In a post-season full of comebacks and drama, one team stands above the rest: the Indiana Pacers.
It’s a fool’s errand to count this Pacers team out, even against the juggernaut that is the Oklahoma City Thunder. They proved as much on Thursday night, swinging yet another jaw-dropping rally to steal Game 1 of the NBA Finals 111-110 in an absolute thriller.
Down 15 points with nine minutes left in the fourth quarter, the game seemed all but lost. The Thunder had their foot on the gas pedal, their defence was humming, they forced turnovers left and right, and MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was living up to every expectation.
But Heart-Attack Haliburton and the Pacers had different plans. The superstar guard followed up some huge contributions across Indiana’s lineup and drilled the game-winner with 0.3 seconds to go to lift his team past the finish line.
The Pacers have been on an unprecedented run, and the stats prove just how unique it’s been. Here’s a look at some of the eye-popping numbers following the Pacers’ Game 1 robbery.
0.00000001333333333333333: In the Pacers’ four last-minute comebacks this post-season, they had a 1 in 75 million chance to win all of them.
0.3: The Pacers had a lead in Game 1 for a meagre 0.3 seconds. Gilgeous-Alexander scored the game’s opening bucket at the 11:15 mark in the first, and the Thunder didn’t relinquish the lead until that last shot. Gotta make them when they count.
2.48: Haliburton has a 2.48 clutch win probability added in this post-season run — a stat that measures how much a player contributes to winning when the game matters most in the final seconds — and has by far the highest mark of all time, surpassing runs like 2013 and 2018 LeBron James, 2002 Robert Horry and 2011 Dirk Nowitzki.
3: Haliburton’s three lead-taking shots in the final five seconds this post-season (Game 1 vs. OKC, Game 2 vs. CLE, Game 5 vs. MIL) are the most in a single playoff run, ever. In all, this was the fourth time in Haliburton’s post-season career that he took the lead with five seconds to go. The only player with more over his playoff career since the NBA began play-by-play tracking in 1996 is LeBron James, who had seven.
4: Only four teams in NBA history have won a playoff game despite only holding a lead for 30 seconds or less: 1999 Spurs, 2001 Mavericks, 2002 Lakers and now the 2025 Pacers.
5: The Pacers have staged 15-point comebacks five times in these playoffs and have done so in all four series they’ve played. They are currently 5-3 when they go down by 15 or more in these playoffs.
18: The Pacers lost the turnover battle 25-6 but became the first-ever team in NBA history to win a playoff game while committing 19 more turnovers than their opponent. Only makes it better that they did it in the Finals.
25: Indiana became the first team since the 1977 Portland Trail Blazers to win an NBA Finals game despite turning the ball over 25 times.
85.7: Haliburton is shooting a hyper-efficient 85.7 per cent from the field when going for the tie or the lead with 90 seconds left in the fourth or overtime in these playoffs.
450: The Thunder haven’t lost to an Eastern Conference team at home since March 12, 2024 — 450 days ago. That team? The Indiana Pacers.
2011: A 15-point rally in the Finals hasn’t been accomplished in 14 years. The last team to do so was the Dallas Mavericks in 2011, coached by none other than current Pacers coach Rick Carlisle.