Tyrese Haliburton, Pacers stay true to themselves to advance to Eastern Conference finals

NEW YORK — A long-held belief around the NBA suggests that the game slows down in the playoffs. Teams that play fast in the regular season will have to find other ways to win because a high-paced style just doesn’t hold up to the rigors of postseason basketball.

Sitting between teammates Myles Turner and Pascal Siakam for the postgame news conference following the Indiana Pacers’ 130-109 Game 7 victory against the New York Knicks on Sunday, All-Star point guard Tyrese Haliburton smiled as he fielded a question about that long-held NBA truism.

“Do you think that we have slowed down a lot?” Haliburton asked.

The results of his team’s Game 7 victory revealed the obvious answer. It was a performance for the ages.

Indiana’s 39 first-quarter points were the most scored in the first quarter of a Game 7 in NBA history. The Pacers’ 130 points were the most scored in a Game 7 since the NBA-ABA merger in 1976. The Pacers’ 67.1 percent shooting performance was the highest team field goal percentage in a playoff game in history.

“I think that’s the answer,” Haliburton continued. “I think that’s just the old-school way of thinking that you can’t play this fast in the playoffs, but I think opportunistically, you can do it, right? … I think, slowly, we’re changing the whole way of thinking in the NBA that, in the playoffs, you have to play slow, and we’re able to just keep continuing to be who we are.”

If the Pacers have done one thing this postseason, it’s maintain a steadfast commitment to who they are. It was clear as they ran out to a big early lead in the first quarter, maintained their lead in the second quarter, withstood an early run from the Knicks in the third quarter and closed out the fourth quarter strong. They won all four quarters and, as underdogs, silenced the Game 7 crowd at Madison Square Garden.

“You just have to go through it,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. “And I knew today would be wilder than Game 5. Game 5 was the wildest thing any of our guys have ever seen.

“But you get in a Game 7, it’s just another species of animal. These fans are just unbelievable. They were just single handedly, all 19,000 of them, trying to will the Knicks back into the game in the third quarter. And our guys held the line. They were defiant about holding the line. And we found a way to turn to go ahead and win the third quarter. And then, I think we won the fourth quarter as well.”

While Carlisle would only sheepishly admit it following the game, the Pacers entered the game determined to test the weakest point of the Knicks starting lineup. After missing four straight games with a left hamstring strain, Knicks wing OG Anunoby decided to play through the injury and started Sunday. The Pacers immediately made it a priority to attack him offensively.

While Anunoby made two contested shots in the first four minutes, he struggled mightily to move around. The Pacers pushed the tempo on the break with Siakam and then set screens for Siakam in half-court settings to take advantage of Anunoby’s condition to jump out to a 16-10 lead.

After Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau took out Anunoby, the Knicks stabilized themselves for the next three minutes. Then Haliburton took over. After each possession, he let everybody in Madison Square Garden know about it.

With backup point guard T.J. McConnell in the game, Haliburton moved off the ball, and that created different opportunities for him. His first bucket came on an assist from McConnell and a flare screen from Turner to free him up for a catch-and-shoot look.

After he hit it, Haliburton let the Knicks fan who tried to close him out from the sidelines know all about it.

On the Pacers’ next offensive possession, Haliburton got into the lane, stopped, pivoted and rose up for a fadeaway jumper over Miles McBride. As he did during Game 6 in Indianapolis, Haliburton held his right point finger next to his right thumb to let the 6-foot-2 guard know that he was too small to cover him as he backpedaled down the court.

Following a miss by Jalen Brunson, the Pacers raced the ball up the floor, found an advantage and created another catch-and-shoot 3 for Haliburton. After he hit that triple, he held up his right hand to signal “3” for the sellout crowd to see.

Brunson missed again on the next possession, and Haliburton raced the ball up the right sideline, but the Knicks trapped the ball out of his hands. After he gave it up though, Haliburton didn’t stop moving. He sprinted after the ball as McConnell patiently dribbled on the left sideline waiting for Haliburton to get to him and eventually fired a leaning 26-footer off a pass pitched backward by McConnell.

In under two minutes, Haliburton tallied 11 points and gave his team a 12-point lead. Again, as he made his way back to the Pacers bench following a Knicks timeout, Haliburton let that fan courtside and the rest of Madison Square Garden know all about what he had just done.

