Close-knit Indiana Pacers are hard to shake
INDIANAPOLIS — The Indiana Pacers have been winning together, losing together and fighting together all season.
Now they need to demonstrate their resilience once more as they try to save their season by rebounding from an emotional loss to LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers.
“Nobody thought we’d be in this situation,” Victor Oladipo said, referring to the NBA playoffs. “It’s important for us to stick together now because we’ve seen where it can go, where it can take us and it’s great.”
The immediate problem is recent history doesn’t bode well for the underdog Pacers, who trail 3-2 with Game 5 set for tonight in Indianapolis.
Cleveland swept Indiana in the first round last year, winning four games by a record-low 16 total points. James has won 10 straight closeout games and has never lost a first-round series. Indiana, meanwhile, is trying to reach the conference semifinals for the first time since 2014.
But the Pacers don’t care about stats, projections or conventional wisdom — as they’ve proven repeatedly this season.
After last summer’s Paul George trade, Indiana seemed bound for the draft lottery. Instead, general manager Kevin Pritchard cobbled together a rare combination of proven, often overlooked veterans, emerging stars, good shooters and willing defenders.
It turned out to be a perfect fit. Indiana won 48 games in the regular season, six more than it did with George last season, and is a win away from forcing the three-time reigning Eastern Conference champs into a decisive seventh game.
Cleveland has learned one lesson the hard way: The fifth-seeded Pacers won’t go away. They won 12 times after facing double-digit deficits and eight times after trailing by 15 or more during the regular season.
So perhaps it should come as no surprise Indiana has erased double-digit deficits in four straight games and wound up taking the lead or having a chance to win late in all four in this series.
“That team does not quit,” James said Wednesday night, moments after his buzzer-beating 3-pointer gave Cleveland a 98-95 win to salvage a win after the Pacers wiped out a 12-point second half to deficit to tie the score in the final minute.
Playing hard until the final buzzer has become the norm for these Pacers. And they’re savoring every precious second, too.
Nate McMillan recently called this one of the most enjoyable seasons he’s had as a head coach because he knows what he’ll get every day — energy from Oladipo and Lance Stephenson, steadiness from Darren Collison and Corey Joseph, leadership from Thaddeus Young and Bojan Bogdanovic and an eagerness to develop from Myles Turner and other young players.
With each player embracing their role, the Pacers have formed a cohesive bond.
Six players actually approached Pritchard before the trade deadline and pleaded with the general manager not to make any moves because they wanted to close out this season together. Pritchard said it was a first for him, and he kept the team intact.