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The Indiana Pacers are starting to look like a team of destiny, if they didn’t look like one already.
Trailing by 15 in the fourth quarter, the Pacers erased that deficit and pulled off a huge upset in Game 1 of the NBA Finals on Thursday night against the Oklahoma City Thunder.
The 15-point lead early in the fourth quarter was OKC’s largest of the game. But after the Pacers called a timeout, they went on a 15-4 run of their own to get back to within four. The Thunder wound up pulling away a bit to lead by nine, but they responded with another run, this one 10-2, to suddenly trail by one with 48.1 seconds left.
Gilgeous-Alexander missed a shot with 11.0 seconds left, and Tyrese Haliburton responded with the game-winner with 0.3 seconds left. It was Indiana’s first lead of the entire game, as most of the game had been all Thunder.
Indiana came in as double-digit underdogs, and that looked to cover for the majority of the contest. Instead, it’s a 111-110 win for the Pacers, their first in the NBA Finals since 2000.
In the final 9:27, the Pacers outscored the Thunder, 32-16, and it was a 12-2 run in the final 2:38.
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It’s yet another insane comeback for the Pacers this postseason – in nearly 1,500 playoff games since 1997, only four times has a team come back to win after trailing by seven-plus points in the final minute of the fourth quarter or overtime – the Pacers have won three of those games this season alone. This one did not fit that criteria, but nonetheless, it’s chalked up as an incredible comeback.
“It ain’t over til it’s over,” Haliburton, doing his best Yogi Berra impression, said after the game. “It ain’t over until the clock hits zero.”
Amazingly enough, no Pacer had 20 points in the game, while MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander had a game-high 38 for the Thunder. But, six Pacers scored in double-digits, and five had at least 14.
Game 2 will be Sunday night in Oklahoma City.
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