Rick Carlisle has agreed to a multi-year extension with the Indiana Pacers, the team confirmed on Tuesday.
Carlisle, 65, led the Pacers to their first NBA Finals appearance since 2000, and their second all-time, this past season. In pursuit of their first NBA championship, they fell to the 68-win Oklahoma City Thunder in seven games.
Still, Carlisle piloted one of the more unexpected and memorable playoff runs in recent league history. In his fourth year leading the franchise, Indiana won 50 games and earned the No. 4 seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs. A year removed from making a similar magical carpet ride to the Eastern Conference finals, the Pacers dazzled again and this time carried their mojo into June.
Indiana knocked out the Milwaukee Bucks in five games, then ousted the conference’s top-seeded Cleveland Cavaliers in five more. While both the Bucks and Cavaliers dealt with injury issues, the run-and-gun Pacers proved they belonged in the upper echelon of the East with a collection of dominant wins and a few others that went down to the wire, when star point guard Tyrese Haliburton thrived and wowed.
Haliburton made a habit of delivering clutch shots in the postseason, ushering in dramatic victories and rendering an anonymous player poll from earlier in the year completely obsolete. The two-time All-Star was voted the “most overrated” player in the league.
He flushed that narrative once more in the Eastern Conference finals with a game-tying, buzzer-beating bucket to force overtime against the New York Knicks in the series opener, and then again in Game 1 of the NBA Finals, thanks to a last-second, game-winning jumper that completed another comeback.
Indiana took care of the Knicks in six games, but Haliburton’s Achilles tear early in Game 7 of the NBA Finals was a gut punch to Indiana’s underdog effort.
Head coach Rick Carlisle of the Indiana Pacers talks with Tyrese Haliburton during the first half against the Cleveland Cavaliers at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse on April 12, 2024, in Cleveland. (Photo by Nick Cammett/Getty Images)
(Nick Cammett via Getty Images)
The Pacers will be without Haliburton next season as he recovers from his devastating injury. They also won’t have longtime center Myles Turner, who surprisingly signed with the Bucks in free agency.
But Indiana will have plenty of other pieces from the 2024-25 team and Carlisle at the helm.
Carlisle, who won an NBA championship as a player with the Boston Celtics in 1986, famously guided the Dallas Mavericks to a title in 2011. That Dirk Nowitzki-led, six-game triumph over the Miami Heat’s LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh took place in Carlisle’s third of 11 seasons coaching the Mavericks.
He took the Pacers job, for the second time in his career, ahead of the 2021-22 campaign, which started an expedited rebuild in Indiana. After winning a combined 60 games the first two seasons of his second go-around as the franchise’s head coach, the Pacers broke out in Year 3 with the first of their two straight Eastern Conference finals appearances.
Carlisle’s 81 playoff wins are currently tied for the 10th most all time among coaches in NBA history.
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