The Indiana Pacers are about to do something that no other team has done in the history of the NBA.
They ended the 2023-24 NBA season with making the Eastern Conference Finals, but due to injuries suffered by both the Milwaukee Bucks and New York Knicks, fans — and Las Vegas — believed their run was lucky. They entered this season with +5000 odds to win the championship.
Now Indiana is one away from making the NBA Finals, where defeating the Oklahoma City Thunder would make them the biggest preseason underdogs to win a championship in the history of the NBA. Of course, taking down the 68-win Thunder will be a monster task if the Pacers do end up finishing off the Knicks.
Indiana's miracle run would put them among Steph's Warriors, Dirk's Mavs
In hindsight, these teams were great. But they didn't have high expectations before their respective seasons started.
2014-2015 Warriors
Looking back at the start of the Golden State Warriors dynasty a decade a later, it seems crazy that they're currently the biggest preseason underdog in NBA history. They entered the 2014-15 season with +2800 odds to win the championship.
Before the season, it wasn't shocking at all. The prior season, they finished with a 51-31 record and lost to the Los Angeles Clippers in round one, after making the conference finals in 2013. They fired head coach Mark Jackson and replaced him with now future Hall-of-Famer Steve Kerr.
There was no reason to believe at the time that the Warriors would become the dominant team they did. The Clippers and Spurs were believed to be the best teams in the West, while Golden State was young and shot too many 3-pointers — or so people thought — to win it all.
They proved everyone wrong. Golden State won 67 games, Steph Curry won his first MVP and eventually won the championship. If Cleveland wasn't injured, they probably would have won, but the 2015 Warriors were the start of one of the most dominant dynasties ever — and still a massive preseason underdog.
2010-2011 Dallas Mavericks
The 2011 Dallas Mavericks and 2025 Indiana Pacers have a lot in common. Both are viewed as having a star who might not be a superstar, but the biggest similarity is that Rick Carlisle was the head coach for both of these teams.
Dallas went 57-25 in the 2010-11 season, finishing as the third seed in the West. For a majority of the 2000s, the Mavericks were a consistently solid team with a few 60-plus win seasons. Most of those seasons ended in first or second round exits, with one NBA Finals loss and one WCF loss.
Entering the playoffs, Dallas was not expected to make a deep run. They defeated the Portland Trail Blazers 4-2 in round one, proving they were the deeper team. A big shock was them not just beating — but sweeping — the defending back-to-back champion Los Angeles Lakers. Then they faced a young Oklahoma City Thunder team and beat them in five games.
The icing on the cake was playing the Miami Heat, led by prime LeBron James, next to Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. Miami were massive favorites.
Dirk Nowitzki had other plans; after falling down 2-1, the Mavericks ran off three straight wins to secure a championship that solidified Nowitzki in basketball lore, with the greatest championship run ever.
A championship for the 2025 Indiana Pacers would be almost as impressive as that Mavs run over a decade ago.