Bennedict Mathurin drops 27 points, while T.J. McConnell and Obi Toppin combine for 18 to spark Game 3 win off the bench.
INDIANAPOLIS — There’s a different energy in the 2025 NBA Finals, at least sensed by those in this historic and proud basketball state. The Indiana Pacers are leading the championship series and hopeful to spin their own Hoosiers tale.
How realistic is that against the top-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder? Any ambitious goal must start with a significant step, which was taken Wednesday night at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, and perhaps that footprint left an impression on OKC.
It was Pacers 116, Thunder 107, and this game presented a twist. In the first two games combined, the Pacers led by less than two minutes total. This time? Once the lead was seized with six minutes left, it was never surrendered, and here we are.
There was too much Tyrese Haliburton, too much Bennedict Mathurin off the bench, too much rim protection by Myles Turner late in this game for OKC to handle. The Pacers played a more complete game for once and beat the Thunder at their own game — defense, depth and at times dominance.
In the process, the Pacers finally broke their Game 3 jinx, having dropped all three such games in the postseason before Wednesday.
Said Pacers coach Rick Carlisle: “Hard things are hard. Our guys, they have made the investment, and it’s an ongoing thing. It’s like a great marriage, it’s a lot of work.”
The work is paying off so far for Indiana.
Speaking of work: Suddenly, down a game in this series, nothing seems safe anymore for the Thunder, not even a simple inbounds pass. (Hello, T.J. McConnell!)
Here are five takeaways from a momentum-shifting victory by the Pacers:
1.Shai finally silenced a bit
They didn’t shut the MVP down. Honestly, given the season Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has had — and is still having — that doesn’t seem reasonable. Yet this was a clear victory for Andrew Nembhard, Ben Sheppard and the Pacers to flash a different strategy and prevent him from becoming a one-man demolition.
“You’re consistently trying to mix things up because if you give any good player the same look over and over, it can be really tough,” Haliburton said.
He was far from a factor Wednesday, which represented the first tame output by Gilgeous-Alexander in this series. No 30-piece this time, no soul-crushing run of buckets to snatch momentum, no steady trips to the free-throw line, none of that. Just six turnovers and a mild 24 points, which Indiana will take anytime.
The sight of Gilgeous-Alexander working up a sweat to free himself from the Pacers’ clutches was different. Indiana brought help high in the pick-and-roll, which seemed to freeze him at times and limit his movement. He started slow (six first-quarter points) and managed only one bucket in the fourth.
Gilgeous-Alexander had moments. He just didn’t have a game.
The Pacers limit league MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to 24 points with 6 turnovers in Game 3.
“With him, he’s the MVP,” Carlisle said. “You’ve just got to try to make it difficult. And you know, we’ve just got to keep platooning people onto him and try to keep our guys fresh somehow.”
Have the Pacers figured something out? They did so against the Knicks’ Jalen Brunson in the Eastern Conference Finals. Brunson plays a similar style and initially put the Pacers on red alert. But as that series progressed, he labored so much more.
Such is the goal of Carlisle and also Nembhard, who is the first line of defense. They want, and probably need, to solve the Gilgeous-Alexander riddle to capture this series. Wednesday was either the start … or merely a temporary speed bump.
“I’ll clean everything up and try to be better for this basketball team come next game,” Gilgeous-Alexander said.
2. The math adds up for Mathurin
In a best-of-seven championship series, there’s always an unexpected source of production, usually from the bench. One day it’s Alex Caruso, the next it’s Aaron Wiggins or Obi Toppin.
Game 3 was claimed by the Pacers’ Mathurin, a walking bucket on this night who caused problems for a usually dependable OKC defense. His mandate was clear — get ball, shoot ball. And he delivered on that duty.
Let’s see: 27 points in 22 minutes? Shooting 9-for-12 and also 7-for-8 from the free-throw line? Dare we suggest that Mathurin was the best Canadian on a floor shared with Gilgeous-Alexander? And he didn’t even play in the first quarter?
Well, once Carlisle put him in, he stayed with him. Mathurin was that effective and meant that much for an Indiana team that fed off his energy.
