The Indiana Pacers did something special in the fourth quarter of Game 2 against the Cleveland Cavaliers: they erased a seven-point deficit in less than a minute for the second time in three games and went on to take a stunning 2-0 lead as the Eastern Conference semifinals heads back to Indianapolis for a Game 3 clash at 7:30 p.m. ET tonight.
All of a sudden, the Pacers are -165 favorites to make their second Eastern Conference Finals in a row, as Cleveland’s 64-18 regular season looks as if it will amount to nothing. In a piece of good news, it seems as if the Cavaliers are finally getting healthy, as all three of Darius Garland, Evan Mobley, and De’Andre Hunter will at least try to suit up tonight after missing Game 2.
Cleveland is a five-point favorite (-198 Moneyline) at DraftKings Sportsbook, with the point total set to 230.5. Indiana, meanwhile, is +164 on the Moneyline.
Cavaliers at Pacers Game 3 preview, prediction
With 57.6 seconds remaining in the game, Donovan Mitchell hit his 16th and 17th free throws of the night to give the Cavaliers a 119-112 lead, an advantage that would’ve looked insurmountable had the Pacers not come back from a 118-111 edge in Game 5 against the Milwaukee Bucks just a week earlier. But then Jarrett Allen fouled Pascal Siakam, who was bailed out after he missed both by an Aaron Nesmith put-back dunk. On the ensuing trip up the floor, Mitchell committed an offensive foul, leading to a Siakam layup that cut the lead to three. Max Strus threw the inbounds pass straight to Andrew Nembhard, and Cleveland never got the ball back again. Tyrese Haliburton rebounded his own missed free throw and sunk the dagger from the top of the key.
I’m not sure who was the most stunned, the Cavaliers faithful who had come to Rocket Arena in throngs to cheer on their best team since LeBron James wore the wine and gold; the clearly exhausted and exasperated Mitchell, whose 48 points nearly delivered his team a victory; or even Haliburton’s jubilant teammates. It’s hard to take too much from a game in which Cleveland was missing three of its six best players and one of the others, Ty Jerome, shot just one-for-14 from the field after being nearly 50-40-90 during the regular season. But a win is a win, and now the Cavaliers need four of those in five games — three of which will be played on the road, where the Pacers have lost just six times since the start of 2025.
The series isn’t entirely over — much like the 61-21 Boston Celtics, who trail the 51-31 New York Knicks after two games at TD Garden, Cleveland is absolutely good enough to turn it around — but tonight is a must-win. No team has ever come back from 3-0 down to win a playoff series, and only four teams have ever even forced a Game 7. It’ll need all three of Garland, Mobley, and Hunter healthy.
Cavaliers at Pacers pick, best bet
Cleveland must be angry after the way Game 2 played out, and it’ll come out with a vengeance in Game 3. It’s unclear how healthy Garland, Mobley, and Hunter will be if all three suit up, but if they’re all even close to fit, the Cavaliers are still alive in this series.
Back-to-back blowouts in Games 3 and 4 of the first round sweep of the Miami Heat made us forget how important Garland is to the offense, but Cleveland was 1.3 points per 100 possessions better with him on the floor than on the bench in the regular season. His usage rate also spiked to 30.3% in the fourth quarter during the regular season, so he should be able to take some late-game responsibility off of Mitchell, diminishing both players’ crunch-time mistakes. During the regular season, the Cavaliers’ ball movement in particular was a lot better with him on the floor, as of his 10 most common five-man lineups, seven out-assisted opponents. In 40 regular-season minutes with him on the floor alongside Mobley, Hunter, Mitchell, and Allen, Cleveland blitzed opponents by 23.7 points per 100 possessions.
Without Mobley, the Cavaliers were 5.3 points per 100 possessions worse with him on the bench than with him on the floor. He didn’t play particularly good individual on-ball defense in Game 1 — Siakam and Myles Turner combined to shoot five-for-six against him — but his deterrence was noteworthy. Indiana attempted just 21 shots at the rim in Game 1 and 15 in the midrange, a rather unhealthy shot diet. In Game 2, 29 of the Pacers’ shots came in the restricted area, with only 13 in the midrange. If Indiana attempted the same shots as it did in Game 1 with the accuracy that it had in Game 2, the series would be tied and Cleveland wouldn’t be particularly concerned about advancing.
The Cavaliers have gotten fairly unlucky with their shooting; Max Strus has hit just three of his 14 open or wide-open threes so far this series, Mitchell is two-for-12, and Jerome one-for-seven. The Pacers, too, have gotten pretty lucky, hitting 50% of their midrange shots and and some 46% of their threes. Some of it is scheme — 32.7% of Indiana’s shots this series have come with no defender within six feet of the shooter, partially a product of Cleveland’s lackadaisical closeouts and partially a product of Haliburton’s brilliant playmaking — and some is pure luck. No Pacer has even shot below 40% from the field on three or more shots in any game this series except for Nembhard in Game 2, who missed the mark by 1.5 percentage points. That’s unsustainable.
It’s true that Game 2 would not have been close at all without Mitchell’s heroics. But his 48-point performance was more a result of high usage than of ridiculous efficiency; his 61.2% true shooting percentage was just his 32nd-best figure of the season. And while his 21 free-throw attempts marked the second-highest single-game total of his career, he’s always been fairly good at drawing fouls on his drives, so it wasn’t a complete surprise. Garland’s and Mobley’s returns should allow him to take a more passive role in the offense, where he can still score 30 on better efficiency.
Indiana absolutely deserved to win each of the past two games, and it should probably be favored over the Knicks if New York comes out of the other Eastern Conference semifinal. Haliburton is undeniably clutch and even less deniably not overrated. But the fact is that the Pacers have played far closer to their A-game than the Cavaliers have over the last two games, and as long as all three of Cleveland’s All-Stars suit up, I can’t see the visitors not making a huge statement tonight.
