Pacers vs. Thunder: With Tyrese Haliburton hobbled, Pacers now on brink of losing NBA Finals. Do they have anything left?

OKLAHOMA CITY — Tyrese Haliburton ambled into a dribble handoff from Tony Bradley, and even though he was only going about three-quarters-speed at best on a flat right rear tire, the Pacers’ premier playmaker still merited enough respect with a live dribble to draw a second defender.

Haliburton read the help and kicked to the corner, where Andrew Nembhard was waiting to launch a 3-pointer over a screaming closeout from Thunder reserve Cason Wallace. Nembhard’s triple clanged clear, but the ball finds energy, they say, and Pascal Siakam, a 6-foot-9, 230-pound source of coursing current, rose up over the top of 7-footer Isaiah Hartenstein to high-point the offensive rebound and give Indiana a second chance.

A second later, Siakam lofted his own long ball over the outstretched right arm of Oklahoma City stopper Luguentz Dort. When it found the bottom of the net, the sound that emanated from the stands at Paycom Center was something like 18,203 souls leaving 18,203 bodies.

These friggin’ Pacers, man. They’d done it again.

Despite being down 18 late in the first half of Game 5 of the 2025 NBA Finals … despite looking absolutely dead in the water after again sputtering up a sinful seven first-quarter turnovers to stake Oklahoma City to an early lead that Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jalen Williams seemed intent on expanding … and despite Haliburton clearly hampered by a right calf issue that he seemed to aggravate after slipping on a drive to the basket midway through the first quarter …

… they’d clawed all the way back, with Siakam’s 3 capping an 11-3 run that drew Indiana within one stinking bucket, 95-93, with 8:30 to play.

“Even with the game that we had, we still put ourselves in position [to win] at that point,” said Siakam, who scored 18 of his team-high 28 points in the second half, adding 6 rebounds, 5 assists, 3 steals and 2 blocks in yet another monster game from him in this 2025 postseason.

Eight-and-a-half minutes is an absolute lifetime in an NBA game. An eon of possessions with which to regain control — of the game, of the Finals, of a golden opportunity to put the fear of God into the favorite. A chance to make a 68-win juggernaut’s life flash before its eyes, and see if it blinks.

But chances come, and chances go.

“They got a second-chance opportunity and scored, and then we had an uncharacteristically bad turnover that turned into a dunk,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. “We called timeout. Came out, I think Myles [Turner] got fouled. Got it back to five. But then, I don’t remember — I just looked at part of that sequence to see what happened. Didn’t make enough plays, pretty clearly.”

“Yeah,” Siakam said. “Just that fast, it kind of, like, went away from us.”

That’s how fast it can happen against the Thunder, who refused to let Game 5 turn into a repeat of Game 1. They battled back from the brink, answering Indiana’s 11-3 run with a 10-4 jolt of their own to push the lead back to eight. And then Oklahoma City’s season-long “superpower” — its league-leading, historically larcenous defense — broke Indiana’s back, snaring four straight steals leading to eight straight points to double the Thunder advantage, reach escape velocity … and finally allow those 18,203 true believers in white and blue T-shirts to exhale.

Five minutes later, the Thunder had put the finishing touches on a 120-109 victory to take a 3-2 lead in the best-of-seven NBA Finals, and a Pacers team that had prided itself all year on taking care of the basketball knew it had let that golden opportunity slip through its fingers.

“We had 23 turnovers for 32 points,” Carlisle said. “I mean, that’s the game. We gotta do a heck of a lot better there.”

The four turnovers that effectively ended the game came off the fingertips of starters Haliburton and Nembhard, Indiana’s two best guards all season long. They were not, however, the Pacers’ best backcourt options in Game 5.

As he did in Indiana’s Game 3 win, T.J. McConnell completely shifted the energy of the game on Monday night, scoring 13 points on 6-for-8 shooting in the third quarter and assisting on five more to turn a 15-point deficit into a two-possession game heading into the closing seconds of the frame … before Williams, for the third straight game, hit a tough final-possession shot to give Oklahoma City a little more breathing room.

“I found a rhythm and my teammates kept finding me, so I’ve got to give credit to them,” McConnell said after the game. “Just trying to put some energy in the game, like I always do, and get us jumpstarted.”

Putting that energy into the game came at a cost, though — one that Carlisle said he saw almost immediately after keeping McConnell in to start the fourth quarter.

