‘We’re different than every other team in the NBA:’ 7 reasons why the Indiana Pacers can win the title

Siakam’s averaging a team-high 18.8 points, 6.2 rebounds and 3.1 assists per game in this postseason, shooting 58% on 2-pointers and 44% on 3s. He’s perfectly comfortable contributing in the two-man game with Haliburton, hunting switches to pound smaller defenders in the post, making connective-tissue passes in the middle of the floor, playing quality defense across the frontcourt positions and doing it all while hardly ever turning the ball over. He’s just completely rock-solid: an additive accelerant, an All-Star and one of two NBA champions on the roster — we see you, Thomas — and an absolutely perfect fit.

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OK, back to the clamps …

After that incremental progress post-Pascal deal, Indiana jumped all the way up to 13th this season. And if you chop off those first 25 injury-plagued games, the Pacers rank seventh in defensive efficiency after early December — ahead of defense-first outfits like the Pistons, Rockets and Warriors.

“We’re starting to care more,” Pacers center Myles Turner told reporters earlier this season. “We went through a stretch last season where we kept on saying the same thing: ‘We gotta defend, we gotta defend.’ But I think now we’re putting those words into actions.”

That manifests in more focused effort on the boards, where Indiana went from a bottom-five defensive rebounding rate last season to just below league-average in 2024-25. It shows up in an improved attentiveness to defending without fouling: The Pacers went from dead last in opponent free-throw attempt rate last season to, again, just below league-average. It pops up in both a commitment to floor balance and a dedication to sprinting back after a shot goes up; no team was better during the regular season at limiting opponents’ transition opportunities than Indiana.

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And it leaps off the screen in the sheer amount of ground Indiana covers (second in both the regular season and playoffs in average distance traveled per game on defense, according to Second Spectrum) and in how quickly they do it (No. 1 in the postseason in average speed on defense) — especially in terms of the pressure they apply to opponents in the backcourt.

3. The Pacers love to pick up full court

The Pacers have played press defense more often than any other team in the NBA this season, according to Synergy Sports tracking data — 12.4 possessions per game during the regular season, and 17.7 possessions per game in the playoffs, twice as much as any other team in the postseason field. Indiana has forced turnovers on nearly 17% of those press possessions, which is good, but almost beside the point; even without forcing a cough-up, the press pays dividends in the discomfort it inflicts on the opposing offense.

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Applying pressure the length of the court is a great way to put extra miles on the legs of an opposing point guard; it’s no coincidence the second-place team in playoff press possessions, at 8.8 per game, is the Pistons, who deployed Ausar Thompson and Dennis Schröder to try to tire out Jalen Brunson in Round 1. It’s also a great way to get an offense out of rhythm.

Committing a defender (typically Nembhard, Nesmith or the über-caffeinated T.J. McConnell) to face-guarding the opposing point guard the full 94 feet will often force the opponent to inbound to a secondary ball-handler — often someone less adept at handling ball pressure and at getting the team into its prescribed offensive sets. Indiana will also throw second and third defenders into the backcourt, including their bigs, trying to make even your release-valve outlet passes more stressful than they typically are.

The more difficult it is to get the ball across half-court, and the longer it takes to do so, the less time the offense has to attack. And, when it does, the more likely it is that it’ll be starting at a disadvantage, with players in spots they’re not supposed to be, scrambling around trying to get into position, knowing all the while that every second it takes to get started brings them one tick closer to the shot-clock buzzer. Hurried possessions are rarely smooth ones, and late-clock shots are less likely to find the bottom of the net: Indiana’s opponents have shot 51.3% this season when they fire with 15 or more seconds remaining on the clock, 45% after the 15-second mark, and 41.2% with seven seconds or less on the timer, according to NBA Advanced Stats.

All told, the Pacers have allowed 0.905 points per press possession this season, according to Synergy, well below their overall defensive mark. It’s a valuable tool in Carlisle’s arsenal — one he’s able to deploy because …

4. The Pacers are deep

No Pacer averaged more than 33.6 minutes per game during the regular season; no Pacer has averaged more than 34.1 minutes per game in the playoffs. As my podcast partner Tom Haberstroh noted on this week’s episode of The Big Number, all five members of Indiana’s starting lineup are averaging at least 14 points per game in the postseason — the first time since 1987 a team has done that (minimum of 10 games started) — and eight Pacers are averaging at least 8.5 points per game.

