Pacers’ Andrew Nembhard not about to back down from good pal SGA in NBA Finals

OKLAHOMA CITY — He was tired.

After playing some of the most significant minutes of his career — which is saying something, given he has played in 34 playoff games and counting, not to mention an Olympic tournament, in the past 13 months or so — Andrew Nembhard just wanted to get out of the Paycom Center, find his family for a quick catch-up and get some rest.

Everything else didn’t matter. Not that the Pacers had just pulled an upset at the buzzer, finally silencing the jackhammer-level crowd volume that had made it difficult for Indiana players to hear each other on the court for most of Thursday night.

Not that Nembhard’s fingerprints were all over the final result, making huge plays down the stretch of Indiana’s comeback from down 15 with 9:42 left in the fourth quarter, suddenly putting the underdog Pacers in control of the series against the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Not that he had successfully guarded MVP and old friend and rival Shai Gilgeous-Alexander for one more critical possession in the final seconds, enabling teammate Tyrese Haliburton’s 21-foot pull-up jumper to be the game-winner.

There was no adrenaline charge. No mood to celebrate, and no energy for it either.

“Is it bad if I just go back to the hotel and got to bed and catch up with you guys tomorrow?” he told his father Claude, who had flown in from Indianapolis with the rest of the Pacers parents and staff on a team charter earlier Thursday for Game 1 of the NBA Finals.

“Not at all,” his father told him after exchanging hugs. “Do what you need to do.”

It might as well be the younger Nembhard’s motto. Guard the other team’s best player? Sure. Engineer fourth-quarter comeback, including a gorgeous cross-over step back three over Gilgeous-Alexander with two minutes left to cut the Thunder’s lead to three? Yup.

Get ready to do it all over again Sunday night? Absolutely.

After an off-day Friday, the native of Aurora, Ont., said he was fully charged for Game 2 on Sunday — “I’m 25, I bounce back quick,” he told me — but chances are he’s going to be in a similar situation by the end of the night.

Gilgeous-Alexander will be coming, and Nembhard will be there to meet him.

Nembhard is used to taking on difficult defensive assignments. But guarding the fellow Canadian is a cut above.

Not only is he the NBA’s regular-season scoring champion and the leading scorer in the playoffs, but Gilgeous-Alexander has the ball a lot — his 37.3-per-cent usage rate was the third highest the Thunder star has had in 40 career playoff games and his 30 field goal attempts were tied for his career post-season high. He’s determined to attack whoever is defending him, friend or foe.

He plays downhill almost exclusively, using his shoulder, forearms and elbows like battering rams, creating space for himself and drawing fouls when defenders try to hold their ground.

“I always try to be aggressive and I never, like, predetermine it. I always just let the game tell me what to do,” Gilgeous-Alexander said Saturday of his approach. “So I guess last game, I felt more often than not, I had a shot or a play that I could attack on more than in the past, and that’s just the way it went.”

Gilgeous-Alexander had 38 points, but they didn’t come easily. He missed 16 shots and for as much as he had the ball and as often as he drove into the defence, he got to the free-throw line only eight times, just below his season average.

More often than not, Nembhard was there, absorbing the body blows with his chest, keeping his hands out wide so Gilgeous-Alexander couldn’t lure him into fouls, and moving his feet.

It’s not glamorous work, but it’s crucial, and the Pacers appreciate him for it and not only because he still had the legs to record eight of his 14 points and three of his six assists in the fourth quarter. That’s typical too: Nembhard’s career playoff averages of 13.9 points with an effective field goal percentage of .598 are significantly better than his career regular-season marks of 9.6 points with an eFG of .524.

But it’s defence that the Pacers have come to depend on.

“He loves the challenge. He has a great intellectual curiosity about defence and the challenge of trying to — I mean, you don’t stop players today. You try to make it hard,” said Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle. “… They are both from Canada and they both have played a lot with and against each other over the years … but this is the ultimate challenge, a guy like him who is the MVP. He’s just so skilled, so quick, bigger than you think. Everybody talks about the lethal mid-range, but he makes threes easily, too. He lives at the free throw line. So there’s no breaks. There’s no breaks. But Drew is one of these guys that he has an equal focus on the defensive end as the offensive end, and that’s — it’s a bit rare with today’s players.”

Nembhard spent more time guarding Gilgeous-Alexander than anyone else on the floor and more than held his own, as his Olympic teammate was just 3-of-9 against him in their one-on-one battles and — crucially — went to the free-throw line only once.

“It’s definitely a job that has no breaks. It’s a consistent 48-minute job from our whole team,” said Nembhard of the assignment.

And Gilgeous-Alexander felt him. How could he not? Nembhard is no shrinking violet. He employs the dark arts of physical basketball as effectively as anyone else, he just doesn’t jump up and down about it.

He drives to create contact, such as his momentum-shifting ‘and-1’ that sparked the Pacers’ comeback early in the fourth quarter when he barrelled through the Thunder’s Alex Caruso, a rugged defender himself.

And on the other end, Nembhard bumps and grabs and uses his leverage to throw ball handlers off balance, and he does it consistently. It’s not uncommon for his opponents to get thrown off, irritated or worse, and when that happens Nembhard is there too.

During Indiana’s run to the Conference Finals last season, Nembhard got into a confrontation with Bobby Portis of the Milwaukee Bucks in their first-round series. Portis is no stranger to mixing it up and not someone to mess around with performatively, but it was Nembhard was more than willing and Pacers assistant Jenny Boucek found herself sprinting the length of the floor to de-escalate.

“I got made fun of for how quickly I got down the court when Andrew stepped up to Bobby Portis. But one of the reasons I got there so quick is because I know how tough Andrew is and that he wasn’t going to back down, and I didn’t want something to break out where he takes a swing and gets suspended, he’s too valuable to us,” Boucek, who has been an assistant to Carlisle in Indiana and Dallas for five seasons, told me for a feature on Nembhard I wrote last summer. “A lot of fake tough guys in those situations, nothing’s going to happen, but Andrew just is legitimately tough … and I think the world saw that, and I think a lot of people around the league have already felt that (and) I think players know the difference between real and phony.”

In that context it was telling — and interesting — that Gilgeous-Alexander was annoyed enough by Nembhard’s defensive tenacity that the normally cool, calm and collected Thunder guard was the one doing the shoving, with Nembhard shoving back in a brief skirmish midway through the fourth quarter as the Thunder’s lead was beginning to shrink.

In the grand scheme of things, there wasn’t much to it, but showcases Nembhard’s approach.

“It’s just competition, getting a little physical guys out there trying to win the game, and it’s no friends at this point,” Nembhard told me as the Pacers were getting ready for practice Saturday. “I think I’m just out there to compete now. I’m willing to do what it takes to get it done, and I’m not too worried about making friends out there. So whatever happens, happens in that sense.”

Gilgeous-Alexander respects it.

“It’s nothing more than two guys wanting to win. No malicious intent behind it, just wanting to win,” he said Saturday. “(Nembhard’s) a competitor. He’s a winner. Plays the game the right way on both ends of the floor. Really good player. Yeah, he’s a winner for sure. No doubt.”

And after a good night’s sleep and a couple days to recover, Nembhard will be right back where he was in Game 1, chest-to-chest with an old friend who happens to be the NBA’s most lethal scorer, ready to do it again.