NBA Finals: Pacers have one simple path to upsetting Thunder, and the math didn't add up in Game 2
Miracle comebacks don't happen for one reason alone. But if you were to point to a single number that most defined the Indiana Pacers' against-all-odds 111-110 Game 1 NBA Finals win, which required a 15-point fourth quarter rally, 18 would tell you a lot.
That was the number of 3-pointers the Pacers hit, six more than they had averaged through the first three rounds of the playoffs. The Pacers took 39 triples in the opener, which accounted for more than 47% of their total shots (up from 40% in the regular season) and was eight more than they averaged against New York in the conference finals.
Indiana stuck with the bombs-away strategy in Game 2. It didn't go as well, and by extension, the Thunder rebounded from their own Game 1 shooting collapse to win, 123-107, and tie the series at one game apiece heading to Indiana for Game 3 on Wednesday.
The Pacers made 14 3s at a 35% clip on Sunday. It's not a horrible number. But the Thunder matched them with 14 of their own. That's the difference. In Game 1, the Thunder made seven fewer 3s than Indiana. That's a 21-point disparity in what was a one-point win for the Pacers. Game 2 was a wash from 3, and OKC cleaned up everywhere else.
Indiana has to win the 3-point battle because OKC is better everywhere else on the floor. They're bigger. They have the best one-on-one creator certainly in the series and possibly in the world. They have one of the best defenses in history. There's a reason almost nobody picked the Pacers to win this series, and why many of us didn't even think they could get more than one win.
Game 1 was a stunner. Game 2 wasn't. Game 2, and frankly a lot of Game 1, looked a lot more like everyone expected. The Thunder will miss shots, but they can get pretty much any shot they want. Indiana cannot. As simplistic as the old adage sounds, this has been, and will likely continue to be, a make-or-miss series for the Pacers, who are going to have to do major work from beyond the arc whether they like it or not.
Why? Because OKC's defense makes it damn near impossible to get into the paint. Even when you do, they swarm to you like mosquitoes to type O blood as what has to feel like about 50 sets of hands start swiping at the ball.
Look at how far out Pascal Siakam is when he basically throws an escape pass from jail to the cutting Aaron Nesmith, whose tiny slice of daylight goes dark in an instant as Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is immediately there to block his shot from behind.
So far in this series, Indiana is being outscored by 24 points in the paint, and even that gap feels deceiving. This is likely to continue as the Pacers are having trouble creating any kind of consistent advantage off the dribble and/or into the paint, meaning they have to make it up somewhere else.
That somewhere else is the 3-point line.
If they're making shots, and the Thunder are missing, the Pacers can (barely) hang. In almost any other scenario, over a seven-game series, they can't. Of course, the reason make-or-miss analysis comes off as pretty lazy is because it's never actually that simple. It's all about the types of shots that you're getting, and the process by which you're getting them.
And herein lies the problem for the Pacers, because in Game 2 especially these 3-pointers were not on their terms, which is to say created off an advantage that led to collapses and kick-outs and ball swings into rhythmic shots. Rather, these were "I don't have any choice but to fire this up" 3s. Like this:
It's strange to suggest the Pacers are jacking up 3s by both their own design and by the Thunder's, but that's exactly what's going on. Again, it's all about the quality of these 3s. OKC is fine with giving up quantity.
It's another simple but important distinction, as OKC's defense surrendered over a 41% 3-point frequency rate in the regular season, per Cleaning the Glass, which was the third highest in the league.
But don't confuse that number with a defense that concedes 3s. To the contrary, opponents made just 34.8% of their non-garbage-time 3s against OKC this season, the second-lowest mark in the league. That's because OKC doesn't give up quality 3-pointers.
Oklahoma City, by design, has an unending assembly line of long, strong, athletic wings who can pressure out to half-court and collapse into the paint to harass would-be scorers while still having the ability to race back out to shooters for not just a cursory contest, but to actually disrupt them. Look at all the pressure OKC is putting on Indiana's ball handlers while still flying out to throw off Nesmith's corner 3:
Indiana felt this kind of layered disruption considerably throughout Game 2. Tyrese Haliburton could not break loose from his primary defender, let alone when OKC sent multiple guys at him, to get the Thunder into rotation, so the kick-outs were not generally open. In fact, nobody on the Pacers could create any space.
If you're not beating anyone off the dribble to force help defenders to abandon their man, you're going to have a hell of time creating open 3s. Basketball is actually quite simple in that way.
Haliburton has to be more effective moving forward in terms of looking to score when he does get into the paint. He has to force OKC to send more and more defenders to him to create these open looks for everyone else. He had a pedestrian 17 points in Game 2, but even that number suggests a far better game than Haliburton actually had. He didn't actually start scoring until the game was, for all intents and purposes, over.
As an overall strategy, the Pacers, in part, are taking more 3s in this series because they know they are going to have a hard time with OKC's interior defense and because they know they're playing uphill. Making 3s is the most tried-and-true underdog blueprint. But there's more to it.
The Thunder forced the Pacers into 19 turnovers in the first half of Game 1, an unbelievable number for an extremely protective offense. The surest way to cut down on turnovers is to shoot quickly, before a turnover can happen.
If nothing else, Indiana certainly isn't passing up any 3s. They know that they have to get as many shots on goal as possible with the number of turnovers OKC is likely to force (Indiana kept the number to 15 in Game 2, which is still above their average but perhaps manageable if they're making a bunch of 3s, but you have to count on a pretty big turnover number moving forward).
In the end, it all comes down to a basic question: Will the Pacers make a high percentage of contested 3s, and if they do, will the Thunder do their part in missing a high percentage of theirs? That equation worked out in Indiana's favor in Game 1, but the math went wrong in Game 2.
You can look at a hundred different factors for Game 3 and beyond, but none will outweigh the simple truth that the Pacers have to win the 3-point battle, probably by a wide margin, to have any chance to win another game in this series, let alone three more.
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