INDIANAPOLIS — With fewer than eight minutes remaining in Game 4, Indiana Pacers forward Pascal Siakam grabbed a defensive rebound and pushed the ball looking for an easy transition opportunity. When the Boston Celtics turned him away, he kicked it out to second-year guard Andrew Nembhard for a catch-and-shoot 3 to give Indiana a nine-point lead.
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Nembhard, who was spectacular once again on Monday with 24 points, 10 assists and six rebounds, missed the open look. As the ball bounced off the front of the rim, backup point guard T.J. McConnell sprinted past Celtics point guard Jrue Holiday and flew through the air to secure the offensive rebound. As he did that, Jaylen Brown tried to poke the ball away and whacked McConnell across the face, sending McConnell crashing to the ground.
Jaylen Brown was called for a common foul on this play on T.J. McConnell.
Was it the right call?
🎥 @espnpic.twitter.com/17DUuURWW5
— The Athletic NBA (@TheAthleticNBA) May 28, 2024
After an official review, Brown was assessed a common foul. A pool report conducted with crew chief Zach Zarba following the game confirmed and explained the decision.
With the 105-102 Game 4 loss, fans may end up remembering the call for years as some sort of an injustice as the Eastern Conference finals and season came to a close. For Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle though, it will be the exact type of play that shows the inner makeup of an underdog team that made it all the way to the Eastern Conference Finals.
“I don’t really know where to start, but first, I want to just tell you that we thanked our players a few moments ago for an amazing season, a magical season,” Carlisle said after the loss. “The level of fight was just tremendous all the way through this.
“Circumstance never fazed them, one way or the other. They were in this to win every possession that they could and any game that they could and so, a lot of respect to our players and just how they conducted themselves in this series.”
In the end, the Pacers didn’t have enough to beat the No. 1 seeded Celtics, but few outside of their building even expected them to advance that far. After finishing 11th in the conference last season, the Pacers took a massive step forward this year in securing the sixth seed. Carlisle and the Pacers hope their surprise postseason run to four wins from the NBA Finals is the next step in the organization’s build toward consistent regular and postseason success.
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What does this postseason run mean?
The Pacers don’t need to apologize for winning.
In the first two rounds, they beat the players and teams that were in front of them to advance to the Eastern Conference finals for the first time since 2014. While the Milwaukee Bucks dealt with injuries in the first round and the New York Knicks had a large assortment of injuries in the second, the Pacers still needed to bring the necessary energy, discipline and focus to games to put themselves in a position to hit the shots, grab the rebounds and defend well enough to advance. That’s exactly what the Pacers did throughout their 17-game postseason run.
They also did that while dealing with injuries of their own. After putting together a All-NBA Third Team season, Tyrese Haliburton dealt with back spasms in the first round against the Bucks and then missed the final two games against the Celtics after aggravating his left hamstring injury reminiscent of the same injury that sidelined him for 10 games in January. Bennedict Mathurin, a 25-minute-per-game player, missed the final month and a half of the regular season and the entire postseason because of a torn right labrum.
In the end, they didn’t have enough to beat the NBA’s best regular season team. The disappointing finish should not take away from what the Pacers did in the first two rounds.
The Bucks knew what the Pacers wanted to do. Milwaukee had six games to slow down Indiana, but the Bucks never managed to find a way to keep the Pacers from doing what they do best as the Pacers ran a veteran-laden Bucks team off the floor. The series finale encapsulated that.
In the second round, the Knicks lost a number of contributors, but Nembhard, McConnell, Siakam and Haliburton all had massive moments in swinging the series.
When the Pacers acquired Haliburton in a deadline deal on Feb. 8, 2022, they were 19-37, winding up 13th in the East that season. Not even 28 months later, the Pacers made the conference finals.
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While that might feel like something to celebrate, Carlisle went out of his way throughout the postseason to keep his team’s focus on the task at hand rather than trying to contextualize their run in the moment or even think about what it could mean moving forward. One of the few exceptions Carlisle made to that focus came the day after they lost Game 5 to the Knicks by 30 points.
“This organization is great to work with,” Carlisle said, when asked to consider how the organization reached this point. “The communication between management and the coaching staff is exceptional and, look, you gotta get lucky, to get ahead of schedule, if indeed we are. It’s still to be determined.
“But you get lucky because you do a tremendous amount of work. That’s what those guys do. So anyway, that’s kind of the story. This is just one of the great franchises in all of pro sports, but we got a lot ahead of us here tomorrow. So, I don’t wanna get in too much of a feel good mood after getting our ass kicked in Game 5. We really are going to have to do a lot better.”
The answer was an encapsulation of why Carlisle is the perfect person to lead the organization through this period.