“He was just talking before the game,” Haliburton said of the fan he trash talked during the first quarter. “It seems like whoever sits in that seat all series had something to say to me.

“I knew I was going to have to pick somebody today to get me going, and it just happened to be him. And (it) just got me going in the first quarter, and we just continued on, but I think that’s the game within the game. That’s the fun that is this environment.”

As he reflected on Haliburton’s first-quarter outburst, Carlisle found himself appreciating Haliburton’s ability to know what the Pacers need on a given night. Carlisle also thought about another brash Pacer who had an ability to perform in the biggest moments and hit big shots while letting the Madison Square Garden crowd know about it.

“Tyrese Haliburton is a great basketball player,” Carlisle said. “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.

“And when you have a guy that not only is a great passer but gives his teammates great confidence when he passes the ball, it’s important the right balance is struck. And I thought today he knew that we needed some special shot making. I mean, there were shades of Reggie Miller running around in that first quarter. The play where he ran all the way, side to side, made the 3 right in front of our bench, that was a huge play. I mean, that put us up 12. And those kinds of shots and those moments give a team confidence.”

Fittingly, Haliburton wore a sweatshirt postgame with Miller’s infamous choke gesture at MSG printed on the front. But while the rest of the Pacers might not share his interest in talking trash to New York’s courtside denizens, Carlisle was right in suggesting Haliburton’s confidence put the rest of the roster in a mental and emotional space to play with the defiance that has defined their season.

That defiance was apparent throughout the Pacers’ win.

It showed up on every shot Andrew Nembhard (20 points, six rebounds, five assists) and Aaron Nesmith (19 points, four rebounds) made to silence the MSG crowd and shut down Knicks’ runs throughout the game on their way to a combined 16-of-18 shooting performance, including a perfect 8-of-8 for Nesmith. It showed up on rookie Ben Sheppard’s baseline cut and extra pass to Isaiah Jackson for a two-hand dunk to keep the Pacers’ run rolling in the second quarter. It showed up on all four of Turner’s blocks.

But it was most apparent in Haliburton, especially in the moments when his team needed him most.

The Pacers took a 15-point lead into halftime, but the Knicks made one final push. With the capacity crowd attempting to will the Knicks back into the game, New York cut Indiana’s lead to seven points with 6:13 left in the third quarter. Then Haliburton delivered the knockout blow his team needed to put the Knicks away for good.

After a desperate scramble forced a Knicks turnover and let the Pacers get out on the run, Haliburton got in front of the Knicks and then made a ridiculous crossbody pass back to Turner for a left-wing transition 3.

On the next possession, the Knicks brought Haliburton into a pick-and-roll, an action that tormented the Pacers’ All-Star guard in the Knicks’ 30-point Game 5 win in Madison Square Garden.

This time though, when Josh Hart screened for Brunson, Haliburton stood his ground and aggressively jumped Brunson’s pocket pass to force a turnover. McConnell corralled the loose ball and tossed it over the top of Brunson for a Haliburton layup and a 12-point lead for the Pacers.

As Thibodeau called a timeout, Haliburton once again yelled out into the crowd. And while no one knew it in that moment, the Knicks’ hopes of a comeback ended on that play. The Knicks never cut the Pacers’ lead down to single digits again, and Brunson fractured his left hand on his attempted strip of Haliburton, which forced Brunson out of the game for good with 3:02 left in the third quarter.

After dropping Game 5 to go down 3-2 in the series, the Pacers took two straight to advance to their first Eastern Conference finals since 2014. They did it with Haliburton brashly knocking down the door and showing his teammates the way.

“I just told our team, when you win a Game 7 at Madison Square Garden, you’ve made history,” Carlisle said. “It’s very, very difficult to do. This is the most raucous crowd in the NBA that I’ve seen.

Now, the Pacers move on to face the Boston Celtics, the overwhelming favorites to represent the East in the NBA Finals. No one will likely pick the Pacers to beat the Celtics, just like no one picked them to beat the Knicks and very few people picked them to beat the Milwaukee Bucks in the first round.

That won’t bother the Pacers. It will just give them the chance to prove people wrong one more time.