The Indiana Pacers left Oklahoma City with the NBA Finals tied 1-1 after stealing the opening game with Tyrese Haliburton’s latest iconic playoff game winner and then losing handily in the second game as the Thunder dominated a long stretch in the first half and cruised to a 123-107 victory from there.
Against a 68-win OKC team, heading back to Gainbridge Fieldhouse for Game 3 with a tied series is exactly what they needed to do, but as the Pacers have led for under two minutes combined in the series, there are plenty of problems they need to solve if they want to pull off an all-time upset and win their first NBA Championship.
“Felt like we really let the rope slip there in the second quarter,” Tyrese Haliburton said after Game 2. “So I think there are many different ways to choose to digest what’s in front of you … you got the split. You feel good about that but we definitely wanted to play better tonight. I think our processes need to be a lot better for us to be successful here.”
The Thunder’s defense is challenge number one and it’s proven to be a daunting one. Their aggressive scheme was head and shoulders above the rest of the league in the regular season with a 106.6 defensive rating and that number has only improved (105.2) in the playoffs against stiffer competition but also with more time for their coaching staff to prepare for their opponents. No one’s had a solution for their swarming, physical, turnover-inducing style. The Pacers are still adapting after limited regular season exposure to this team, still trying to figure out how to consistently attack against an elite defense with no major weak link to poke at–unlike their first three opponents in the playoffs.
This led to a stretch in the second quarter where it felt like the Pacers were just taking turns attacking Chet Holmgren in isolation, despite the slim center being very capable of moving his feet, keeping each player in front, and challenging shots, even though some of these possessions featured less than of their outstanding and best defenders. The fact that so many possessions were ending with the Pacers trying to attack defenders in isolation was a bad enough sign on its own that the team’s process wasn’t great.
Chet's first half was absurd defensively. Locked down on every single switch, either forcing a tough, well-contested miss or turnover. Played some excellent transition defense and just took away the rim. Unbelievable defensive versatility and impact. Freak talent. https://t.co/UfQs5WcHjN pic.twitter.com/103LhCAuXa
— Carson Breber (@Carsobi) June 9, 2025
(Sidenote on Chet: the Pacers best way to neutralize him so far in this series on both ends has been Myles Turner, who has outplayed him while they’ve shared the floor. Turner’s size and shooting has been difficult for Holmgren to deal with and the Pacers center has done well to contest Chet’s drives inside on the other end. The Thunder pulled their young center after three minutes in the third quarter with Turner getting off to a hot start. The Pacers may need to make sure Turner is in the game when Chet is in as often as possible.)
The Pacers have had stretches like this in previous series where they would needlessly bring Mitchell Robinson into actions against the Knicks or Evan Mobley against the Cavaliers but there isn’t often an easy answer against OKC to point out and say, “Hey, how about you just go back to attacking Brunson and/or KAT against the Knicks or Ty Jerome and/or the clearly hampered Darius Garland against the Cavaliers instead?” When the other defenders are elite at the point of attack and off the ball like Alex Caruso, Lu Dort, Jalen Williams, and Cason Wallace, things are going to be much tougher. The answers aren’t as obvious.
“They were super aggressive, which is what they do,” Pascal Siakam said of dealing with the Thunder’s defense in Game 2. “They are a disruptive kind of team. I think we’ve got to watch the film and just find ways to no matter what, still be us. We’ve got to figure it out. I don’t have the answers right now. But yeah, we’ve got to watch it, and find a way to, again, get to the paint or spray off threes. Whatever our game is, you know, we’ve got to find a way to do that.”
A common refrain for the Pacers over the last few seasons has been “paint to great,” meaning get the ball into the paint and turn it into great shots from there. Those are the kind of 3-pointers the team wants to get and of course they want to be able to score as often as possible at the rim and inside the paint. The Thunder have made that exceedingly difficult as the Pacers have averaged just 31.2% of their points in the paint over the first two games compared to 43% in the regular season.
“They were the best in the league during the year at keeping people out of there,” Carlisle said on the Thunder’s defense stopping the Pacers from being able to score inside. “They are great at it. We have to find ways to get the ball in there, and you know, there are so many things that have to go right … to get the ball into the heart of their defense.”
The lack of paint points/touches was a common theme for Pacers players after the game. It’s understandable when they’re facing a defense that swarms to the ball like my kids do to candy. You bring it into the house without a tight grip and before you know it, it’s been swiped away as they’re off to the races with their prize in hand.
“We have to do a better job of getting to the paint,” Haliburton said of the team’s struggles to get baskets near the rim. “It’s a lot easier said than done. I feel like in the first half we were just moving the ball on the outside and I don’t think we had a single point in the paint in the first quarter, if I’m not mistaken. So you know, our offense is built from the inside-out, and we have to do a better job getting downhill.”
The extreme and alarming stat from last night's game: Paint pressure.
