Game On: Sports News, Highlights & Commentary
Tyrese Haliburton did not have a stellar performance in Game 2 of the NBA Finals. Through three quarters on Sunday, the Indiana Pacers star had five points on 2-for-7 shooting, four assists and three turnovers. After the 123-107 loss, he credited the Oklahoma City Thunder for their swarming defense and told reporters that he needs to “figure out how to be better earlier in games.”
Heading into Game 3 on Wednesday, Haliburton would surely like to build on his 12-point fourth quarter. He said that this matchup could call for him to play “off the pitch a little bit more,” rather than relying on his usual diet of high ball screens. Here he is finding a floater this way:
It’s easy to say that Indiana needs Haliburton to be better or more aggressive. He is the engine of what is usually a high-powered offense, and the Pacers started the series by turning the ball over a zillion times and then scored just 41 points in the first half of Game 2.
They put up plenty of points in the second half, though, and the biggest change from Game 1 to 2 was Oklahoma City’s vastly improved offense. If they can’t slow the Thunder down, Haliburton’s scoring is the least of their problems.
The OKC onslaught
On offense, Oklahoma City knew that it had to “get back to being us,” as big man Isaiah Hartenstein put it leading up to Game 2. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is amazing at making tough shots in isolation, but the Thunder are at their best when they have a balanced attack. On Sunday, Gilgeous-Alexander scored four fewer points than he did in the opener, but was worlds better in terms of efficiency and creating for others. Chet Holmgren went on a mini-run late in the first quarter. Jalen Williams got going in the second. Alex Caruso and Aaron Wiggins scored a combined 38 points on 12-for-22 shooting off the bench. OKC hardly generated anything in transition, but, even when Gilgeous-Alexander was on the bench, it had little trouble scoring.
“We just had a better flow to us tonight offensively,” Gilgeous-Alexander said.
Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said that they were a tick better in a whole bunch of areas: tempo, organization, decision-making in the paint. They had felt Indiana’s ball pressure, they had seen its unconventional “next” pick-and-roll coverage and they were ready to execute better than they did in Game 1. “We all calibrated to our opponent,” Daigneault said, crediting Gilgeous-Alexander specifically for getting in a “great rhythm” with his floor game.
It’s not as if Gilgeous-Alexander suddenly had an epiphany about the importance of passing. Oklahoma City collectively made an effort to get more movement into the offense. Here, Holmgren is open for a 3 in part because of Caruso’s perfectly timed corner cut:
Here, Gilgeous-Alexander appears to be stuck, but, with the defense focused on the MVP, Hartenstein cuts from one block to the other and Caruso relocates on the perimeter for a catch-and-shoot 3:
In addition to the pick-and-roll stuff, Gilgeous-Alexander gave Indiana problems in the mid-post. If defended one-on-one, he raised up for a jumper comfortably; if doubled, he made the right read and the Thunder got a good look:
OKC removed rookie Ajay Mitchell from the rotation, ditched the centerless lineups, found more minutes for Hartenstein and Holmgren and played the bigs together when Indiana had Thomas Bryant and Obi Toppin on the floor. It often initiated pick-and-rolls at the logo, giving Gilgeous-Alexander and Williams more space to operate.
The Thunder might be the best defensive team ever. When their offense is awesome, too, they’re basically unbeatable. According to Cleaning The Glass, they scored 119.8 points per 100 possessions in the halfcourt in Game 2, their second-best mark of the playoffs.
How can Indiana respond?
The Pacers weren’t terrible defensively on Sunday. On a couple of Wiggins’ makes, for example, you just have to tip your hat to him and move on:
But there’s room for improvement. If they continue having trouble navigating those hiiiiiiigh ball screens, they need to go under instead of trying to fight over the top. Maybe they can mix in some more zone — they went to it in the third quarter and immediately forced a turnover, but abandoned it after a foul on the next possession. Fouls were an issue in general; later that quarter, Bennedict Mathurin and Aaron Nesmith both picked up fouls pressuring ballhandlers outside the 3-point line, with Indiana in the penalty.
In Game 3, the Pacers could cut out the Bryant-Toppin minutes entirely. They could mix up their pick-and-roll coverage or just execute it better. And yes, they could be better offensively, too, and some of that is on Halliburton, I guess.
It’s not that Haliburton was flawless in Game 2. It was only the fifth time all season that he recorded five turnovers in a single game. Everything started to go sideways as soon as he went to the bench, though, and his relative struggles were not nearly as much of an issue as, say, Indiana’s bigs failing to punish Oklahoma City for packing the paint. Myles Turner, Pascal Siakam, Toppin and Bryant shot a combined 3 for 15 from deep on mostly clean looks.
The Thunder don’t give you driving lanes. If you can keep your cool in the face of their physical defense, though, you can find 3s or opportunities to attack close-outs on the weak side. Generally speaking, when I was frustrated with the Pacers’ decision-making on Sunday, it wasn’t because of Haliburton. A few plays they’d like to have back in the disastrous second quarter: Nesmith turning down a 3 and then going at Lu Dort one-on-one, Siakam forcing it against Caruso and Turner throwing away an entry pass.
Unlike previous series, there are no real weak links to attack against OKC. Haliburton said that Indiana needs to get downhill more often and avoid playing late in the shot clock, even though it “feels like there’s five guys around you every time you’re in the paint.” Indiana’s offense is not going to look as smooth as it usually does, but if it can score the way it did in the second half of Game 2 and get some more stops, it can give itself a chance. This is the Finals. Nobody said it would be (Nemb)easy.
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