“Just whenever my number is called, go into the game and do the right things and try to help my team win,” Mathurin said. “That’s the whole mindset.”
He missed last season’s playoffs with a labrum injury, so in a sense, he was restless. He waited a year for his turn, and it arrived on Wednesday.
3. McConnell steals the show
The urgency and the energy of the Pacers was embodied in a series of blurs by T.J. McConnell, who placed his signature hustle on this game.
“T.J. brought a competitive will to this game,” Carlisle said. “He’s a guy who inspires our team a lot.”
He stole three inbounds passes off of made Indiana baskets. Those had a demoralizing effect on the Thunder and translated into additional points for the Pacers.
In one sequence, he drove to the rim, passed to Toppin for a layup, then stole the inbounds. Another such steal led to a Pascal Siakam shot. It missed, but McConnell grabbed the rebound and dished an assist.
McConnell played 15 minutes, had five steals — three in a rousing second quarter — 10 points and five assists. The crowd was energized and so were his teammates.
“He did a great job of consistently getting there and making hustle play after hustle play, and sticking with it, and I thought we did a great job of just feeding off of what he was doing,” Haliburton said.
4. Tyrese is forceful from the jump
In the two first halves of the previous Finals games, Haliburton was curiously absent. He totaled nine points in those 24 minutes, and for much of that time, the Pacers trailed big, including by as much as 20 in Game 2.
He admitted he needed a better start, and being more aggressive was the key. That didn’t necessarily mean Haliburton had to force shots — that’s not his style anyway — but to create issues for OKC’s defense.
Mission accomplished.
One reason the Pacers led by four at halftime while shooting 55% was Haliburton, who had 12 points with seven assists in the half. He brought bounce, attacked the rim at times, controlled the pace, drew the double-team, which opened the floor for his teammates and helped them to open shots.
“I thought his approach tonight was exactly what it need to be, a combination of spatial awareness and aggression, and you know, a real good feel for aggression to score along with getting his teammates involved at the right times,” Carlisle said.
All told for Haliburton: 22 points (4-for-8 from deep), 11 assists and nine rebounds, a near triple-double all made possible by a first half where he was determined to be more impactful.
“I’m just trying to play the right way,” he said. “This means the world to me and I’m excited to be here. But I do think it’s important that you don’t overreact at any point.”
5. OKC has been here before
It’s very simple: the Thunder must win three out of four games to win the NBA championship. And the next game is in Indianapolis. And the Pacers lost only four games total in the previous three rounds before the Finals.
This is enough to cause understandable concern for a 68-game winner in the regular season. But panic? OKC didn’t in the Western Conference semifinals against the Nuggets, so why start now?
About that Denver series: OKC dropped the first game and trailed 2-1, much like this series so far. Each time, the Thunder’s response was emphatic. They won by 43 points in Game 2, then evened the series in Game 4 with a gutsy five-point win where they refused to crumble in the fourth quarter.
So here they are again. OKC seemed poised to snatch control of this Game 3 in the last 52 seconds of the third quarter, when they flipped a one-point deficit to a five-point lead. Jalen Williams was the architect of that, assisting on a Chet Holmgren dunk before swishing a 26-footer at the buzzer.
This time, though, the Pacers had all the fourth-quarter answers. Holmgren was shut down by Turner, Gilgeous-Alexander had one bucket in the fourth and OKC was outscored 32-18. All told, the Thunder had 19 turnovers, unusual for them. That was a wrap.
“I thought they were in character in terms of their physicality, their pressure on defense,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “Then they were in character in terms of their pace on offense.”
The slate is clean for Friday (8:30 p.m. ET, ABC). In the Finals, each game takes on its own identity. What was evident one night could disappear the next.
Those are all comforting words for a team eager to avoid falling into a 3-1 hole, which would create a scenario of doom. Panic? In such a situation, it would certainly creep into the conversation.
“The great thing is we have another game coming up,” Holmgren said. “We can’t be thinking about frustration or anything. No matter how good it’s going, how bad it’s going, the focus can’t be on your emotions. It has to be on what we’re trying to accomplish — the task at hand.”
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Shaun Powell has covered the NBA for more than 25 years. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on X.
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