The Indiana Pacers have taken a 2-1 lead in what's shaping up to be the most fascinating postseason series.
Free throws this season
Oklahoma City Thunder
NBA
Indiana pulled off the impossible in Game 1; they beat the Oklahoma City Thunder despite committing 24 turnovers. Throughout the entire regular season, no team had managed to defeat the Thunder with that many giveaways.
This game showed that Indiana might be the most mentally resilient team we've seen in years.
They've come back from so many impossible deficits this season that it's no longer just a fluke.
It's a structured system based on unbelievable poise in crunch time and a "next play" mentality executed to perfection. Mistakes don't linger; they move on immediately.
Game 1
Right from the start of this playoff series, we saw various adjustments.
Oklahoma came out with an unorthodox starting five, no Isaiah Hartenstein, replaced instead by Cason Wallace. This wasn't a huge surprise given the matchup.
Isaiah
Isaiah
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Mark Daigneault clearly wanted a smaller, faster lineup to counter Indiana's transition game and switch more defensively. The idea was to use speed and aggression to disrupt Indiana's flow.
To some extent, the tactic worked, but it also came with a cost. Since OKC was switching a lot more on defense, Hartenstein, despite his strengths, wasn't a great fit in this scheme.
He's simply not comfortable in switch-heavy coverages the way he is in other setups, such as drop or high flat coverages.
Indiana decided to leverage their size advantage, especially through Pascal Siakam, who punished the switches early in the game both on the low post and high post.
Indiana Pacers / Schedule
But Oklahoma's defensive pressure was so intense that even entry passes into those situations were often intercepted.
Thunder's defense deserves credit; they forced a ton of turnovers, and those turnovers nearly cost Indiana the game.
Generally, the first requirement for even competing with OKC is keeping turnovers to a minimum. That's easier said than done, and if you don't, you usually have no chance.
But Indiana somehow pulled off the win anyway. How?
The answer starts with one shocking stat: Oklahoma scored just 11 points off Indiana's 25 turnovers. In other words, all those extra possessions OKC gained didn't really translate into points. That's where the game slipped away from them.
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Oklahoma's offense was simply not on the same level as its defense.
The Thunder scored just 107 points per 100 possessions, a huge drop from the 130 points per 100 possessions they posted in Game 2, which they won.
We'll get to the adjustments they made in that game later. For now, it's worth noting that Hartenstein only played 17 minutes in Game 1.
Hartenstein is one of OKC's most important players when it comes to offensive flow. His ability to create from the elbow and the middle of the floor through handoffs and quick decisions gives OKC a major edge.
He's become one of the league's best big man passers and has great chemistry with both the guards and Chet Holmgren. The difference was clear when he was on the floor; Oklahoma's offense had a different rhythm and much better structure.
Another major issue that allowed Indiana to hang around and ultimately steal the game was Oklahoma's corner defense.
The Thunder are known for giving up a lot of corner threes because their defensive scheme relies heavily on confident closeouts and help recovery. Indiana exploited this weakness to the fullest, knocking down 10 of their 16 corner threes in Game 1.
Game 2
In Game 2, we saw some key adjustments from Oklahoma that significantly improved their offense, leading to the stat I previously mentioned, 130 points per 100 possessions, a full 23 points more than in Game 1.
The most important change was that OKC had a much clearer idea of how to attack Indiana.
They focused far more on targeting Tyrese Haliburton, especially through guard-to-guard screen actions that forced Indiana to switch and left Haliburton guarding Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, a dream matchup for the Thunder.
Haliburton
Haliburton
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This simple action became a major problem for Indiana, particularly because OKC often ran it in flat spacing, which made it extremely difficult for Indiana to send help. With this unorthodox floor spacing, Oklahoma identified the weakest link in Indiana's defense and exploited it to the max.
Another crucial factor for the Thunder was Hartenstein's increased involvement.
His playmaking from areas where he thrives offensively helped improve OKC's ball movement and made their offense far more fluid. In 22 minutes on the floor, Hartenstein posted a +17 plus-minus, a clear sign of his impact.
Defensively, the Thunder also did a much better job guarding Indiana's corner shooting, which had hurt them badly in Game 1. After giving up 10-of-16 from the corners in the opener, they held Indiana to just 6-of-15 in Game 2, a clear improvement.
This required a small but important defensive tweak: less over-helping, especially in those specific corner scenarios, knowing that Indiana has several capable shooters from those spots.
But the biggest defensive win and perhaps the most critical part of the game was shutting down Pascal Siakam. Indiana failed to capitalize on the size advantage Siakam usually has against OKC's smaller lineups.
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Even when Indiana managed to create decent looks for him, Siakam just couldn't deliver, shooting 3-of-11 from the field.
