28 teams have been eliminated from contention for the NBA title. Two teams remain.
The Oklahoma City Thunder, after finishing the regular season with the best point differential in NBA history, were expected to be here. That wasn’t so much the case of the Indiana Pacers, who haven’t made the Finals since 2000 and are one of the 10 teams who have never won a championship.
Indiana is here thanks to the contributions of Eastern Conference Finals MVP Pascal Siakam and point guard Tyrese Haliburton, whose notable late-game heroics propelled the Pacers to three comeback victories in which they trailed by seven or more points with less than a minute to play, three of the four such rallies in NBA playoff history. During the conference finals, Haliburton averaged 21.0 points and 10.5 assists per game, his second career series in which he’s averaged 20 or more points per game. Perhaps not-so-coincidentally, both series have come against the New York Knicks.
The Knicks are one story, but can he do it against the vaunted Thunder, who had the best defensive rating since the 2021-22 Boston Celtics? According to DraftKings Sportsbook, he has +150 odds of doing so. DraftKings Sportsbook is also offering odds on three other players to average 20: Oklahoma City forward Jalen Williams (-350), Siakam (-170), and Thunder center Chet Holmgren (+475).
Unlike several other players of Haliburton’s ilk — he was named to his second consecutive All-NBA Third Team last week — he isn’t a consistent scorer, even if he is usually efficient. While he had 16 regular-season and four playoff games in which he scored more than 25 points, he also had 11 regular-season and two playoff games in which he didn’t even reach the 10-point threshold. His usage rate also varied widely, from 32.6% to 8.7%, although he recorded north of 20% usage in all but five playoff games.
Indiana should encourage Haliburton to be aggressive; combined between the regular season and the playoffs, the Pacers are 19-2 when he attempts at least 17 shots and 13-1 when he makes at least 10 shots. His ability to get to the charity stripe is another marker of Indiana’s success; between the regular season and the playoffs, they are 14-4 when he attempts six or more free throws. The latter is an area in which Oklahoma City might actually be exploitable; during the regular season, the Thunder allowed opponents to attempt the fourth-most free throws and are conceding 0.1 more per game these playoffs, although that’s only been the seventh-worst mark.
Haliburton is an ace from floater range and from beyond the arc, but struggles to get all the way to the basket; he attempted just 14 restricted-area shots during the Eastern Conference Finals. That might not be a terrible recipe against Oklahoma City, either; the Thunder were the league’s best rim-protecting team in the regular season and the sixth-best so far these playoffs but merely the 10th-best on non-restricted area paint shots in the regular season and the sixth-best in the postseason. Their dominance in three-point defense has also slipped from first in the regular season to seventh so far these playoffs, although that’s partially a byproduct of playing the Memphis Grizzlies, Denver Nuggets, and Minnesota Timberwolves, three of the league’s five most accurate teams from above the break in the regular season.
Haliburton didn’t reach the 20-point plateau in either of these teams’ regular-season matchups, scoring four and 18 points as Oklahoma City won both. He’ll likely be guarded mostly by Luguentz Dort, and though he made both of his shots and assisted twice against Dort in the regular season, the fact that he only attempted two shots in 50.1 partial possessions is cause for concern. The Thunder also rarely concede open shots, as they got a defender within six feet of the shooter on 78.7% of attempts in the first round, 73.5% in the second round, and 73.6% in the conference finals. He also averaged 3.3 points off turnovers per game in the conference finals, which also might not be sustainable against the team with the best turnover margin in NBA history.
Ultimately, Dort is a good enough defender that Haliburton will find it difficult to get off a quality look, and Haliburton trusts his teammates enough not to force subpar ones. Dort is a better on-ball defender than Jalen Williams is, so I have higher hopes this series for Siakam than I do for Haliburton. He barely got to the 20-point mark in the conference finals overall despite reaching it in four of his seven games, and doing it against Dort is very different than against Mikal Bridges. This time around, Haliburton will fall just short.