Just 29% of Indiana's attempts through the first three quarters were in the paint — a playoff low. And they had just 2 (!!) FGA in the paint in the first quarter out of 21 shots. Miserable. pic.twitter.com/1DznYXHUvx
— Kyle Taylor (@1kyletaylor) June 9, 2025
Haliburton’s struggles to get going earlier in these games have been a major talking point but perhaps the most concerning statistic for him is the uncharacteristic five turnovers and the limited number of assists as their defense has eliminated opportunities for him to drive and kick and the Pacers haven’t been able to consistently push the pace to their preference either with a 16% their shots coming late in the shot clock (third-worst in the postseason per iPacers contributor Kyle Taylor’s graphic above).
“Defensively they have a lot of different guys who can guard the ball, fly around,” Haliburton said. “They are really physical, force the officials to let us play a little bit more. So just got to do a better job playing to their—I think I’ve had two really poor first halves. I just have to figure out how to be better earlier in games. But kudos to them. They are a great defensive team but I’ll watch the film and see where I can get better.”
While Haliburton did get going in the 4th quarter with 12 of his team-high 17 points, the game wasn’t close at that point. We’ll have to see whether the Pacers can utilize some of the things they did in that fourth quarter to get him going towards to rim with more consistency. Turner said that the team has things they’ve gone over to help Tyrese get free that they haven’t done a good job of executing in these games.
“There are things we went over in our gameplan that we didn’t execute well enough today,” Myles Turner said of how OKC is defending Haliburton and keeping Indiana out of the paint. “We’ll get them in the paint. I think we have been one of the better teams scoring in the paint all year and we have to establish that early. I think we only had four or six points in the paint in the first half and that’s not Pacers basketball … There’s ways to break down the defense but I think at times it’s easier said than done.”
Per Cleaning the Glass, this is the first time in the postseason that the Pacers have had below average efficiency nights on offensive in consecutive games as they’ve scored at a rate that would put them in the 41st percentile in Game 1 and 37th in Game 2. While they’ve had worse games offensively in the playoffs, they haven’t struggled this much on that end in back to back games during this historic run.
They also need to figure out how to get their other star Pascal Siakam touches in more efficient areas. Indiana hasn’t managed to have any individual player including their two stars to score 20 points or more in either game. Siakam recorded just one post-up possession in Game 2 where SGA pulled the chair and forced a turnover. Outside of that the Pacers were unable to get him the ball in advantageous positions inside even though there were times where he was guarded by Isaiah Joe or Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
the tracking data for last nights game?
1 post possession for Pascal – that low of volume basically never happens https://t.co/eyDMmtotac
— Samson Folk (the coach) (@samfolkk) June 9, 2025
Things were made very difficult by OKC but the Pacers didn’t do themselves any favors either. The lineups with Siakam but without Tyrese have to figure out ways to consistently get him the ball more often, which has been an issue at times throughout the year. There were moments in that terrible second quarter stretch that the Pacers had three starters on the floor but the offense had multiple possessions of TJ McConnell and Thomas Bryant being the only players that touched the rock.
“They swarm a lot. They do a good job of that,” Siakam of OKC’s defense. “I mean, yeah, they use their hands a lot. I mean, we are not going to get into fouls or no fouls but whatever. I think they are just being aggressive, and we’ve got to be stronger with the ball. We can’t let that speed us up. We’ve still got to play under control. Yeah, that’s what we’ve got to find a way to do.”
If they can unlock things for their stars, that may make things easier for everyone else.
The other end of the floor wasn’t pretty either in Game 2, the Pacers defense had its worst performance of the playoffs with OKC scoring 130 points per possession. Players were lost in rotations and shooters were left wide open on broken coverages on too many occasions all night. There’s plenty to fix on that end as well as the Thunder picked apart the Pacers defense with clever adjustments highlighted below by Caitlin Cooper (Indiana’s also facing the best coaching staff they’ve been up against in these playoffs as well).
More counters from OKC:
Baking 45 cuts & flares into their zoom actions to attack the next defender/exaggerated nail help
Spacing SGA to the logo to lift Nembhard from the nail + firing the ball into second side actions to attack the sag from Siakam pic.twitter.com/fnY2Ex8Xem
— Caitlin Cooper (@C2_Cooper) June 9, 2025
While SGA scored 38 points in the first game, the Pacers made him take 30 shots to get there. He scored 34 in Game 2 on 21 attempts while also seeming to make a much more persistent effort to find open players on many of his drives leading to guys like Caruso and Wiggins having big nights as well.
“I don’t know if there was any lineup that they used that wasn’t impactful for them,” Carlisle put it bluntly.
The Pacers have always found a way to respond to a loss in these playoffs. They haven’t lost consecutive games since March 10th. If they can keep that trend going through this series, they’ll be NBA Champions. But this will be the biggest challenge of the season for Indiana by a long shot. Can the Pacers find the necessary answers and execute them well enough to win three more games against OKC? They’ll get their first chance for one of them on Wednesday in Gainbridge Fieldhouse for Game 3 with the Pacers faithful having their own opportunity to make an impact on the series.
“I thought the atmosphere, I thought their crowd was exceptionally great,” Carlisle said of the Thunder crowd. “And so as we go home, we’re going to need our crowd to be just like this crowd was. 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.”
-#31-