Clawing back from 15 down in the 4th quarter, the Indiana Pacers take Game 1 of the 2025 NBA Finals.
OKLAHOMA CITY — Tipoff to the opener of the 2025 NBA Finals came a few minutes after 8:30 p.m. ET. A ferocious crowd at Paycom Center stood and roared, and their team of choice, the Oklahoma City Thunder, seized the court, primed to chase down the first league championship since the franchise came to town in 2008.
The Indiana Pacers joined the fray about an hour later.
Through the first half, the Pacers wound too tight, which showed itself in playing too fast, neglecting details of their game plan and, worst of all, coughing up the ball at a record pace.
Let’s be clear about that: No team in the play-by-play era (since 1997) ever had turned over the ball 19 times in a half of a Finals game, first or second … until the Pacers did that Thursday night in Game 1.
It was the antithesis of what they had hoped to do against the handsy, pushy Thunder defense. And it seemed certain to be their undoing over the final 24 minutes. Until it wasn’t, and they wriggled out of their self-buckled strait jacket on guard Tyrese Haliburton’s trademarked game-winner.
TYRESE HALIBURTON GIVES THE PACERS THE LEAD!
GET TO ABC NOW FOR THE FINISH! pic.twitter.com/l4SPrNspGG
— NBA (@NBA) June 6, 2025
The moment
The Pacers — away from prying eyes, in a visitors’ locker room that easily could have gone sideways — checked themselves and their emotions. Had they looked in the mirrors there, underneath the raucous stands, they would have seen some ugly, unfamiliar image of themselves staring back.
Their shooting wasn’t horrible and even the hole they’d dug on the scoreboard could have been worse: OKC 57, Indiana 45. They had managed only five fewer buckets than the Thunder, but were hemorrhaging possessions with the turnovers, getting up 19 fewer shots.
The Eastern Conference champions prided themselves all season on taking care of the ball. Their 13.2 turnovers per game in the regular season were better than all but two teams, and they had shaved that to 12.7 against through three playoff rounds against the Milwaukee Bucks, Cleveland Cavaliers and New York Knicks.
It was amazing that, for all the giveaways, the Thunder had only stung them for nine points directly off those miscues. Still, it was no formula for success, more a recipe for disaster.
“We like controlled chaos,” Haliburton said, “but that was just chaos. Ugly.”
Something had to change.
The impact
Indiana outscores Oklahoma City 32-16 in the final 9:42 to erase a late 15-point deficit in Game 1 of the NBA Finals.
It’s easy but not at all helpful to come out for the third quarter thinking, “Take better care of the ball.” Just what does that mean? On the fly, against the NBA’s nastiest defense, emboldened by all those stolen Pacers possessions, in the Finals?
“We just knew we had to value the ball a lot more,” center Myles Turner said, before delving into specifics. “We started to put two hands, two eyes on the ball. Whoever [was] passing it started to keep the ball high. It was just all the elementary stuff. Sometimes that’s what it’s about in this game is going back to fundamentals. Chin on the ball, stuff like that.”
In the first half, four different Pacers had three turnovers or more. In the second, none of them did. They gave up the ball just five times, and OKC turned those into just two points.
Instead, Indiana outscored the favored-and-rolling home team 66-53 in the second half, including 35-25 in the fourth quarter. The Pacers’ offense settled down and returned to form: 51% shooting overall in the half, 10-of-20 on 3-pointers, 1.4 points per possession. All five starters and key sub Obi Toppin — from a roster that was entirely underwater in the first half — all had robust plus-ratings in the second.
One lead change all night and it came when it mattered most. But without the Pacers calming down, passing with more intent and factoring in OKC’s greediness for the ball and banging ways of springing it loose, Haliburton’s hero moment would not, could not, have happened.
What they’re saying
“The turnovers were the first thing that we talked about. You know, it seemed like we were doing a good job on the boards but they had 20 more shots than we did in the first half. That was really fool’s gold. … So, look, it was just hit the reset button. Let’s go whistle-to-whistle in the third quarter, try to chip away at it, and try to hang in.”
— Pacers coach Rick Carlisle.
“You just said it, we knew what this team was. I think on this stage you don’t have time to be stunned. You don’t have time to be disappointed. … It’s probably historically bad, I’m not sure what the record is but we weathered the storm.”
–Turner on falling into the turnover trap they knew was waiting for them vs. OKC.
“I thought they loosened us up a little bit. They took better care of the ball. … But I thought our conversion on the turnovers in the first half hurt us a little bit. We didn’t get the kind of juice for that squeeze that we normally do when we turn teams over.”
–Thunder coach Mark Daigneault on the Pacers’ shift in the third quarter.
“It’s just not who we are but I mean credit to their defense, like they are just on another level in terms of just disrupting the game and making mistakes and stuff.”
— Indiana’s Pascal Siakam.
What’s next
Patching a hole on the fly was good enough for Indiana on Thursday, but they will spend plenty of time breaking down video over the next two days before Sunday’s Game 2 (8 ET, ABC). This refresher course, facing the beast that is the Thunder’s disruptive defense, dare not be wasted.
For OKC, it’s one thing to bother an opponent into 25 turnovers, but quite another to get only 11 points off the extra opportunities. That’s the juice of which Daigneault spoke. Where’s the fun in turning a game into a night of make/take, like a playground 1-on-1 showdown, if it doesn’t provide the payoff?
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Steve Aschburner has written about the NBA since 1980. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on X.
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