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“It’s a balanced effort,” Haliburton said after scoring 31 points in the Game 5 closeout in Cleveland — the Pacers’ first 30-point-scoring performance of these playoffs. “We’re different than every other team in the NBA. We don’t just have one guy who scores all the points. I think we defeat teams in different ways: We move the ball, the ball is flying, we’ve got a lot of different guys making shots, making plays.”

Carlisle leans on the starting five of Haliburton, Siakam, Nembhard, Nesmith and Turner — one of the best big-minutes lineups in the NBA during the regular season, and a league-best plus-73 in 164 playoff minutes. He won’t hesitate to go 11 deep, though, because he’s got players he can trust all the way down his bench.

McConnell’s an ace backup point guard: a defensive menace at the point of attack, a sure-handed facilitator (44 assists against 14 turnovers in 166 playoff minutes) and a north-south engine who routinely makes well over 60% of his shots at the rim. Bennedict Mathurin offers scoring punch (and, sometimes, just punch) in the second unit — another source of hard drives, athletic finishes and defensive physicality on the perimeter.

Sheppard brings length and quickness on the ball and a bit more long-range shooting touch than Mathurin, but with less scoring verve (and in a quieter overall package). Obi Toppin’s a perfect frontcourt fit on a team that loves to push the ball in transition; while Indiana will often play Siakam and Toppin together at the 4 and 5 spots when Turner sits, Bryant has provided a credible floor-spacing, interior-scoring complement. While other teams tighten their rotations, the Pacers stretch theirs; the deeper you get into the series, the more evident the impact.

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“Through the course of the series, you can see it on the other team’s faces,” Nesmith told reporters. “They’re tired. Their hands are on their knees. We’re continuing to run. It’s just game-by-game, quarter-by-quarter. You may not see it in the game, but they feel it.”

Carlisle’s comfort level with cycling through those options helps ensure that Indiana has fresh legs and the confidence that it can make a push with any combination in any circumstance — like, say, chopping down a 19-point deficit in a closeout game on the road.

“We just had a lot of guys that played extremely hard, and we just said, ‘Hey, let’s hang in this thing, try to wear them down and see if we can outlast them,’” Carlisle told reporters after Game 5 in Cleveland. “And essentially, that’s what happened.”

That’s happened a lot this season. The Pacers owned the NBA’s best net rating in “clutch” games during the regular season, blitzing opponents by 20.9 points per 100 possessions when the score was within five points in the final five minutes. Including the playoffs, Indiana is 29-14 in “clutch” games — the most close and late wins of any team in the league — and has outscored its opposition by 183 points in the fourth quarter, the NBA’s fourth-highest mark, behind only Cleveland (+259), Minnesota (+226) and Oklahoma City (+193).

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One big reason why?

5. Tyrese Haliburton isn’t overrated. If anything, he’s underrated

NBA players are certainly entitled to their opinions, and we’d never presume to say otherwise. Facts aren’t feelings, though, and a preponderance of them point toward Haliburton being a friggin’ monster when it comes to generating offense and driving winning.

Haliburton has been one of the most lethal crunch-time performers in the league this season, scoring 120 points in 136 “clutch” regular- and postseason minutes on 47/41/76 shooting splits, with 29 assists against just five turnovers. When he’s had a shot to tie or take the lead in the final two minutes of the game this season, he’s gone a preposterous 10-for-11 (90.9%) — 4-for-4 inside the arc and 6-for-7 from 3-point range.

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Two of those makes have come in these playoffs: his driving layup around Antetokounmpo in the series-clinching Game 5 overtime win over the Bucks and his stepback 3 over Ty Jerome to snatch Game 2 from the Cavs. According to ESPN Research, that makes Haliburton just the second player in the last 28 years with multiple go-ahead field goals in the final two seconds of a game in a single postseason. The other: LeBron James in 2018.

(Even sicker: All time, NBA teams are 3-1,640 when trailing by at least seven points in the final minute of the fourth quarter or overtime since the 1997-98 season. That works out to a winning percentage of 0.18%. Haliburton iced two of those three wins.)

As impressive as those buckets are, though, Haliburton’s impact isn’t confined to crunch time. Since those underwhelming first 25 games, he’s averaging 18.9 points on .634 true shooting to go with 9.6 assists, 4 rebounds and 1.4 steals per game, and the Pacers have scored 122.9 points per 100 possessions in his minutes, according to PBP Stats — an offensive rating that would’ve led the NBA during the regular season.

