The Indiana Pacers, fueled by a near triple-double from Tyrese Haliburton, on Wednesday outdueled the Oklahoma City Thunder 116-107 to take a 2-1 lead in the NBA Finals.
Haliburton scored 22 points with nine rebounds and 11 assists to spearhead a tremendous collective effort that included a career playoff high 27 points from reserve Bennedict Mathurin.
The Pacers bench outscored Oklahoma City’s reserves 49-18, and Indiana wore down NBA Most Valuable Player Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, whose 24 points included just three in the fourth quarter.
Photo: Kyle Terada-Imagn Images / USA Today
“So many different guys chipped in,” Haliburton told American Broadcasting Co. “Ben Mathurin was amazing off the bench tonight. He just stuck with it. We just had guys make plays after plays.”
Pascal Siakam scored 21 points for Indiana and T.J. McConnell added 10 points and five steals off the bench to help the Pacers improve to 10-0 since March 11 in games immediately after a defeat.
They will try to stretch their lead in the best-of-seven championship series when they host Game 4 today before the series heads back to Oklahoma City for Game 5 on Monday.
Pacers coach Rick Carlisle lauded the contributions of Mathurin and McConnell.
“Those guys were tremendous,” Carlisle said. “T.J. just brought a will, competitive will, to the game. Mathurin jumped in there and immediately was aggressive and got the ball in the basket.”
“This is the kind of team that we are,” he added. “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’ve got to do it, and we got to do it as a team.”
In 22 minutes on court through the second and fourth quarters, 22-year-old Canadian Mathurin was a brutally efficient nine-of-12 from the field, making two of his three three-point attempts and seven of eight free-throws, adding in four rebounds an assist and a blocked shot for good measure.
“Just staying ready,” Mathurin said. “Whenever my number is called, go into the game and do the right things and try to help my team win — that’s the whole mindset.”
Mathurin is playing in the playoffs for the first time, after watching the Pacers’ run to the Eastern Conference Finals from the bench in the wake of season-ending surgery in March last year.
“He was with the team. He just wasn’t playing,” Carlisle said. “He took a lot of notes, a lot of mental notes, and he may have written some things down.”
“I do know that after he sustained the injury, it was either in February or early March, you can order these calendars that start on a specific day and then they count days,” he said. “So there was a calendar sitting in our training room and every day he would come in and take one off, take one off. He was counting the days down to being cleared sometime in August and then be able to begin training camp, begin five-on-five with our guys in September and then be in training camp, really, with his eyes firmly set on an opportunity in the playoffs.”
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