Doyel: One more day. One more game. And all the grind, nonsense and drama will be over. Who is ready?
Rick Carlisle is sitting up there, talking with reporters, and he sounds exhausted. He's so tired, he almost sounds defeated — but that's not the case. Check the box score. The Indiana Pacers have just won Game 6, beating the Oklahoma City Thunder to save their season and force a Game 7 in these incredible 2025 NBA Finals. And Carlisle is spent.
"This is what you dream about growing up," the Pacers coach says of Game 7, and while it doesn't exactly sound like it, you know he means it. Whatever energy he has after 104 games, he's saving it for the film study he'll do to get ready for practice the next day, then for the flight to Oklahoma City, then for more of this — more meetings with reporters, the grind behind the grind, the drain behind the drama.
Carlisle is thinking about it all as the clock approaches midnight Thursday at Gainbridge Fieldhouse. He's trying to keep his days straight.
'It's getting back on the plane at 3 p.m. tomorrow, have a team dinner tomorrow night, another session with you guys, whatever day that is,' he says, then takes a shot.
'Saturday,' he says, and he's right.
Carlisle concludes his media obligation — after 19 days of this, meeting with reporters almost daily and twice on game days must feel like such an obligation — and walks slowly off into the rest of a night that is just getting started.
Game 7 predictions: Can Pacers pull off championship upset? Belief is rising
Doyel on Game 6: Underdogs in every NBA Finals game, Pacers force a Game 7.
Now it's Tyrese Haliburton's turn, and he's not even trying to sound happy. He is happy, no doubt. Just doesn't sound it. He was able to play in Game 6, against some steep odds. The Pacers just won, against even greater odds. Haliburton looked a lot like himself out there in just 23 minutes on the court — 14 points, including a trio on 3-pointers, and a handful of delightful look-away passes among his five assists — but he doesn't sound like himself in here now.
What does he normally sound like? Upbeat. Vivacious. Haliburton is the modern-day NBA star, meaning, he gets it. His brand is his brand, and it's not limited to 48 minutes a night, 82 times a year plus the playoffs. Branding is a 24/7/365 thing, and Haliburton is normally up to the challenge, but this isn't normal and he's trying to protect himself. A voracious consumer and contributor on social media, he has deleted the apps from his phone.
Someone is asking Haliburton a good question — and there have been some real doozies during the Pacers' 2025 NBA playoff run, including one from me (sigh) we'll get to in a minute — and Haliburton is too tired to fake his answer, to think of the brand. He's exhausted, he's drained, and he's about to sound exhausted and drained.
Here's the question: 'This team has never been this close to an NBA championship in its history. You've talked with Reggie (Miller) about how much that would mean to you personally. How do you weigh that over the next 48, 72 hours, with the focus it's going to need to win (at OKC) in Game 7?'
Haliburton starts his answer by focusing on focus — 'Yeah,' he sighs, 'not trying to look at it from, like, a big-picture thing' — and then reveals that even the happy stories people will write and tell feel exhausting at this time of year.
'The narratives are going to be almost poison,' he says, and he's about to mention some really happy possible narratives. 'What this would mean to our city, and our organization, and legacy talk. And we played so well and now the pressure is on.
'Like, you know what I mean? There's going to be narratives that we can't really pay attention to.'
He's going to celebrate winning Game 6, though. Right?
'I don't even want to say, you know, 'celebrate this one tonight and move on,'' he says.
He just wants to get some sleep.
The Pacers don't just seem to be playing at a different speed than everyone else. They are playing at a different speed, faster, than everyone. This is actual data logged by the advanced analytical site Second Spectrum, which has tracked the distance NBA teams have run in every game since 2013 — and come up with something that sounds logical, plausible and startling:
The Pacers have run more miles and at higher speeds than any team in the NBA Finals since 2013. The Pacers are doing this after 82 regular-season games, followed by three playoff series that went five games (Milwaukee), five games (Cleveland) and six games (New York). No wonder they sound tired, you know?
This goes well beyond the media obligations, though let's point out a few more of those.
How about Bennedict Mathurin after Game 3? That was the Mathurin game — 27 points in 22 minutes off the bench — and afterward, as one of the game's biggest stars, he was brought into the postgame news conference room. His reward? Questions from an international press corps that is not always, shall I say, reserved. On non-game days, during the players' obligatory media availability, reporters from Japan and Brazil and other places grab whichever players they can, teach them how to say something like, 'Watch (this channel)' in another language, and then put them on camera to say it. The reporters think it's a blast. The players do a good job of pretending.
Back to Mathurin. He's just had the game of his NBA life, and here was the first question from a media market far, far away:
'Every day when people go out of their house, they try to have a nice day,' the reporter said. 'Do you think about this, that you were going to have a good game today?'
Mathurin stared.
'Yeah,' Mathurin said after a moment of silence. 'Is that a trick question?'
The reporter shook his head, no.
'I pray every morning, so what are you trying to say?' Mathurin said, then continued. 'I pray every day, I know I'm going to have a great day.'
Before Game 6 of the NBA Finals at Gainbridge Fieldhouse — the Thunder led 3-2, remember — a reporter from a galaxy far, far away asked OKC coach Mark Daigneault, essentially, to taunt the Pacers.