“He was great in the third. Put him back in earlier than normal,” Carlisle said. “He was very tired. That’s why we got him out. And I think there was a play early in the fourth where it looked like fatigue had set in there.”

Haliburton checked back in for McConnell, and while he clearly couldn’t summon the same zip off the dribble to create his own shot, he was still able to orchestrate the offense effectively enough to set the table for that 11-3 run.

“Just trying to keep pace in the game, impact whatever way I can,” said Haliburton, who finished with four points on 0-for-6 shooting, but did add seven rebounds and six assists in his 34 minutes. “Just trying to get P [Siakam] the ball in the right spots. Try to get the ball to guys in the right spots if I can.”

When OKC responded, Carlisle opted to stick with his starting backcourt, even with Haliburton hobbled and Nembhard struggling to command the offense, and even with McConnell having gotten several minutes of rest. Four turnovers later — two each from Nembhard and Haliburton — and the lead’s up to 16, with McConnell still on the bench.

“Yeah, it’s always a consideration,” Carlisle said when asked if he’d considered turning back to McConnell at any point before the 3:23 mark of the fourth, with the game pretty firmly out of reach. “But I haven’t gone through the entire game and completely analyzed the whole thing.”

Indiana Pacers guard Tyrese Haliburton reacts during the first quarter of Game 5 against the Oklahoma City Thunder on Monday. (Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)

(Matthew Stockman via Getty Images)

Carlisle will have two days to go back and analyze every second of Game 5 before the two teams reconvene for Game 6. He and his staff will pore over the film, considering how to help their players protect the ball against a swarming, smothering, suffocating Thunder defense. They’ll break down what worked in Monday’s second half, when Indiana scored 64 points on 53 possessions, and see what, if any of it, might be replicable come the first half on Thursday, to avoid going down big early and needing to mount such a furious comeback just to have a shot late.

And while they break down the tape and make their notes, they’ll do it praying that Haliburton — who, for what it’s worth, wasn’t limping as he left the postgame podium like he was after Game 2, though he was moving gingerly — will be able to provide more than he could on Monday night.

“He’s not 100%. It’s pretty clear,” Carlisle said. “But I don’t think he’s gonna miss the next game. You know, we were concerned at halftime, and he insisted on playing. And I thought he made a lot of really good things happen in the second half. But he’s not 100%.”

Haliburton said he doesn’t know if the injury he tried to work through on Monday was related to the “lower leg thing” that ailed him earlier in the series, but acknowledged that the issue is in “the same area.” Even though it limited him, though, he said he never seriously considered not getting back on the court.

“I mean, it’s the NBA Finals,” he said. “It’s the Finals, man. I’ve worked my whole life to be here and I want to be out there to compete. Help my teammates any way I can. I was not great tonight by any means, but it’s not really a thought of mine to not play here. If I can walk, then I want to play. They understand that. And it is what it is. Got to be ready to go for Game 6.”

Carlisle said the Pacers would “evaluate everything with Tyrese and, you know, see how he wakes up tomorrow.” But he also said he understood Haliburton’s mindset.

“I mean, all these guys playing in this series, on both sides … I think it’s pretty clear now that we’re going into the sixth game, and you know, all the attention and the crowd noise in both arenas, everything — this is a lifetime opportunity,” Carlisle said. “And not many guys are going to sit, even if they’re a little banged up. If you’re injured, that’s a different story.”

Which side of that divide Haliburton falls on remains to be seen.

“He’s a fighter,” Siakam said. “He’s been our rock all year. He’s a big reason why we’re here. I don’t know exactly what’s wrong, but I know he’s fighting and he’s going to give us everything he’s got. We are 100% behind him and we support him.”

The Pacers had their chance to make the Thunder blink, and they squandered it, losing consecutive games for the first time since March. Now, they find themselves needing to win on Thursday to stay alive, and give themselves one more chance to play here in Oklahoma City — a Game 7 for the NBA championship.

Before they can get there, though, they have to find a way to bounce back from two straight disappointing losses and live to fight another day.

“We’ve had our backs against the wall many different times over the last two years and had to find different ways to win,” Haliburton said. “The way that this year has gone, nobody said this was going to be sweet. It’s kind of poetic that we’re here.

“We’ve got to be ready to go for Game 6. Our backs are against the wall. It’s a really tough team. We’re going to have to go home and get ready the next couple days. There shouldn’t even be a conversation about Game 7 or anything like this. This is the game, and everybody has to be prepared. It starts with me, and we’ve all got to be better. That’s just point-blank, period.”

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