Yahoo Sports senior NBA analyst Kevin O’Connor and Tom Haberstroh react to the Thunder’s comeback win over the Pacers to even up the NBA Finals at 2-2. Hear the full conversation on “The Kevin O’Connor Show” and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen.
Video Transcript
Indiana, man, I feel like this was the opportunity to win it all here.
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I felt like before this game, Tom, this game was gonna decide the series.
If OKC won this and tied it up 2 to 2, I’d pick them to win the series.
If Indiana goes up 3-1, I’m not picking OKC to win 3 in a row.
I felt like the Pacers missed missed their opportunity right here, and somehow it came down to this 3 minute stretch to close the game.
They were in it, man, they were in it.
This is where they wanted to be, right?
They, this is where Indiana feels most comfortable on their home floor.
It’s a close game.
They’ve won so many of these, uh, 9 and 1 in this postseason in clutch games and with Halliburton just going nuclear on every single opponent, and they could not pull it out and a lot of great defense by OKC I think primarily.
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I just love Alex Caruso on the floor for them in these big moments.
He hasn’t been starting these games.
They go with that lineup change to start Isaiah Harenstein going back into the starting lineup for Cason Wallace.
And I think Alex Caruso, he needs to be in that 30-plus minute range and closing out defensively.
A lot of good stops by him.
But Indiana, they were playing Indiana Rick Carlisle basketball for about 45 minutes of this game.
And then they got completely, completely out of that.
And some of that credit goes to Oklahoma City defense, the best defense by a mile in the regular season, one of the best defenses in NBA history.
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By my eyes, I thought, for most of this season, this was the best defense I’ve ever seen, and they showed it down the stretch, putting the clamps on Andrew.
Ehar and the rest of the Indiana Pacers that were moving the ball relentlessly for most of this game, and then they turned into the worst version of themselves and gave it away.
I have a lot of family and friends in Indiana, and they were texting me before this game, Kev.
They hadn’t been this nervous for an NBA game in a very Long time because they knew what was at stake.
They could have gone up 3-1 in the NBA finals, and now they got to go back to OKC 2-2, and it seems like all the momentum just shifted from Indiana with this Cinderella story, and now it’s back to that 68 win team OKC that looked like they’re just gonna go roughshod over the rest of the league.