How are you going to celebrate, the reporter was wondering, if you win tonight? Or would you maybe prefer to win (the series) at home?
'I'm just going to skip (that one),' Daigneault said pleasantly.
It's not only the international reporters asking unanticipated, borderline impossible questions. It's us locals. OK, fine, it's me. This happened after Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals in New York:
The Pacers, who had a 3-1 lead entering the night, have just played disastrously. They are outrebounded, outshot, out-everything'd, and basically outfought all game. Afterward, Carlisle blasts his team's effort.
'Well,' is how Carlisle opened his postgame news conference, before a question could be asked, 'we obviously didn't play with the level of force that we needed to.
"To start the game we didn't have the right level of force, the right level of attitude necessary. Overall disposition, posture, force, intensity — all that — just simply was not good enough."
The next person into the press conference room is Pascal Siakam, and he has the misfortune of volunteering that he and his teammates had been 'outfought' by the Knicks.
Look, the topic is fair game. Carlisle had just ripped his team's effort, and now Siakam, in his own way, has mentioned the same thing. Now the microphone is in my hands — state your name and media outlet — and to be honest, I'm not thinking very hard. Hey, we're all tired.
This was the game where the Pacers' starting five famously scored a grand total of 37 points, but that wasn't a Siakam thing. He has just had another of his adult-in-the-room games — 15 points, six rebounds, five assists — but, as I said, I'm not thinking about Siakam being the one Pacers' starter who has carried his weight in this game. I'm hearing Carlisle question his team's effort, then hearing Siakam question his team's fight, so I'm asking Siakam:
How can that happen in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals?
Siakam is taken aback, and with the benefit of hindsight, I get it. He probably has no idea Carlisle has just opened the door to this line of questioning, but he knows one thing: He feels under attack, and he's tired, and he's not having it. He pushes back, and I get it.
Tried to explain all this to Siakam during the off-day interview session in OKC, but a Pacers official said it could wait for the offseason. So it will.
As for the rest of you:
Are you not entertained?
Media inanity is fun to point out — even mine — but more than anything else, the Pacers are being pushed to the outer limits by the Thunder, and by the grind of playing this many games for this many months. Almost nine months after the start of training camp, the Pacers will play their 105th and final game Sunday night. Think about 105 games. A successful college season, one that goes well into March, is about 35 games.
This is three of those. And it takes a toll.
Take Pacers guard Andrew Nembhard. After being one of the team's top two defensive stoppers all season, along with Aaron Nesmith, Nembhard has been asked to defend three future Hall of Famers in the first three rounds — the Bucks' Dame Lillard, the Cavaliers' Donovan Mitchell and the Knicks' Jalen Brunson — and now gets, ahem, reigning MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. This has been Nembhard's nightly task, as grueling mentally on non-playing days as it is physically during the games, and then comes Game 5 of the NBA Finals when he scores just seven points in 36 minutes and people are wondering: How come the Pacers aren't getting more from Nembhard?
Take Pacers center Myles Turner. He played with a cold in Game 2, but didn't tell anyone outside the locker room. You found out only because Carlisle wanted you to know, because he thought it was fair — if he was going to ask Turner to play through a cold against bouncy young Thunder star Chet Holmgren — that media and fans understood. How do you get over a cold during the NBA Finals, with travel and practice and games? You don't. Not completely.
Someone asked Turner about the cold before Game 5: Have you recovered? How are you feeling?
'I'm all right,' he said. 'No excuses this time of year — it is what it is. People get sick all the time. You can't stop the train from rolling. Take it for what it is, take my medicine and get rolling.'
Someone asked him about it before Game 6: How are you feeling? Are you over the cold yet?
'It doesn't matter,' he said. 'That's the best I can put it.'
Take Tyrese Haliburton. He twists an ankle in Game 2 at OKC, the pain finally hitting after the adrenaline from the game subsides, and is spotted limping away from the postgame news conference. Then he strains his calf in Game 5, plays with it, makes zero field goals and takes a beating for that unproductivity in the press. To get ready for Game 6 he goes through 72 hours of what he describes as nearly round-the-clock care.
'Massage, needles, hyperbaric, H-waves,' he says when asked about it on Wednesday, then expands on his preparation for Game 6 when asked about it again after the game.
'Went to hyperbaric chamber, had an MRI,' he said of his Tuesday — the day after Game 5 — in Indianapolis. 'Had a meeting with a couple specialists and my agents and the organization, and then the next day more treatment at the gym, more stuff at the gym, tried to get some shots (Wednesday).
'And then just around the clock — hyperbaric again, and (two Pacers training staff members) have been at my house, coming and putting H-wave on me and doing a bunch of treatment on me that way. And then this morning (before Game 6), hyperbaric again. Usually not a gameday hyperbaric person, but just trying to give myself the best shot that I could coming into today. And then just more H-wave, more treatment at the house.'
No wonder, after the Pacers won Game 6, Haliburton sounded a little bit less than happy, and a lot more than tired. Relief is coming soon, though. One way or another, the 2025 NBA Finals end Sunday night. One team will mourn. One will celebrate. You just wish both could sleep soundly.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Threads, or on BlueSky and Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar, or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar. Subscribe to the free weekly Doyel on Demand newsletter.
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