OKLAHOMA CITY — Game 1 of the NBA Finals saw an epic fourth-quarter comeback followed by a Tyrese Haliburton game-winning shot that will live forever in Indiana Pacers lore.
However, as many Pacers comebacks as we have seen this season, Game 2 was a reminder of Indiana’s reality: If it continues to fall behind early against Oklahoma City’s elite defense — the Pacers will lose the series. Through two NBA Finals games, the Thunder have led for 91:22 minutes to the Pacers 1:53, and that’s not a recipe for success.
“Another bad first half. Obviously, it was a big problem, and we just played poorly,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said Sunday night after the loss. “A little bit better in the second half but you can’t be a team that’s reactive and expect to be successful or have consistency.”
That was the message across the board from the Pacers after Game 2: The 68-win Thunder are too good to keep falling behind by double digits early and expect to come back and win. That has to change, especially at home in the Gainbridge Field House, in front of their fans for the next couple of games.
Pacers All-NBA point guard Tyrese Haliburton raised his hand as the guy who has to lead that change.
“I think I’ve had two really poor first halves,” Haliburton said. “I just have to figure out how to be better earlier in games.”
In Game 2, the Thunder dialed back their ball pressure slightly, looking to stay solid positionally, cut off drives, and swarm Haliburton when he did try to get downhill. The result was a too-passive Haliburton, who focused more on getting his teammates going (which didn’t happen) than on himself.
“We have to do a better job of getting to the paint,” Haliburton said after Game 2. “It’s a lot easier said than done. I feel like in the first half we were just moving the ball on the outside and I don’t think we had a single point in the paint in the first quarter [they did not].”
When Indiana’s offense is clicking, it’s very balanced, spread pretty evenly among five or six players — Carlisle called their offense an ecosystem.
“They’re more a conceptual team. You have to be kind of a conceptual defense against them,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “If you do that, I think it has a downstream effect on everybody against them.”
In the face of that, it falls on Haliburton to be aggressive, look for his own shot more, and spark his team. This is the Haliburton we saw in the fourth quarter of Game 2, when he had 12 points on 5-of-6 shooting, but by then it was too late.
“We had some success there,” Haliburton said of the fourth quarter. “Me playing off the pitch a little bit more, flying around rather than, if I’m in that high ball screen, which I feel like I am really successful at, that gives them a chance to really load up, pack the paint. They got a couple steals in there. I had some really dumb turnovers tonight.”
That has to change at home in front of their fans for Game 3 on Wednesday. The Pacers know they can’t keep digging holes against this Thunder team and expect to climb out of them.
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