Doyel: Underdogs in every NBA Finals game, Pacers force a Game 7. Is this really happening? You bet
INDIANAPOLIS – And now, anything can happen. Wait, hang on. Anything has happened. The Indiana Pacers, given no chance against the mighty Oklahoma City Thunder when the 2025 NBA Finals began, have forced a Game 7 with a 108-91 blowout — it wasn't that close — Thursday night at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Game 6.
Game 7 will be Sunday night at the Paycom Center in downtown OKC.
'One game,' Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said afterward. 'This is what it's all about. This is what you dream about growing up.'
Can this impossible dream come true? Think about it: The 2025 Indiana Pacers, two years removed from being a lottery team, are 48 minutes from winning the first NBA title in franchise history. This wasn't on anyone's radar in the preseason, and things only got worse when the regular season began. The Pacers lost four of their first six games, though NBA insiders have a saying: You need 25 games to know what kind of team you have.
After 25 games, this team was 10-15.
Two of the Pacers' top three centers were lost for the season after suffering torn Achilles' tendons a few days apart. All-Star and U.S. Olympian point guard Tyrese Haliburton wasn't playing like himself. The Pacers, surprise Eastern Conference finalists in 2024, were leaking like an Indiana basement. Water was finding its level. The Pacers, those plucky Pacers, were heading…
… to Oklahoma City for Game 7?
Is this really happening?
Pictures:See the best shots by IndyStar photographers at Game 6 of the NBA Finals
Tyrese Haliburton isn't moving like someone with a strained calf. He's dancing with OKC defender deluxe Alex Caruso, in and out, left and right, before darting behind the arc for a 3-pointer and a 56-39 lead. Now he's leaping for a pass by Thunder wing Jalen Williams, batting it out of the air, saving it from going out of bounds and then heading up the court. Pascal Siakam is filling the lane, and Haliburton isn't looking but finds him anyway for a dunk. The Pacers lead 62-42.
Would Haliburton play in Game 6? Would he not? That was the question entering Thursday — 'a game-time decision,' Carlisle had called it Wednesday morning — though Carlisle was saying after the game 'the drama was created in the press.'
Whoever created it, however it started, this was some serious drama. No Haliburton? No chance for the Pacers. That was the consensus as Haliburton was receiving one MRI and visiting with two specialists after returning from OKC on Tuesday. He got up some shots on Wednesday, then warmed up 3½ hours before tipoff Thursday, wearing a gray sleeve on his calf, when the decision was made: Haliburton could play.
This was the culmination of nearly 72 hours of treatment, including three trips to a hyperbaric chamber, members of the Pacers training staff coming daily to Haliburton's home to treat his calf with an electronic stimulation machine that looks like a video game joystick — 'H-wave,' Haliburton called the device — and even members of his own family pushing him to do what he could to get ready for Game 6.
'Are you doing treatment right now?' they'd ask him.
'Put something on your leg,' they'd tell him.
Haliburton didn't have a typical Haliburton game — 14 points, five assists — and normally that's a death knell for the Pacers, who are unbeatable when he posts a 20-and-10 double-double but vulnerable when his points and assists slip below those thresholds. But have you not been paying attention to a word I've written? Normal is not happening anymore for the Pacers, who turned rising young Thunder star Jalen Williams — Mr. 40-Point Man from Game 5 — into Mr. Minus-40 for Game 6.
Seriously. One game after scoring 40 points, Jalen Williams' plus-minus score was minus-40. Give a lot of that credit to Pacers wing Aaron Nesmith, who was hounding Williams (16 points, 0-for-4 on 3s, one assist, three turnovers) all over the court.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Mr. MVP himself, wasn't a lot better, and might have been worse: 21 points, two assists, eight turnovers. Give a lot of that credit to Pacers guard Andrew Nembhard, who did what he's done all series: Defending SGA for the better part of 90 feet, leaving the game only when SGA left, returning to the court when SGA returned.
Put it like this: SGA played 30 minutes, 56 seconds. Nembhard played 31 minutes, 6 seconds. And Nembhard almost outscored the MVP, totaling 17 points on just seven shots from the floor — 5-for-7 overall, and 3-for-5 on 3s — and adding four assists and one turnover. Does it look like the Pacers' seventh-leading scorer (Nembhard: 10 ppg) outplayed the NBA's scoring leader (SGA': 32.7 ppg)?
Looks are not deceiving.
