INDIANAPOLIS — It was right there.
A win that would’ve given them a stranglehold on the series.
A win that would’ve been — to this point, at least — the most consequential in franchise history.
A win that would’ve pushed them to the precipice of a title.
It was right there, all of it, as delicious an opportunity as the Indiana Pacers have ever stared down, a fourth-quarter lead on their home floor in Game 4 of the NBA Finals, with their opponent flustered and their fans in full throat and a commanding 3-1 lead there for the taking.
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The Oklahoma City Thunder couldn’t buy a bucket. Obi Toppin couldn’t miss. The Pacers were in control, all 17,272 inside Gainbridge Fieldhouse were on their feet, and Pat McAfee was on the mic, trashing Stephen A. Smith and revving a crowd that could smell a championship.
All the Pacers had to do was seize it. This was their moment. Their chance. For a team that’s feasted in crunchtime throughout this magical postseason run, wearing opponents down, cracking their spirit, stealing games at the buzzer they had no business stealing, the script felt stunningly familiar.
The Pacers led the Thunder by seven with 10:03 left.
And by four with 3:20 left.
And by one with 2:24 left.
Then — the unthinkable. Indiana unraveled. Crumbled.
“You’re up seven at home,” coach Rick Carlisle said, “you gotta dig in and find a way.”
His team didn’t. Instead, it melted down.
The Pacers’ 111-104 Game 4 defeat feels like two losses in one. This series isn’t over, but it just changed. The firm grip the Pacers had on these NBA Finals after Wednesday’s thrilling Game 3 victory is gone, and the truth is they might never get it back. Now it’s a best-of-three series, and the Thunder not only have regained the momentum but home-court advantage as well.
Make no mistake: If the Pacers go on to lose this series, Friday’s loss will haunt this franchise forever.
Because this team has never been that close. Not in 2000, when the Pacers made their only other finals appearance, and as luck would have it, happened to run into the blossoming Los Angeles Lakers dynasty led by two Hall of Famers, Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant, at the peak of their powers.
No, Indiana was never winning that series.
This one, though? This one was starting to feel different.
And while this nucleus is young, and the future undeniably bright, making it back is never a guarantee.
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“We just didn’t execute at the end of the game,” forward Pascal Siakam said. “We didn’t get easy shots, and the easy shots we did get, we missed them.”
All of them, in fact. The Pacers didn’t convert a field goal over the game’s final 3:20.
“We gotta do — I gotta do a better job of keeping the pace in the game,” star guard Tyrese Haliburton said. “That’s on me. I gotta get us playing faster down the stretch.”
He’s right. Instead of playing with speed, the Pacers grew stagnant. They leaned into isolation ball, then were forced to heave last-second prayers at the end of the shot clock. Haliburton bricked a stepback 3 from 27 feet with 1:43 left. On their next possession, Andrew Nembhard badly missed a 20-footer.
Then Myles Turner missed a 3.
Then Bennedict Mathurin, an 82-percent free-throw shooter, clanked two from the line.
Then another.
They stopped moving, stopped cutting, stopped creating open looks. They stopped doing everything they’d done all night.
The Thunder, meanwhile, did exactly what the Pacers had done two nights earlier: They closed. They guarded. They extended possessions with offensive rebounds. And they hit their free throws, finishing 34-for-38.
“This series is going to come down to the basics, and our inability to effectively rebound when we needed to was the biggest thing,” Carlisle said.
But it was more than that. With so much on the line, the Pacers played some of their ugliest offensive basketball of the season.
After it was over, Haliburton sat at his locker, ice packs on both knees, staring at his phone. His mind was lost in thought. The room was as quiet as a library.
No one said a thing.
If the Pacers had finished this one off, the city would have partied until the sun came up. Indiana would’ve been 48 minutes from its first NBA title.
Instead, a team that’s earned its reputation as stone-cold killers saw the other side Friday. The Thunder were sharper. They were smarter. Some questionable second-half whistles didn’t help the Pacers’ cause, but the officials didn’t decide this one. With the game hanging in the balance, the Thunder went out and won it.
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The Pacers found so many ways to lose it.
Indiana had 20 assists across the first three quarters; it had just one in the entire fourth. The Pacers allowed the Thunder to close the game on a 12-1 run. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (15 fourth-quarter points) nearly outscored the Pacers (17 fourth-quarter points) by himself.
For a team that entered the game plus-27 in the fourth quarter of this series, the Pacers were outplayed thoroughly in the deciding frame, 31-17.
There were no grand proclamations after it was over, no admissions that they’d blown their best chance at a title.
“It’s gonna take a lot, and it’s gonna be hard, but I think we’ve got the group capable of doing it,” Siakam said.
“This group has been resilient all year, and (I) wouldn’t wanna go to war with any other group,” Haliburton added. “I’m really excited for Game 5.”
“I don’t need to motivate these guys,” Carlisle said. “I think they have a sense of where they are, but this kind of a challenge is gonna have extreme highs and extreme lows. This is a low right now, and we’re going to have to bounce back from it.”
If they do, Friday night will be forgotten, the pain erased by the joy that follows. But chances like this don’t come around often for this franchise, which is why the moment meant so much. All you had to do was scour the stands at Gainbridge Fieldhouse. So many Pacers greats from previous eras were on hand — Reggie Miller, Mark Jackson, Jalen Rose, Dale Davis, Derrick McKey, Travis Best, Austin Croshere — hoping to see this team do what they never could.
Now you have to wonder if this group still has what it takes to finish it off, or if they just let their best chance slip through their fingers.
(Photo of Tyrese Haliburton and Obi Toppin: Maddie Meyer / Getty Images)
