INDIANAPOLIS – The Pacers have finally ended the franchise’s 25-year NBA Finals drought, achieving the unthinkable after starting 10-15 and looking like anything but a title contender.
Now Indiana will try to exorcise the demons of its decades-long, snake-bitten history and actually win the title when the Pacers take on the Oklahoma City in the NBA Finals.
“It is really a special thing that happened 25 years ago, I wasn’t even six months old,” Tyrese Haliburton said after Indiana’s series-ending victory over New York. “There’s a lot of fans who have never seen success from this organization, especially people around my age. They weren’t alive for it.
“So it’s really special what we’re doing, and we’re just trying to keep making this a special place, a place where people want to come.”
The Pacers play in a state where basketball is treated like religion, championship teams become royals and players and coaches emerge as revered figures when they achieve the unexpected like these Pacers.
But Indiana hasn’t always been that dream destination for NBA players, instead being tabbed as snake-bitten franchise for most of its 48 seasons in the league.
— After winning three ABA titles, it took a telethon to save the financially floundering NBA newbie in July 1977.
— The Pacers made just one playoff appearance during their first decade in the NBA, losing both games to Philadelphia.
— Fans booed resoundingly when the Pacers used a first-round draft pick on Reggie Miller in 1987 instead of home-state favorite Steve Alford.
— And their pathway to championships in the 1990s seemed hopelessly blocked by Michael Jordan’s Bulls or Patrick Ewing’s the Knicks until the breakthrough run in 2000 only to lose to Shaquille O’Neal, the late Kobe Bryant and the Lakers.
And though Miller was still playing at a high level, it has taken another quarter-century to make it back.
The journey hasn’t been an easy one.
This Pacers team rallied to eliminate some other snake-bitten opponents. They knocked out the 2021 NBA champion Milwaukee Bucks, the top-seeded Cleveland Cavaliers and the rival Knicks. The second final chapter begins Thursday in Oklahoma City.
The expectations were different 25 years ago.
Donnie Walsh revamped Indiana’s roster by surrounding Miller with younger players following the 1999-2000 season, and four seasons later the Pacers posted the league’s best record in 2003-04. They wound up losing the conference final in six games to Detroit.
Then came the franchise-changing Malice in the Palace brawl in November 2004.
Several lengthy suspensions gutted the team, derailing Miller’s last title run while sending the franchise into a downward spiral. Larry Bird fired coach Rick Carlisle, his friend and ex-teammate, two years later and his departure was followed by a rash of devastating injuries.
Danny Granger’s budding career was cut short by knee tendinitis. Paul George suffered a compound fracture in his right leg in 2014 and he was traded to Oklahoma City in 2017. Two years later, All-Star guard Victor Oladipo ruptured his right quadriceps tendon and was subsequently traded, too.
Myles Turner experienced most of the ups and downs of that decade from the Pacers locker room, and it only made his opportunity to hug Miller and Nancy Leonard, the widow of former Pacers longtime coach and broadcaster Bobby “Slick” Leonard, so much sweeter after winning the conference crown.
“It was just pure excitement, pure validation,” Turner said. “Just all the years, all the hate, all the love, everything in between. So, man, in that moment, it was just pure exuberance.”
Turner was a pivotal piece — not the central one — when president of basketball operations Kevin Pritchard embarked on another rebuild midway through the 2021-22 season to form the core of this year’s squad.
He started by dealing All-Star forward Domantas Sabonis to Sacramento for Haliburton. Five months later, Indiana acquired forward Aason Nesmith from Boston for Malcolm Brogdon. And when Pritchard sent Bruce Brown to Toronto for Pascal Siakam in January 2024, Pritchard figured the Pacers finally had their big three.
Fans were skeptical, but the Pacers ushered in a new era of basketball, one that combined Indiana’s favorite sport with its longtime auto racing tradition, creating a track-like pace brand of basketball.
In some ways, these Pacers are a throwback to their ABA roots — fast, high scoring, flurries of 3-pointers and made-for-television entertainment right down to the dance team.
“The pace, it just fits who I am as a person, like the way I play the game,” said Siakam, who won a championship ring with Toronto. “We have a lot of people who look down on us as an underdog and that’s my style. I like that because that’s been me my whole life.”
The Pacers will open as the underdog against the Thunder, the team George landed with all those years ago. Two former ABA powers, San Antonio and Denver, have won NBA titles. But if the Pacers can capture the Larry O’Brien trophy, they would be the league’s only team to be crowned ABA and NBA champions.
“This is not the time to be popping champagne,” said Carlisle, who led the Dallas Mavericks to the 2010-11 title. “Getting to the NBA Finals is an accomplishment. But if you start looking at it that way, you’ll go into it with the wrong mindset. When you get to this point of the season, its two teams, it’s one goal so it becomes an all or nothing thing.”
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