That's a major issue for Indiana because Siakam is the only player in the lineup who poses a clear physical mismatch against OKC's personnel, which is a rarity.
In this era of mismatch-hunting, the Thunder are one of the few teams with essentially no weak link on the floor; every player is at least a solid, if not elite, defender.
This was a big contrast for Indiana after their series with the Knicks, where they could constantly attack players like Towns or Brunson and simplify their offensive execution.
Now, due to OKC's adjustments, Indiana has found itself with a rare physical edge through Siakam, but his unique style and limitations make it difficult to fully exploit that mismatch.
Going forward, this could be one of the most important dynamics of the series: how effectively Siakam can punish OKC's smaller defenders and score in those 1-on-1 situations.
Game 3
This was a hugely important win for Indiana, one that could potentially prove decisive, as it gives them a massive confidence boost and a 2-1 series lead.
If this game showed anything, it's that Indiana has the deepest roster in the entire league. The era of top-heavy superteams with short rotations in the NBA seems to be over.
Any team that tries to build a superteam overnight usually sees it fall apart. In contrast, teams like Indiana and Oklahoma represent a completely different philosophy, with deeper rotations and benches full of quality players who play critical roles.
So far, Indiana seems to have the edge in depth. In this particular game, Indiana's bench outscored Oklahoma's 49 to 18.
A big part of that advantage came from the incredible performances of T.J. McConnell and Bennedict Mathurin, who dominated throughout the game. That bench production, along with several other factors I'll touch on shortly, proved to be decisive.
As mentioned before, Siakam is Indiana's most important player in this matchup, and his performance will greatly affect the direction of the series.
The start of Game 3 showed a slightly different approach from Rick Carlisle, putting Siakam in simpler offensive situations that allowed him to better exploit his advantages.
Siakam
Siakam
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For some reason, in the first two games, Indiana often overcomplicated things by trying to force additional mismatches for Siakam, even when he already had a favorable matchup from the start, whether it was Cason Wallace or someone else guarding him.
That changed in Game 3.
Without unnecessary adjustments, Siakam attacked 1-on-1 situations in well-spaced lineups and delivered an outstanding performance, finishing with 21 points on an efficient 8-of-14 shooting from the field.
Indiana finally capitalized on all those opportunities that it failed to punish consistently in the first two games, especially in Game 2. With Siakam clearly having an edge on the floor, his presence created an immediate advantage that Indiana used to take control.
Although Shai is putting up his usual numbers on paper, it feels like he hasn't had the kind of impact you'd expect. The credit for that goes to none other than his national team teammate, the one player who seems to guard him better than anyone ever has.
Andrew Nembhard's familiarity with SGA, likely boosted by their time together with Team Canada, clearly helps him on the defensive end. They know each other's tendencies extremely well.
But it's not just that Nembhard is simply one of the best on-ball defenders in the league.
He's a nightmare matchup for anyone, even for an MVP-caliber player like Shai. He makes every single point hard-earned, and he's been a major reason SGA hasn't been able to fully take over games in this series.
Nembhard
Nembhard
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But that's not the main issue for Oklahoma or the reason they're currently trailing in the series.
With a decent sample size by now, it's fair to say that Oklahoma simply hasn't been great in close games, and they're going up against a team that isn't just the best this season in those situations, but arguably the best in years.
Indiana is special in that regard. They display incredible calm in crunch time and never stray from their style or offensive philosophy, no matter how tense the moment is.
They play the final minutes exactly like they play the first quarter, with no sign of pressure, which is almost unheard of in basketball. In most close games, teams tend to tighten up.
The offense usually simplifies, isolation plays take over, and predictability sets in as the ball is forced to the star player. That's not the case with the Pacers.
They continue playing team basketball, even when everything's on the line, and their leader, Tyrese Haliburton, consistently makes the right decisions when it matters most.
This is where Oklahoma faces its biggest and perhaps unsolvable problem, and it might be why labeling them favorites in this series could be a mistake.
There's virtually no chance they'll win this series by blowing Indiana out or avoiding close finishes. The reality is, nearly every game is going to come down to the wire, because these are the two best teams in the league, and the margin for error is razor thin.
But in those final minutes, the gap in poise, experience, and execution between these two teams is enormous. Oklahoma often stops looking like itself in those moments, a bit of panic creeps in, and that dominant version of the Thunder fades away.
Vukašin Nedeljković
Vukašin played basketball competitively in his youth, and now contributes to Synergy Sports Technology and Sportradar regarding basketball analysis. He also has experience working as a journalist in Serbia and is passionate about writing basketball articles mainly focused on basketball X's and O's.
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