There was gratitude and a deep understanding of how difficult it can be to win in the NBA, which can only come with more than two decades of experience as a head coach and nearly four consecutive decades of living the NBA grind, but also a demand to continue to get better. That is what the Pacers will need if they want to continue to progress as a franchise and watch this season be the first step towards consistent year-in, year-out success and not just a one-season blip.
“I want to be very careful, just because I think it’s easy after a season like that to be like, ‘Oh man, we were so close and we’re going to get back to it.’ But it’s not guaranteed,” Siakam said. “And I’ve known that, like firsthand. I feel encouraged, but I think it’s a lot of work.”
For that to be the case, the Pacers will need to lean on the leadership of Carlisle and Siakam and remain vigilant in their efforts to improve as a franchise. To keep moving forward, the organization will need to remain critical of themselves and the work they put into building this team moving forward.
What did we learn about Haliburton?
All eyes remained on Haliburton throughout his first postseason run. After his first All-NBA season, observers wondered how he would handle the spotlight of the postseason as well as the greater defensive attention that comes along with being a superstar in the playoffs.
“Ty never got rattled, man,” veteran center Myles Turner said. “He cares about the game so much, and you can see it on his face, whether it’s a good game or bad game. And I think that whatever teams threw at him — it’s a credit to him and the team — he found a way to continue, to keep making different reads, getting us open and keeping himself involved and still making big shots. So I was very proud of his progression.
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“He also played through injury as well. That first Milwaukee series, he could have said, ‘Oh, my back hurts.’ … but he fought through that. And that’s leadership right there, man.”
In 15 postseason games, Haliburton averaged 18.7 points, 4.8 rebounds and 8.2 assists in 34.8 minutes per game. Despite seeing his minutes increase by more than two minutes per game, Haliburton’s points and assists both dipped from his regular season averages of 20.1 points and a league-leading 10.9 assists. That slippage occurred despite Haliburton shooting 1.1 percent better from the field (48.8 percent) and 1.5 percent better from behind the 3-point line (37.9 percent) in the postseason.
The highs of hitting a postseason game-winner in the first round against the Bucks and silencing a crazed Madison Square Garden crowd in a Game 7 at Madison Square Garden crowd were unfortunately mirrored by the lows of single-digit shot attempts in a Game 1 loss to the Bucks and losses in Game 1 and Game 5 to the Knicks in the second round.
“Tyrese Haliburton is a great basketball player,” Carlisle told reporters after the Pacers ended the Knicks series. “He’s a great point guard. If we need him to score 30, he can find a way to score 30. His job is to run the team. That’s why he led the league in assists.
“Too much is made of his point totals from game to game and I always kind of push back on that because if he has one big challenge, it’s the balance of the ability to score and running the team.”
Ultimately, the biggest postseason disappointment might have been something out of Haliburton’s control: his health. While there was a small stretch when Haliburton did not appear on the injury report, his name was found on it for much of the postseason with the left hamstring injury that hampered him throughout the season. He missed the final two games of the Eastern Conference Finals after sustaining the same injury in Game 2 in Boston.
Still, these 15 postseason games will be invaluable for Haliburton. There will always be some level of disappointment that he couldn’t experience those postseason reps at full health.
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“This summer, he’s going to devote a lot of (time) to, number one, getting healthy,” Carlisle said. “Number two, continuing to get stronger, build up his strength.
“You don’t realize the toll it takes playing an extra 14 or 15 games in the postseason and playing virtually every other day against the highest-level competition, so that’s something that he can take away. And all of our guys can. And as they make preparations this summer for next year, conditioning is a very, very important part of it.”
If Haliburton can learn and build from this experience, the Pacers should be in a great spot.
What happens with Siakam?
The Pacers foreshadowed what their summer should look like with their moves at the trade deadline.
Rather than trying to hold on to expiring contracts and draft picks to build out a wait-and-see roster around Haliburton, the Pacers decided to use some of their draft picks and contracts to make a play for Siakam. The 30-year-old forward is an unrestricted free agent this offseason, but as The Athletic first reported, the Pacers were optimistic at the time of the deal they would be able to sign Siakam to a long-term extension.
After arriving in Indianapolis, Siakam told the Pacers television crew that he “wants to make (Indianapolis) home” in a post-game interview on Jan. 25. Following the Game 4 loss to the Celtics on Monday, Siakam didn’t want to discuss his contract or what might happen this offseason, but was otherwise positive about becoming a Pacer.
“The support from the first day has been incredible,” Siakam said. “I couldn’t really ask for anything better in terms of support from the first day I got here. I could literally name everyone. … Just so much love and support. Just coming from where I came from. I sacrificed so much in a place and I think after you have that kind of break up, it’s hard, it’s tough.
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“Then you come into here and I think without that support, I don’t know how I really would have been able to do it. I’m so grateful and happy I came to a place where I felt so supported and you feel like you’re needed and you matter. As a player, that’s really all you can ask for.”
