.<\/p>\n

Boris Diaw, Tiago Splitter, Marco Belinelli, Beno Udrih, Jakob Poeltl, Fabricio Oberto, Pau Gasol and many more were part of the Spurs program as well. Popovich had international coaches \u2014 Italy\u2019s Ettore Messina made big headlines in Europe when he joined the Spurs, for example. And Popovich picked the brains of others when he was coaching the U.S. national team, including former French national team coach (and Wembanyama\u2019s coach) Vincent Collet, someone he went head-to-head with for Olympic gold at the Tokyo Games in 2021.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are smart people everywhere,\u201d Popovich once said, around the time he was taking over as the U.S. coach. \u201cNone of us has it all figured out. Everybody brings something to the table that you might not have thought about.\u201d<\/p>\n

If anyone came close to having it all figured out, it was Popovich.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s a Basketball Hall of Famer. The NBA\u2019s all-time win leader. A five-time champion with the Spurs. Coached the U.S. to Olympic gold. And that\u2019s just the stuff everybody knows about. Ask the people who operate the San Antonio Food Bank what Popovich has quietly done for them and the answers will take a while. Same goes for the Innocence Project and St. Jude\u2019s Children\u2019s Hospital, two other causes he supports.<\/p>\n

Popovich was more than a coach. He was a guy from Indiana who could shoot the ball well and was smart, parlayed that into an Air Force education, should have made the 1972 U.S. Olympic team as a player, took some of the disappointment from that and began learning how to coach instead, took over a Division III team in California that had lost 88 consecutive conference games and turned it into a champion, kept climbing the ladder and here we are.<\/p>\n

The Air Force Academy \u2014 a place he would return to many times after his graduation \u2014 taught him countless lessons, including to embrace different views and to never stop evolving.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you learn there is to get over yourself,\u201d Popovich said. \u201cIt\u2019s not about you.\u201d<\/p>\n

He never stopped learning, either. He changed the Spurs. Changed the NBA, too. Forget the championships and records and one-liners and everything else. Popovich helped change the NBA.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s his legacy.<\/p>\n

The Associated Press contributed to this article<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The second round of the 2025 NBA Playoffs gets underway on Sunday, May 4 when the Cleveland Cavaliers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8044,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3774],"tags":[7,113,126,3866,6,114,3731],"class_list":{"0":"post-8687","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-indiana-pacers","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-indiana","10":"tag-indiana-pacers","11":"tag-indianapacers","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-pacers","14":"tag-rocket-mortgage-fieldhouse"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114451340629114832","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8687","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=8687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8687\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}