INDIANAPOLIS — For the first time these Finals, the Thunder looked shook.
Indiana brought the defensive pressure — like Oklahoma City has done to so many teams this season — and the result was Thunder players trying to do too much on their own and coughing up 19 turnovers. Indiana leaned into its depth, as the Thunder have done all season, and the result was Bennedict Mathurin scoring 27 and the bench as a whole scoring 49, including Obi Toppin doing this.
Indiana turned the tables on Oklahoma City and gave them a taste of what it was like to play themselves.
The result was a 116-107 Indiana win — its first Finals win in 25 years — in front of a raucous home crowd. The Pacers now have a 2-1 series lead, with Game 4 on Friday night in Indianapolis.
After a couple of rough games for the Pacers’ bench, things turned back home.
“This is the kind of team that we are,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. “We need everybody to be ready. It’s not always going to be exactly the same guys that are stepping up with scoring and stuff like that. But this is how we got to do it, and we got to do it as a team. And we’ve got to make it as hard as possible on them.”
The spark was T.J. McConnell, whose scrappy, hustle plays changed the dynamic in the second quarter. His steals ignited the crowd and a 15-4 Pacers run that put them in the lead for the first time in the game.
Indiana found its offensive groove thanks to the bench and turned that into 40 second quarter points on just 26 possessions. This from a team that scored 41 and 45 in the first halves of Games 1 and 2.
At the heart of the Pacers’ bench play was Mathurin, who shot 9-of-12 on his way to those 27 points, including hitting a couple of 3-pointers on a night the Pacers as a whole struggled from beyond the arc (9-of-27).
In the face of the tempo and pressure, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was gassed in the fourth quarter and couldn’t lead the Thunder to the win. The MVP finished with 24 points but on 9-of-20 shooting, with eight rebounds and just four assists. Jalen Williams led the Thunder with 26 points. The Thunder shot 10-of-22 from 3, keeping them within striking distance for much of the night.
However, what won the 68 games and got them to the Finals was their defense, and the Pacers torched that for a long stretch of Game 3. Indiana took better shots and capitalized on them, finishing with a 116 offensive rating (9.5 points higher than the Thunder allowed on average during the playoffs coming into the game).
For Oklahoma City, Game 4 on Friday becomes the season. If they go down 3-1 against a Pacers team that is rising to the moment like this, they will not climb out of that hole.
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