As they return to Indiana, the Pacers' subs overwhelm the Thunder in Game 3 of the 2025 NBA Finals presented by YouTube TV.
INDIANAPOLIS — A poor start to the game. A lousy start to the second half. A feeble finish to the third quarter. Add it all up and the Oklahoma City Thunder dominated those game parts – a total of about six-and-a-half minutes — by a margin of 27-6.
Fortunately for the Indiana Pacers, there were another 41 minutes in Game 3 of the 2025 Finals on Wednesday night at Gainbridge Fieldhouse. Within those were six in particular in the fourth quarter when Pacers’ big men Myles Turner and Obi Toppin made all the difference, scoring a little and denying even more as defenders to help boost Indiana to its 116-107 victory and a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven championship series.
The moment
Indiana’s 7-1 spurt early in the final quarter was necessary, but all it earned them was a slim 98-96 edge with eight minutes left. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jalen Williams were rolling for OKC, the latter’s left-handed layup pulling the Thunder even at 98-98. Then Turner checked in with 7:04 to play. Toppin had been in since the start of the fourth.
The Pacers’ two big men — both adept at shooting from the arc, both rangy enough to protect the rim — were on the court together against this opponent that gets more attention when it plays its two bigs, Chet Holmgren and Isaiah Hartenstein, in tandem.
The impact
Turner, fighting a cold all day, started simply enough, getting the ball to Tyrese Haliburton for a 3-pointer that sent the Thunder into a timeout. The longest-tenured Indiana player got called for a moving screen, costing his team the ball for Williams’ floater that cut the gap to 101-100. Turner made up for it with a layup over Holmgren with 5:38 left.
That’s when the biggest Pacers asserted their size. Turner blocked a layup attempt by Holmgren. Toppin cleared a missed 3-pointer by Lu Dort. Toppin slammed back an errant jumper by Haliburton. Then it was Toppin’s turn to block Williams at the rim.
When both teams looked up, the Pacers had completed a 9-2 stretch that put them in front, 107-100. Turner and Toppin stayed in, and Turner put the finishing touches on their contributions when he blocked Holmgren twice in rapid succession, first on a long 3-pointer and then on a driving layup.
The fans at Gainbridge Fieldhouse were delirious by that point. The Pacers were up 110-104 with less than two minutes left. The Thunder had lost all momentum, all flow, and were settling for splitting pairs of free throws. In a league in which outcomes seem dictated by the teams that score by threes, scoring by ones wasn’t going to cut it.
What they’re saying
“Well, Myles is under the weather. He may not even be with us tomorrow. He just hasn’t been feeling well the last couple days.”
—Pacers coach Rick Carlisle, talking about Friday’s practice, not Turner succumbing to his cold.
“He did a great job of just taking a couple of deep breaths in the third quarter and just doing a reset and coming back in there ready. That’s what a lot of this is. You have to be super resilient. Things happen in milliseconds. I mean, these guys go by you, they are dunking the ball, they are doing this, they are doing that. It’s a lot going on.”
— Carlisle on Turner’s revival from a slow start
“They really outplayed us in the fourth. … I thought they were in character in terms of their physicality, their pressure on defense. Then they were in character in terms of their pace on offense. They just stacked way more quality possessions in the fourth quarter than we did.”
— Thunder coach Mark Daigneault.
“[Obi is] gifted. We know what he can do and he’s one of the fastest out there in the league as a big to run the floor. He’s perfect for what we want to do, and obviously, yeah, [his dunking ability] is crazy. I just love when he’s aggressive. Playing defense, running, and again, using his athleticism to just get in the paint, rebound, anything that he can do out there as a big that can move.”
— Pacers forward Pascal Siakam
What’s next
If the Pacers have any say about it and, most likely if they’re going to have any hope running down the Larry O’Brien Trophy, they will need at least two more performances like this one. It always is the group for them, whether it’s Turner and Toppin messing with OKC’s shots and rhythm, Bennedict Mathurin dropping an unexpected 27 off the bench, or backup guard T.J. McConnell bending the game to his will whenever he subs in.
“Look, this is the kind of team that we are,” coach Rick Carlisle said. “We need everybody to be ready. It’s not always going to be exactly the same guys that are stepping up with scoring and stuff like that. But this is how we got to do it.
“We need all of our guys to bring whatever is their thing to our thing.”
They will try to bring it again with just 48 hours between games. Game 4 comes Friday (8:30 p.m. ET, ABC) in the quickest game-to-game turnaround in the series.
Steve Aschburner has written about the NBA since 1980. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on X.
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