Among the 210 players who’ve logged at least 1,000 minutes in that span, the only primary ball-handler types whose teams had higher offensives rating in their minutes are Nikola Jokić, Donovan Mitchell, Darius Garland, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jamal Murray. Filtering just for this postseason, the Pacers have stayed steady, scoring a blistering 122.4 points-per-100 in Haliburton’s minutes — which ranks above all those guys.

Haliburton’s style of play is at the heart of what makes Indiana’s offense tick. He lives to push the pace, hunting hit-ahead passes and opportunities to probe for early, easy offense. When things slow down, he surveys and dissects coverages as well as any player in the NBA — but he’s not ponderous in his pursuits. Haliburton trailed only Jokić in touches and passes per game during the regular season, but he ranked 112th in both seconds per touch and dribbles per touch, according to Second Spectrum tracking.

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In a related story, the Pacers finished second in the NBA in passes per game during the regular season and are leading the pack in the playoffs, averaging a whopping 337.1 passes per game — the most for any playoff team since the 2014-15 Spurs, and the most of any conference finalist in the player tracking era (2013-14). And they’re doing it while averaging just 2.82 seconds per touch — the fastest average touch time in the postseason.

Attitude reflects leadership; the ball finds energy. Haliburton leads by serving, and so, everybody eats. (And eats really well: Indiana finished the regular season fifth in team effective field-goal percentage, and leads the postseason at 59.1% — the highest mark of any conference finalist in the Cleaning the Glass database, which stretches back to 2003.)

The results speak for themselves: Two playoff appearances in Haliburton’s three full seasons in Indiana, and both times, the Pacers have made the conference finals. Doesn’t sound too overrated to me.

And hey, speaking of underrated …

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6. You guys: Andrew Nembhard

Over the last two regular seasons, the 25-year-old Gonzaga product has averaged 9.6 points and 4.6 assists per game on 48/32/80 shooting splits. Over the last two postseasons: 14.8 points and 5.7 assists per game on 54/49/81 shooting. I believe this is what the kids call “a playoff riser.”

Nembhard gives the Pacers a secondary ball-handler capable of initiating offense — he’s toting a 3.5-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio through two rounds — and making opponents pay for face-guarding Haliburton to force the ball out of his hands. Including possessions where he passes out to a teammate, Indiana is scoring 1.24 points per possession finished out of one of Nembhard’s pick-and-rolls in these playoffs, according to Synergy — the fourth-highest mark in the postseason among players to finish at least 25 such plays.

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He gives them another willing and credible shooter, one unafraid of stepping into and knocking down huge shots — like, for example, his season-saving go-ahead 30-footer in Game 3 against the Knicks in 2024’s second round, and his bully-ball and-one on Darius Garland with 1:07 to go in Game 5 against Cleveland.

He gives Indiana one of the best perimeter defenders in the NBA — someone consistently able to bear the brunt of matchups against every team’s toughest offensive options. I mean that literally: Nembhard ranked in the 100th percentile in the NBA this season in average matchup difficulty, according to The BBall Index — ahead of venerable stoppers like Luguentz Dort, Dyson Daniels, Jrue Holiday, Jaden McDaniels and, well, everybody else in the league.

Nembhard also finished in the 99th percentile in individual perimeter isolation defense, and in the 96th percentile in off-ball chaser defense — elite at both applying clamps one-on-one on the ball and staying connected to dudes who scamper around screens all over the court. He’s got a knack for timely disruption, too, coming up with two of the biggest defensive plays of the playoffs — one steal with the Pacers down four in the final minute of overtime to continue their unreal comeback in Game 5 against Milwaukee, and another on an inbounds pass with Indiana down three in the final half-minute of the similarly unreal comeback in Game 2 against Cleveland.

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Every team needs players who can defend at the point of attack, nail help rotations, distribute the ball, knock down shots, create in isolation and play through the ratcheted-up physicality that comes in the postseason. The Pacers found one with the first pick of the second round of the 2022 NBA Draft and inked him to a three-year contract extension that will account for less than 12% of the salary cap through 2028 — a deal that, just one year later, looks like an absolute steal for a 16-game player whose value leaps off the screen.

7. They’ve been good against good competition

The Pacers went 20-18 against teams with .500-or-better records during the regular season, the seventh-best record against winning opposition in the NBA. (Four of the six teams above them — the Cavs, Rockets, Lakers and Warriors — have already been eliminated.) Go by net rating, and Indiana went 15-9 against teams with top-10 point differentials; the only team still alive with more wins against the upper crust was Oklahoma City. (Here’s where we remind you the Pacers led or were tied in the final minute in three of the four games they lost to Boston in last year’s Eastern finals — with Haliburton missing the final two games.)