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Aaron Neesmith coming flying out of that left corner, rising and firing like it's game one against the Knicks all over again. Andrew nemhard with the 17 dribble, step back against Jay Gilchrist. Alexander with a hand right in his face to hit the three. And then Tyrese Halliburton with the clock winding down against K's on Wallace, a quick little stop and pop jumper a little bit outside of the right elbow and The Pacers are up 10 in the NBA Finals and very much in position to give themselves a chance to win this series. Just absolutely unbelievable stuff. All my notes, crumple them up, throw them in the trash. As far as the narrative of this game goes, we're going to get into as much of the basketball as we can and talk about the different dynamics at play in the series and try to interpret as much of this as we can into what's repeatable and what is not. But I am in complete shock. As I can imagine just about anybody outside of the Pacers fans who have been believing in this team all season long, I'm in shock and I barely know where to start with this thing. I will say before we get started, I cannot say enough how much this Pacers team has just injected an enormous amount of entertainment into this NBA Playoffs. The NBA Playoffs has been a lot of blowouts over the years in recent years. Kind of lacking some of that high level entertainment in the later rounds. And this Pacers team and their unwillingness to give up and the way that they play and the way that they put themselves in position to steal games with their incredible attention to detail and sharpness and relentless motor and effort have just literally injected the enthusiasm and honestly, just what I think is a very beautiful brand of basketball for all of us to watch and enjoy, for young basketball players to learn from, to improve their own games, for basketball teams and basketball coaches to improve the way they play. I can't say enough about what the Pacers have done in this playoff run for my view of the game. I think for everybody's learning of the game and obviously just making for a very entertaining basketball product. You guys know the drill before we get started, subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at_jason lt so you guys don't miss show announcements. Don't forget about our podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts under Hoops Tonight. It's also super helpful if you leave a rating and a review on that front. Jackson's doing great work on our social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. Make sure you guys follow us there for additional content throughout the season. We are not doing a mailbag at the tail end of tonight's show because we're hitting a an all star topic surrounding the new move from Adam Silver to try to pit Team USA versus the World. We're gonna have that, but we will when we wrap up here tonight, be heading over to Playback. That's Playback TV slash Hoops. Tonight we will be doing A chat mailbag there. We'll also be taking callers. We'll obviously watch the film from that insane fourth quarter and go over how the Pacers stole this game. I'm looking forward to watching through that with you guys. So when we wrap up here on YouTube, remember to follow us over to Playback TV slash Hoops tonight. All right, let's talk some basketball. So this game really was a story of two halves in a lot of ways. I talked about how in the series preview that there is like an opening test with Oklahoma City, these fail points, if you guys remember, I talked about these potential failure points for Indiana in the series where if they just struggled to get the ball to where it needed to be, that they were dead on arrival. And those. We talked about specifics. We talked about ball pressure in the backcourt. We talked about off ball denials. We talked about high post entries and low post entries. We talked about double teams in posts and isos and drives. We talked about like, when they get the ball into the middle of the floor, whether it's through a drive or a roll or a post, the, the ability for them to pass out of the traffic in those spots on the floor. And they failed that test miserably in the first half. Like, as bad as you will ever see. Especially relative to the way that this Indiana Pacers team typically takes care of the basketball. Turnovers bringing the ball up the floor, dudes getting poked away from behind as they're not paying attention to what's happening behind them. Turnovers on post entries, turnovers on pocket passes as they're missing, guys tagging from the weak side. Everything. The big one that they were dealing with in that first half was posts and isos. When guys turned their back, just like as soon as someone turned their back, the dude was just swooping in from behind and swiping the ball away in the half court. 19 turnovers in the first half. A truly remarkable performance defensively from the Thunder. Honestly, I thought it was a showcase of everything that makes them so great. Again, like for those of you haven't, for you Thunder fans, maybe if you haven't watched as much, Pacers, like, that's a team that doesn't turn the ball over a lot. That's a team that typically handles that sort of aggression and pressure extremely well. And they didn't in that first half. And it's because of the job that Lou Dortmund can do on Tyrese Halliburton to make him uncomfortable. It's because of the job that those guys do swarming and swiping at the basketball. Lou Dort, his activity on the back line even in this game, Caruso on the back line, everyone flying around and making plays. Even Shea getting in on the turnover. Forcing now to Indiana's credit, their transition defense in that catastrophe in the first half kept them in the game. We talked so much over the course of the last few weeks about low hanging fruit. These are things that are available in every single basketball game to every single team. Now you need a certain amount of elite shot making to make it to your ultimate goal in the NBA. Like that's