NBA Finals: Pacers outlast Thunder in Game 3, regain series lead

By TIM REYNOLDS AP Basketball Writer

INDIANAPOLIS — Every time the Indiana Pacers have lost a game in the last three months, they have come back to win the next one.

Even in the NBA Finals – against a huge favorite who the Pacers now have in some trouble.

Bennedict Mathurin scored 27 points off the bench, Tyrese Haliburton finished with 22 points, 11 assists and nine rebounds, and the Pacers retook the lead in the NBA Finals by beating the Oklahoma City Thunder, 116-107, in Game 3 on Wednesday night.

“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’ve got to do it.”

Pascal Siakam scored 21 for Indiana, which enjoyed a whopping 49-18 edge in bench points. The Pacers, who lost Game 2 in Oklahoma City, improved to 10-0 since mid-March in the game immediately following a loss.

“So many different guys chipped in,” Haliburton said.

Jalen Williams scored 26 points, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander added 24 and Chet Holmgren had 20 for the Thunder, who led by five going into the fourth.

Game 4 is back in Indiana on Friday night.

“We had a lot of good stretches of the game,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “But they had more good stretches than we did – and outplayed us over the course of 48 minutes.”

History says the Pacers are in control now; in the 41 previous NBA Finals that were tied at a game apiece, the Game 3 winner went on to hoist the trophy 33 times – an 80.5% clip.

Advantage, Pacers.

It was back-and-forth much of the way. There were 15 ties; to put that in perspective, there were 13 ties in the five-game entirety of last year’s Finals between Boston and Dallas. The last time there was a Finals game with more ties: Game 1 between Cleveland and Golden State in 2018, which was knotted 17 times and included a 51-point effort from LeBron James before the Warriors held on in overtime.

TJ McConnell finished with 10 points, five assists and five steals for Indiana; since all those stats started being charted, nobody had ever come off the bench and done all that in an NBA Finals game.

“We just had guys make plays after plays,” Haliburton said. “Our bench was amazing.”

The Thunder were 61-2 when leading going into the fourth quarter in the regular season. They’re 1-2 when leading going into the fourth quarter in this series. Indiana – at home in an NBA Finals game for the first time in 25 years, with Caitlin Clark, Reggie Miller, Oscar Robertson and many other stars in the crowd – simply owned the final 12 minutes.

Indiana outscored OKC 32-18 in the fourth, holding the Thunder to 35% shooting with the game and control of the series on the line.

“There’s a lot of areas we can clean up,” Holmgren said. “Everybody who stepped out there can be better.”

FAMILIAR TERRITORY

Game 1, a loss on the opposition’s final shot. Game 2, an easy win. Game 3, another loss to fall behind in the series again.

This formula is not the one that would be considered optimal by the Thunder, especially in the NBA Finals. But if there is some consolation for the overall No. 1 seed in these playoffs, it’s this: the Thunder have been in this exact spot before and found a way to prevail.

That resiliency will be tested yet again.

“I thought it was an uncharacteristic night in a lot of ways for us,” Daigneault said. “We got to learn from it and then tap back into being who we are in Game 4. If we do that, I think we’ll have a much better chance to win.”

It was not very Thunder-like in Game 3. They blew a fourth quarter lead for the second time in the series and gave up 21 points off turnovers.

“We’ll watch it. It wasn’t all bad,” Daigneault said. “But we definitely have to play our style and impose our will for more of the 48 minutes if we want to come on the road and get a win.”

There are uncanny similarities between the first three games of this series and the first three games of the Western Conference semifinal matchup between Oklahoma City and Denver.

• In Game 1 of the West semifinals, Aaron Gordon hit a 3-pointer with about 3 seconds left to give the Nuggets a win in Oklahoma City. In Game 1 of the NBA Finals, Haliburton hit a jumper with 0.3 seconds left to give the Pacers a win in OKC.

• In Game 2 of the West semifinals, the Thunder evened things up with an easy win. In Game 2 of the NBA Finals, the Thunder evened the series with an easy win.

• In Game 3 of the West semifinals, Denver – at home for the first time in that series – played from behind most of the night before fighting into overtime and eventually getting a win for a 2-1 series lead. In Game 3 of the NBA Finals, Indiana – at home for the first time in the series – trailed for much of the first half before eventually getting a win for a 2-1 series lead.

The Thunder dug their way out of that hole against the Nuggets. And now, the same task awaits – with an NBA title at stake.

“I wouldn’t say that now is the time for emotions, to be thinking about how you’re feeling, emotional this, emotional that,” Holmgren said. “You kind of have to cut that out and look at the substance of what it is. We have a great opportunity here and the great thing is we have another game coming up, Game 4.”

GUEST LIST

Clark – wearing a yellow T-shirt emblazoned with the famed “In 49 other states it’s just basketball. But this is Indiana” saying along with a finals logo – was seated with Indiana Fever teammates Aliyah Boston and Natasha Howard for the game, in the same end of the court as the Pacers’ bench.

In addition to Hall of Famers Robertson and Miller, both seated near the court as well, former Pacers Mark Jackson, Dale Davis were also on hand. Former Indianapolis Colts running back Edgerrin James and Alex Palou, the winner of this year’s Indianapolis 500, were also in the arena. Palou arrived for the game in a pace car from Indianapolis Motor Speedway, which was lit up in gold for the evening as a Pacers tribute.