Nembhard would've been the Pacers' scoring leader in Game 6, but the Pacers had to put five players on the floor in the fourth quarter — OKC coach Mark Daigneault pulled his starters after three quarters — and Obi Toppin was one of those players for seven minutes in the period, and he was having himself a game. Late in the third quarter, when Toppin had made three of his four 3-pointers, the crowd was serenading him at the foul line:
Obi Toppin! Obi Toppin!
And in the fourth quarter, playing one of the games of his life, Toppin kept drilling difficult jumpers to finish the night with 20 points.
'We're just a hungry team,' Toppin was saying afterward.
Starving, seems like.
And not satiated yet.
The play of the game could've been Haliburton's steal, save and side-eye pass to Siakam for the dunk — 'If we're fortunate enough to go on and win this thing,' Haliburton said, 'I think that play will be remembered for a long time' — unless it was the play that ended the third quarter: Toppin finally missing a 3-pointer and Siakam batting the long offensive rebound to Nembhard, who leapt for the ball, caught it and whipped a pass to Ben Sheppard in one motion. Sheppard then beat the buzzer with a 3-pointer for a 90-60 lead entering the fourth quarter.
Or maybe it was another steal by Haliburton, who saved it to Toppin, who passed to Siakam, who passed to Nesmith, who buried a corner 3 for a 48-35 lead. That had Daigneault calling timeout and the Gainbridge Fieldhouse camera putting Colts coach Shane Steichen on the scoreboard, where he popped the front of his gold-out T-shirt — Yes 'Cers, it said — before the camera found John Haliburton at his seat, waving that towel with his son's face on it.
Unless it was that play by T.J. McConnell. Which play? You decide. McConnell had himself another of those games, like in Game 5, when the oldest, shortest player on the court picked on all those younger, bigger, longer, All-NBA defenders for OKC for 18 points in 22 minutes. More of the same in Game 6 for McConnell, who had 12 points, nine rebounds, six assists and four steals in 24 minutes.
McConnell had three more rebounds than anyone for the Thunder. He had two more assists than anyone for OKC. He had three more steals.
'It's no surprise what T.J. does out there,' Toppin said, clearly speaking only for himself. Because, seriously. T.J. McConnell outrebounded OKC 7-footer Chet Holmgren (nine to six), out-assisted OKC point guard SGA (six to two) and out-stole OKC All-NBA defenders Lu Dort and Jalen Williams — combined — by a four-to-zero tally?
It's a big surprise what T.J. does out there. It's a big surprise to outsiders what the fourth-seeded Pacers are doing out there, too, though we're getting used to it, aren't we? They dismantled the Bucks, then did the same to two of the three teams seeded ahead of them in the Eastern Conference — No. 1 Cleveland and No. 3 New York — and now have pushed the Thunder, which led the NBA with 68 wins and won the Western Conference by 16 games, to Game 7.
And in doing so, the Pacers destroyed them in Game 6. The Thunder missed 15 of their first 16 3-pointers, were outrebounded 46-41 and had seven more turnovers (21) than assists (14). The Pacers ripped out the Thunder's heart in the second quarter, then spent the third quarter eating it with a nice chianti. That's a little Hannibal Lecter reference for you — Hello, Tyrese — after the Pacers devoured Oklahoma City in the middle two quarters. They scored more points in the second quarter (36) than OKC had in the second and third quarters combined (35) … and the Pacers added 26 more in the third.
The Pacers so thoroughly decimated the Thunder, Holmgren couldn't convert an open dunk on an alley oop, landing before the ball — which clanged off the rim — and then holding his head in both hands in disbelief. Lu Dort, who entered the game on a 14-for-24 heater in the NBA Finals from 3-point range, was a frigid 1-for-5 in Game 6, including an air ball.
The Thunder's 60 points entering the fourth quarter were a season-low. The numbers just go on and on.
'Obviously it was a very poor performance by us,' Daigneault said. 'It was disappointing.'
Disappointing to the Thunder, but thrilling to an Indiana fan base that filled the arena, spent 48 minutes soaking it in, then spilled into the warm night to celebrate. More than 90 minutes after the game ended the party was still raging on Georgia Street, where the smell of skunk — maybe it was something else — filled the air. You could get high on life at a time like this, with the Pacers reaching the 2025 NBA Finals and pushing the mighty Thunder to the limit, and perhaps returning home to Indianapolis in a few days with the Larry O'Brien Trophy.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel onThreads, or onBlueSky and Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar, or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar. Subscribe to the free weekly Doyel on Demand newsletter.
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