the fourth time in this playoff run that Tyrese Halliburton has hit a tough shot in a one on one situation to either win a game or to put his team in position to win a game. In the final seconds of the as the clock is expiring, obviously the Aaron Neesmith shot, the Andrew Nemhard shot, there were a lot of really tough shots that were mixed in there. And obviously you're not just going to win a game because you're a sharp, disciplined basketball team. You've got to have a certain amount of individual greatness to carry you over the top. Especially when you're staring down Shay Gilgis Alexander on the other end, who outside of his last couple possessions I thought had a really good game. And at a certain point, in order to put yourself in position to weather that storm, to live through some turnovers, to live through some sloppiness, you gotta be super sharp in other areas of the game. And they consistently got back, protected the rim and stopped the ball, got contests on three point shooters. And so despite allowing or despite turning the ball over 19 times in the first half, they allowed just nine points off of those turnovers. And then as we say, when you're going to apply that type of pressure, if you're going to deny, if you're going to double, if you're going to tag rollers and offer a ton of nail help and double team post ups and do all of that stuff. The flip side is guys are open and if you can get the ball through the defense to those guys, they're still open. They are a good closeout team. They're going to make it more difficult than it appears on the surface compared to some other opponents out there. But you can't act. They don't actually have six players on the court. They just feel like that sometimes if you can take care of the basketball and you could pass it through their defense, you can get open shots against Oklahoma City's base scheme and in the second half just six turnovers total. Three in the third quarter, three in the fourth quarter and just two points off of turnovers as a result. Mixed in obviously with the tough shot making that we saw a lot of pretty solid either like wide open catch and shoot threes for guys like Obi Toppin or you know, moderately contested catch and shoot threes that are good looks for guys like Aaron Neesmith and a lot of pretty high quality attempts right around the rim. And they scored 66 points in the second half and all night long their defense held up pretty well, wasn't perfect. They ran a lot of traditional coverages and at various points against the traditional coverages they struggled. Shay Gilgis Alexander, to his credit, a lot of stars in NBA history struggle in the NBA finals. They get a little passive or they get tentative or they, you know, kind of get just. They just look kind of shook from the moment. I mean you saw it happen to several pace, you saw it happen to damn near the entire Pacers bench to start this game. Although shout out to Obi Toppin. He had about as nightmare a start to this game as you could possibly have, fumbling the ball and throwing it around all over the place. But he hit a couple of threes and he loosened up and he was awesome from that point forward and hit so many big shots for the Pacers in this game. But once the at the start of the game, Shay Gilders Alexander came out and he was like screw being passive, screw easing my way into this game. I'm shooting the basketball. And he had 11 shot attempts in the first quarter. I think he had like 19 or 20 in the first half. And he essentially accelerated the process with which he became comfortable, which I actually thought was smart, especially as a scoring guard, like if you're a scoring guard. And again the formula for this team is elite defense and Shay shot making on a lot of nights, especially when things bogged down the way they did and he just got himself into a pretty good rhythm. I thought he passed out of an ISO to J dub late that he probably didn't need to. It kind of looked like he was just hesitant to go ISO again and then overcooked his last little pull up jump shot long off the back end of the rim. But overall throughout the game, I mean like tough shot making. Give Shay get a decent look and you know you have Andrew Nemhard hit a crazy 17 dribble, step back three right in his face. Like there's a certain amount of variance that goes into that sort of thing. And I thought Shea played a pretty damn good game under the circumstances with the gate, with the way that the game went. The Pacers came out in a high drop coverage with Turner. I've talked about this before. The high drop coverage with Indiana with respect to Shay has nothing to do with taking away the pull up jump shot off of the, off of the three point line. If he comes off the screen clean, it's all about trying to stop Shea from turning the corner with the Runway. And Shea cooked that coverage right off the bat and was getting right around Turner and drawing fouls and getting all the way to the rim. That's why we saw so many Shay layups in the first part of the game. Then the, the Pacers adjusted and they went from that high drop to more of a low drop where Turner was meeting him far back. And that was when Shea really started to get going with his mid range shot making. And that was kind of how all of that initial work early in the game that he did to get his feel and to get his aggression really started to pay off. And like out like Shay was awesome in this game. Lou Dort was awesome in this game. Lou Dort is. It's so funny. He shot so poorly overall in this postseason run. But against the Pacers in the regular season, he killed them. And he went right back to killing them tonight. Had five threes and a lot of those like kind of semi tough contested threes that you need to knock down in the postseason. But outside of Shea and Lou Dort, they generally did a pretty good job. I think there are some things they need to clean up. We saw a lot of, we saw a lot of the attacking of Tyrese Halliburton and Obi Toppin and in a little bit of Siakam too. And in guard, guard screens out above the break. And Shea had some success like quickly attacking those guys when they were hedging and splitting action and drawing fouls. And he did a lot of damage up there. But for the most part, in the aggregate, they prevented the explosive Oklahoma City quarter. How did they prevent the explosive Oklahoma City corner quarter? By keeping them out of transition. Again, guys, this is a team that in this postseason run is averaging like 23, 24 something crazy in points off of turnovers and pulling it up real quick. Right now they are, they are carrying their offense for extended stretches in this postseason literally by just forcing turnovers and getting out in transition. 