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In NBA Finals Game 7, Pacers have chance to become misfit champions: ‘All we have is us'
INDIANAPOLIS — Their voices were excited but low. Their faces were beaming but serious. Their celebrations were joyful but muted.
A couple of hours after the Indiana Pacers bounced the New York Knicks and advanced to the NBA Finals for the first time in 25 years, Aaron Nesmith sat at his locker with his ankle in an ice bucket. The Pacers guard, who'd been playing through an ankle sprain, was sick of hearing about what Indiana had just accomplished. He was ready to move on, and so was his team. So, when the cameras and mics began to disappear, along with the cyclical questions about Indiana's remarkable trek to the championship round, he welcomed the seclusion from the outside world.
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Myles Turner, the longest-tenured Pacer, pulled up a chair next to Nesmith. So did a few other staffers, who gathered to form a circle around Nesmith's locker. Pacers assistant coach Mike Weinar passed Nesmith a cup for champagne. That was the only bottle they opened.
After a few high-fives, they were already talking about how to take down the Oklahoma City Thunder, whom they'll now face in Game 7 on Sunday night. The sports cliché of going on a 'Cinderella run' wasn't mentioned in that preliminary discussion. Perhaps because the Pacers don't want to be Cinderella, the Disney princess who needed magic to flip her fortunes.
They want to be misfit champions, the kind who create their own fortune.
'We have a group of people that probably wasn't given anything,' Pacers forward Pascal Siakam said earlier in these playoffs. 'We're in a situation where, at the end of the day, nobody really cares to see us win.'
Yet even without those silver spoons, they've found a way to feast.
The Pacers boast arguably the most unconventional collection of players to ever reach the NBA Finals, headlined by their stars, Siakam and Tyrese Haliburton. Siakam, once raised to be a Catholic priest, didn't play organized basketball until he was 17. He began his NBA career in the then-D League and didn't become a full-time NBA starter until his third season. An NBA Finals MVP and another championship, after winning one with the Toronto Raptors in 2019, could place him on a Hall of Fame trajectory.
Haliburton was traded from the Sacramento Kings to the Pacers in January 2022 and joined an Indiana team that finished the season 25-57. Three-plus years later, he's a two-time All-Star and two-time third-team All-NBA honoree. But the last time Haliburton appeared in a winner-take-all game, well, he didn't appear at all. Haliburton never checked in when Team USA defeated France in the gold medal game at the Paris Olympics last summer. A win Sunday, while once again gutting through a calf injury like he did in Game 6, would cement him alongside Reggie Miller as an undisputed Pacers legend.
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'There's nothing like a Game 7 in the NBA Finals,' Haliburton said. '(I've) dreamed of being in this situation my whole life.'
His teammates have, too, regardless of what individual path they took to get here. For Turner, that's meant ignoring the yearly trade rumors and becoming the franchise's all-time leader in blocks. For T.J. McConnell, that's meant proving on the biggest stage of the sport that the undrafted guard out of Arizona can really hoop. For journeymen bigs like Tony Bradley and Thomas Bryant, that's meant staying ready amid inconsistent minutes and providing a spark whenever they're called upon.
Even for Bennedict Mathurin, whose play can sway at times but never his confidence — he challenged LeBron James before he even played an NBA game — that's meant acknowledging the exceptionality yet fragility of the moment.
'As much as this is a dream right now, I'm not trying to live in my dream,' Mathurin said after scoring 27 points off the bench in Game 3. 'I'm trying to make sure the dream ends well, which means … winning a championship.'
The Pacers, winners of three ABA titles in the 1970s, have never won an NBA championship since joining the league during the 1976-77 campaign. In fact, if it weren't for the 'Save The Pacers' telethon that was engineered by former assistant GM Nancy Leonard, there may not even be an NBA franchise in Indiana. Leonard, 93, is the wife of former Pacers coach, GM and color commentator Slick Leonard, who died in 2021. Brainstorming with her husband, Nancy Leonard came up with the idea to start a 16-and-a-half-hour telethon on July 4, 1977, to sell 8,000 season tickets, which was the amount they needed to keep the franchise from moving or being shut down. The Pacers sold 8,028.
The journey from that dire past informs their defiant present. The Pacers aren't supposed to be here, and they don't care.
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'When you have that belief like, 'It's us against everybody,'' Siakam said. 'We are where we are (because of it).'
But where they're still trying to go? That's a place even some of the game's greatest couldn't reach. Allen Iverson never won a championship. Neither did Charles Barkley nor Patrick Ewing. Even Miller, who, unlike the others, spent his entire 18-year career with one franchise, couldn't deliver the Pacers a title. The 59-year-old is still loved unconditionally by the fans of his former franchise, but there's pain in his heart, too. There always will be.
The incompleteness haunts Miller, as he explained recently on the 'All the Smoke' podcast. As he of all people would know, it's one thing to be a legend; it's another to be a champion.
'I don't need to go back and watch them,' Miller said of his agonizing playoff losses. 'It is a nonstop loop in my head.'
Twenty-five years after Miller had his best shot at a ring, falling in six games to the Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant-led Los Angeles Lakers, he's been courtside during these finals, cheering on his former team. Miller and Haliburton shared a big hug on the court after Game 6, with Miller staring into Haliburton's eyes, as if he could see all the dreams he fell short of being resurrected in his successor.
Thursday's victory officially put the Pacers as close to an NBA championship as they've ever been. But close isn't close enough. Haliburton, whose three game-winners in these playoffs have propelled his team to this moment, won't accept that. Nor will his peers. They have no interest in being the lovable underdogs or admirable challengers. Their ultimate goal, as they prepare for Game 7 on Sunday night, is to be misfit champions.
As one hoist of the Larry O'Brien Trophy would reveal, misfit champions are still champions.
'We just have to find a way,' Mathurin said. '… We're playing away against a great team and a great crowd.
'All we have is us.'
(Top photo of Pascal Siakam and Tyrese Haliburton: Joe Murphy / NBAE via Getty Images)
