As the Indiana Pacers host their first NBA Finals game in 25 years and arguably the biggest Pacers game in their NBA history, this is the moment fans have been waiting for.
If you told me one week into December, when the Pacers held a 10-15 record, that they would somehow find themselves in the NBA Finals, I’d call you insane. Every metric says that the Pacers should not be here; that they should have been bounced in the Conference Finals, if not the second round, yet they find themselves knotted up with the Oklahoma City Thunder one game apiece heading back to Indiana.
The Pacers now have a win in every round with this probability:
0.3%
2.1%
4.1%
2.6%
The odds of ALL FOUR games going the Pacers way= 0.0000006716
That's a 1 in 1.5 million chance.
— Tyler Smith (@TylerSmith_ISL) June 6, 2025
June 11, 2025, is the first NBA Finals game to be played in Indianapolis in 25 years. The last time the Pacers were here, they were led by a core of Reggie Miller, Jalen Rose, Rik Smits, and Mark Jackson, coached by Indiana legend Larry Bird. Currently, Miller is finishing up with TNT before joining NBC next season. Rose also does broadcasting, Jackson was let go by ESPN in 2023, and Smits can occasionally be seen at Pacers games when he isn’t in Arizona, spending time on the trails with his two kids. Bird, on the other hand, spent 14 years as President of Basketball Operations for the Pacers before stepping down and currently works as a consultant for the team.
Needless to say, quite a bit has changed since the ball went up at Game 3 of the 2000 NBA Finals. The young fans who spent years watching their team fall to the Chicago Bulls, and then the Los Angeles Lakers, are now grown men with jobs and families. Some may not have even had time to watch basketball before this playoff run, which is completely understandable. In a world that prioritizes working, with free time being hard to come by, why would you waste your time watching the playoffs? After all, it’s just basketball.
…is what someone in the other 49 states would say
Pacers fans know more than anyone how grateful they are to be back in this position. After years of broken promises, squandered opportunity, with their best chance for a title lost to the biggest brawl in NBA history and their second-best chance lost to one of the most horrific injuries in NBA history (that didn’t even occur during the season!), star players coming and going like the wind, and a lack of closure, it feels good to finally have a team with a fixed goal and big-time aspirations.
For years, the Pacers built a reputation as a “tough out,” a “League Pass Team” that people would only watch if no other teams were playing. Fortunately, those days are long gone, as Indiana basketball has once again returned to the marquee. Led by the glimmering ray of hope who goes by Tyrese Haliburton and a supporting cast taken from everywhere and anywhere, the little old Indiana Pacers have found themselves back at the top of the East, a position they have not reached in a quarter-century. Not only that, but they find themselves three wins away from their first NBA championship ever, and homecourt advantage for the rest of the Finals, with three of the final five games taking place at Gainsbridge Fieldhouse.
If I were to rewind just over a year to May 27, 2024, when the Pacers had just been eliminated by the Boston Celtics in the 2024 Eastern Conference Finals, the outlook on the team from fans was quite different from what it is now. Outside of the Indiana faithful, the Pacers were viewed as a team that had benefited from playing against injured teams and would not reach these heights again, with comparisons to the 2021 Atlanta Hawks being quite common. Everyone wanted to call it a fluke.
It was thought that Indiana was one or two moves away from reaching the Conference Finals again, let alone the NBA Finals. Once other teams made moves, such as the New York Knicks trading for Mikal Bridges and Karl-Anthony Towns and the Philadelphia 76ers signing Paul George, you’d be hard pressed to find a national TV analyst even bringing up the Pacers when talking about the NBA’s top teams.
After making little to no offseason changes, the Pacers seemed to prove analysts right in deciding to snub them, as they started the season 10-15 amid season-ending Achilles injuries suffered to both of their backup centers. In fact, Indiana did not acquire a reliable backup for Myles Turner until the 27th game of the season when they acquired Thomas Bryant from Miami. Even then, the high hopes of a return to the Conference Finals that Pacers fans had before the season seemed like wishful thinking, with the playoffs in general looking like a long shot. Heading into December, the Indiana Pacers were lost. A team without an identity and its best player, fresh off a supermax contract extension, playing disappointing basketball.
“You come into the year with all the talk around how it was a fluke,” Haliburton said after Game 1. “You have an unsuccessful first couple months and now it’s easy for everyone to clown you and talk about you in a negative way, and I think as a group we taking everything personal. It’s not just me. It’s everybody … really proud of this group. We just all got each other’s back at every point. Any negative thing that’s said about anybody, we got full belief in each other.”
Now, we find ourselves here. Three wins away from a championship, with Indiana’s favorite sons heading to the city to play at least two NBA Finals games. Of course, I could talk about the improbable comebacks, the hot shooting, the clutch gene, and the emergence of cast-aside role players, but I want to talk about something more. I want to talk about what this means to the fans.
“Expecting a crazy crowd,” said Andrew Nembhard after practice yesterday. “… They help a lot. It’s like our sixth man. Brings us energy, keeps us together. It’s going to be exciting.”
“I can’t wait to see how rocking and loud this place is.”
Aaron Nesmith is excited for fans to bring the noise to Game 3 👀 pic.twitter.com/knqwU62c84
— Indiana Pacers (@Pacers) June 10, 2025
For me personally, and a lot of Pacers fans, this is all about vindication. I do not live in Indiana, and only went for the first time last week for the Eastern Conference Finals, but this team has made me consider this state a second home for years. Years of getting weird looks because I had the Pacers beating the Heat in 2013 and 2014, staying a fan after Paul George’s injury, hyping up Victor Oladipo before he broke out, flying out of my seat in woodshop class when the Tyrese Haliburton trade was announced. All of those years have led to this exact moment. It’s very funny going from being the only Pacers fan in school to having people point out my Pacers hat around town and say stuff like “They’re on a hell of a run, aren’t they?” Time flies, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I’m sure I’m not the only one with stories of Pacers fandom, but I’m sure plenty of people feel the same as I do: vindicated. The ball getting tossed up on June 11, 2025, and the clock counts down from 12:00 represents much more than a simple basketball game. It represents a quarter-century of wrong turns, broken promises, and missed opportunities that somehow led to the most unexpected iteration of the Indiana Pacers being three games away from an NBA Championship.
“As we go home, we’re going to need our crowd to be just like this crowd was,” Rick Carlisle said as a challenge to the Indy faithful after Game 2. “I mean, these fans took it to another level tonight and that’s how Gainbridge is going to have to be for us to have a chance to be successful.”
Pacers fans, this is our moment. We must be loud, we must be annoying, and we must make our voices heard. You never know when the Pacers will be back in this position. Make it count, and hopefully the team can reap the benefits and shock the world.
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