23.8 is their postseason average in points off of turnovers held them to just 11 tonight. Oklahoma City's offense is capable of being very good, but they don't have the depth of elite shot making off the ball and just overall offensive feel to be a super explosive slowdown offense. If you can keep them out of transition by preventing those easy transition points, by getting back, stopping the ball, getting to the rim, forcing them to knock down jump shots, you can keep them from having the explosive quarter. And that's what Indiana did. Indiana had a 35 point quarter. Oklahoma City didn't have a 30 point quarter in this game. Let's get to some of the other little adjustments that I saw. Oklahoma City, they give up a lot of open threes with their swarming defense and it is a trade off. Like again in the first half they forced a bunch of turnovers and it generally paid off, right? Didn't get out and transition as much as they could have, but overall they had a good half. In the second half, Indiana was able to successfully get the ball out and they knocked down shots. They could try to loosen that up a little bit, essentially just being a little bit more picky. I liked when they dove at the basketball. When some of the lesser ball handlers turned their head. If Siakam turns his head away from you, go for it. If Obi Toppin turns his head away from you, go for it. If Miles Turner turns his head away from you, go for it. But if he's looking at you, or if it's anybody that can handle the ball pretty well, be a little bit more hesitant to help because this is a Pacers team that will get the ball out. Almost half of their shot attempts tonight were pretty clean or they were three point shots and they got a lot of pretty clean looks as part of that process. Oklahoma City also, I thought did a decent amount of damage on the offensive glass in the first half. Oh, Indiana flipped that dynamic in the second half. We got started to see some of their size on the interior do some more damage. That's an area where Oklahoma City can do better. We saw them do better in the first half of this particular game. Just looking through my notes really quick here, bear with me. It was a an absolute disaster of a planning night for the show with me putting together the show based on Oklahoma City controlling the. I think it was their first lead on the Tyrese Halliburton shot that he made. It's just an absolutely unbelievable game. Overall, Indiana did have success attacking Smalls. You saw some of the specific differences like it when, when they're doing that three quarter front. We saw Rick Carlisle Talking about some of those, like, tight window bounce passes aren't there. It's almost better for them to push the post a little bit further out and then look to attack with a. With an aggressive move, like spinning off of that guy or something along those lines. We also did see a good amount of that damage being done on the offensive glass. It's an alternative. You got his switch. Instead of trying to cram in some crazy entry pass, put something up from the perimeter, a decent, you know, swing the ball around, run a quick ghost screen, do something to get you a decent perimeter jump shot. Look, and if you shoot it high and soft enough, you're going to give your big guy a pretty good chance to win that battle. On the flip side, I think that's something that we saw in that second half. Unbelievable stuff Again, I think Indiana could. I think Indiana could lighten up a little bit on some of their traditional coverages. We saw a lot of them giving up pretty easy stuff. Like the ball screen coverages with Turner weren't working against Shay and either the high drop or the low drop. Thomas Bryant gave up an easy layup to Isaiah Hartenstein on a play where he was opening up his stance for Seakum to cut through because it should have been a switch. It wasn't. So then Hardenstein would just went right to the basket for a layup. We saw Mark Dagault after a timeout after OB Toppin hit a three to cut the lead to eight. They just had Shea set a back screen for Case on Wallace on Tyrese Halliburton. Pacers didn't want to switch it. Nemhard was hugged up to Shea. Easy layup for KSI Wallace cutting along that backside. Even in that second half. Down the stretch, we saw them get a lot of good looks out of those hedges, right? I thought they looked a little bit better when they were just super aggressive on those switches th those hedges. Like actually like almost like a blitz just attacking him and forcing him to get rid of the basketball. At least in those late game situations where they're packing the paint, they were able to force some catch and shoot jumpers from some of their lesser shooters down the stretch. By doing that, I just think they need to get away from passive traditional coverages. These big guys can't contain the ball well enough. Thomas Bryant can't. Miles Turner can't. They're giving up a little bit too much dribble penetration there. I've liked it against Jalen Williams. We saw Miles Turner against Jalen Williams in the drop coverage, be able to get some stops in at the rim and in the short range. But specifically with Shai I would either be super aggressive or I would just switch and force him to ISO and then be aggressive in your help pinching down off of him because again in those traditional coverages they were giving up too many of those openings.