Pacers steal Game 1 of the NBA Finals with another Tyrese Haliburton clutch game-winner

OKLAHOMA CITY — Tyrese Haliburton and the Pacers have done it again.

This was the fifth time in these playoffs that Indiana has come from 15 down to win a game. The was Haliburton’s fourth game-winning or game-tying basket this postseason.

“I thought we did a great job of just walking them down,” Haliburton said. “When it gets to 15, you can panic, or you can talk about, ‘How do we get it to 10? How do we get it to five from there?’ So, you know, I think all [playoffs], that’s what we preached as a group, is when we get down big, let’s just find a way to incrementally get it down.”

Indiana has won every Game 1 these playoffs, three of them on the road, and that didn’t change in Game 1 of the NBA Finals. On a night when the Thunder were the better team for 45 minutes — leading by nine with 2:30 remaining — it was once again the Pacers who got stops and hit the big shots. Haliburton’s game-winner led to the only lead change of the game and silenced Loud City while sending Pacers fans into a frenzy.

Indiana stole Game 1 of the NBA Finals on the road, 111-110. The Pacers hold a 1-0 series lead, with Game 2 set for Sunday in Oklahoma City.

That gives the Thunder a couple of days to stew on the one they feel they let get away — the Thunder dominated the first half (but led by only a dozen at halftime), had 17 more scoring opportunities but couldn’t knock enough shots down.

“We took, like, 50 something shots in the paint for only 40 something points,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said (OKC shot 23-of-54, 42.6%, in the paint for 46 points). “We can look at those. We have to finish stronger. We have to be stronger with the ball.”

For the Pacers — who embraced their underdog status in these Finals — this was just more of what they do.

“That’s been our thing the whole year, even at the beginning of the playoffs. Everybody got the other team winning every single game,” Obi Toppin said. “We just go out there and always do what we do.”

Toppin may have best summed up the resiliency of Indiana: He had a brutal first half, turning the ball over three times, missing defensive rotations and some shots, but he settled down in the second half and ended up leading the team with 17 points. It was a balanced Pacers’ attack with six players in double figures, three of them also racking up double-digit rebounds.

The other Pacers standout was Andrew Nembhard, who scored or assisted on 16 Pacers points in the fourth quarter while defending Shai Gilgeous-Alexander on the other end. Coach Rick Carlisle asked Nembhard to bring the ball up and start to initiate the offense in the fourth and that was a critical part of Indy’s comeback.

Gilgeous-Alexander looked like an MVP for most of the night, scoring 38 points, but the Pacers generally did a good job of staying home on other players and letting him cook. Those other players shot 36.8% on the night.

The Thunder lost this game in the first half, when their defense was the embodiment of the famous Mike Tyson quote, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” The Thunder’s swarming defense forced 19 first-half Pacers turnovers, 11 of them live-ball.

“We like controlled chaos but that was just chaos, ugly,” Haliburton said.

However, the Thunder turned those 19 turnovers into just nine points, too often looking for a knockout 3-pointer rather than simply getting to the rim. That, combined with OKC shooting 5-of-20 from the midrange in the first 24 minutes, kept the Pacers within striking distance, down a dozen, 57-46, at the half. The Pacers were dominated in the possession game in the first half (and for the whole game). Behind those 19 turnovers and six offensive rebounds in the first half, the Thunder had 18 more scoring opportunities. They just didn’t take advantage of them.

Oklahoma City opened the game with the first twist of the series, going small and starting defensive guard Cason Wallace instead of big man Isaiah Hartenstein. It didn’t take long before the Pacers started to attack that with off-ball screens forcing Wallace to switch onto the bigger Pascal Siakam. That sparked a 10-3 run, and in what would be a theme of the night, the Thunder pulled away and the Pacers roared back.