Siakam is eligible for a two-year extension worth roughly $80 million with the Pacers before opting to become a free agent. If Siakam chooses to be a free agent he would then be able to sign a five-year max contract that would start at 30 percent of the salary cap in the first year of the deal. That would be around $42.3 million, with a total offer coming in near $248 million over five years if the Pacers include annual eight percent raises. (No other team can offer him more than a four-year deal with five percent raises.)
Part of the appeal of joining the Pacers for Siakam was getting an opportunity to play with Haliburton. That pairing was undeniably fruitful in its first season together. Now, it will be incumbent on the franchise to make sure they are able to build a successful long-term relationship.
“Seeing how the city just breathes basketball and just how much support they give to the team, just being here, like the home games, I mean, it’s incredible,” Siakam said. “How would you not (want to) be a part of that? So I think for me, I’m just really blessed and happy for how this has been.”
How do the Pacers build their roster?
With a strong regular season and the franchise’s first conference finals appearance in a decade under their belt, the Pacers have an opportunity to make this a season to build upon. If they are able to get a Siakam deal done and lock in their All-Star duo for the foreseeable future, they will need to figure out their roster needs.
This season, the Pacers put together the league’s second-highest offensive rating, per NBA.com, scoring 120.5 points per 100 possessions. Their offense carried them to a net rating of plus-2.9 points per 100 possessions net rating, but the scoring margin for the Pacers was thin because of their porous defense, which allowed 117.6 points per 100 possessions, good for the NBA’s 24th-ranked rating.
But that defense improved after the team’s 123-109 loss to the Los Angeles Lakers in the finals of the inaugural In-Season Tournament inspired Carlisle and the Pacers to make some changes.
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“After the In-Season Tournament, we just made a decision as a staff that we needed to be better,” Carlisle said following the Pacers’ Game 7 win in New York. “There was a huge shift. The day after Christmas, we played at Houston and we started two of our better, more physical defenders (Aaron Nesmith and Nembhard), we had Jalen Smith starting at the four along with Myles (Turner).
“And I just told our guys, we are going to make a stand, and we’re going to get better.”
At the trade deadline, the Pacers got Siakam and found the starting lineup — Haliburton, Nembhard, Nesmith, Siakam, Turner — that would start the final two months of the regular season, aside from games in which injuries sidelined one of those players.
Per Cleaning the Glass, that lineup was plus 7.5 points per 100 possessions during the regular season. But while so much of the Pacers’ success was built upon elite offense, that lineup was stronger defensively. It graded out as an elite defensive unit, giving up only 108.1 points per 100 possessions, and just average offensively, scoring 115.6 points per 100 possessions.
In the postseason, that flipped as the lineup was spectacular offensively (130.4 points per 100 possessions) and middling defensively (114.5 points per 100 possessions), per Cleaning the Glass. Marrying those two results would create an elite starting group, a pre-requisite for most contenders.
Even if they have Siakam and Haliburton playing on max-level contracts, they will still be able to field an affordable starting lineup with Turner making $19.9 million next season, Nesmith making $11 million and Nembhard making slightly more than $2 million.
Outside of getting a deal done with Siakam, the Pacers’ biggest internal offseason question will be what to do with reserve forward Obi Toppin, likely to be a restricted free agent.
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While there might have been some question about Toppin’s NBA future before this season, the fourth-year forward seemed to find himself in Indiana, playing all 82 games and putting up 10.3 points and 3.9 rebounds in 21.1 minutes per game. Toppin also hit a career-high 40.3 percent from 3 and proved valuable in the postseason as well.
Ultimately, the Pacers will not have meaningful cap space this summer, but they will still be in a position to re-sign their free agents while also using the full mid-level exception. It will require an increase in payroll, but they are well-positioned to bring back the roster that made it to the conference finals, while also adding another piece or two.
On top of that, Mathurin, who was likely going to end up in the Sixth Man of the Year discussion if he would have been able to finish out the season healthy, will return. McConnell, the heart and soul of the team’s bench unit, will be back next season on the final year of a four-year, $33.6 million extension he signed in the summer of 2021.
Carlisle will have to figure out how to deploy everyone, but there is a real possibility the Pacers start next year with seven of their top eight players in minutes played this season still on the roster and adding a few meaningful pieces.
That should make for an exciting offseason and a 2024-25 season with increased pressure and expectations.
“There were a lot of things accomplished this year, and certainly expectations will be raised for next year, which is good,” Carlisle said after Game 4 of the Eastern Conference finals. “There are challenges to meet over the summer for our guys to all get better.”
(Photo of Tyrese Haliburton and Pascal Siakam: Patrick McDermott / Getty Images)
