BOSTON — The Indiana Pacers emerged victorious from a 133-128 Game 1 overtime loss to the Boston Celtics knowing they had missed their chance to steal home court to open the Eastern Conference finals.
With 22 turnovers, including two costly ones in the final 27 seconds, the Pacers let a game slip away despite leading by three points with the ball in the final 10 seconds of regulation.
“We gave it away,” Pacers forward Aaron Nesmith said. “We should have won the game.”
The Pacers had a 3-point lead with 27.1 seconds left in regulation when guard Tyrese Haliburton dribbled the ball with his foot for an unforced turnover. However, Indiana still got the ball back with a chance to seal the game at the free throw line with 10.0 seconds left.
The only problem was that they had to put the ball into the field. With 8.1 seconds left, an errant pass from Andrew Nembhard to Pascal Siakam went out of bounds, giving Boston another chance to tie the game, which Jaylen Brown converted with a three-pointer in the corner.
“I think it’s up to us,” Haliburton said. “They’re a great defensive team, they have great defenders, individual defenders and team defenders, but they’re not a team that forces a lot of turnovers. I just felt like there was more of them on us than on them. We have to clean up.” that up.”
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The Pacers also missed a foul opportunity before Brown’s game-tying 3-pointer, which Siakam said was his intention on the play, but Brown caught the ball in the corner with his shoulders aligned toward the basket and Siakam didn’t want to risk it. . foul a shooter and allow a 4-point play.
The Pacers became the first team since at least 1997-98 to lose a playoff game despite scoring 3 points in the final 10 seconds, according to Elias Sports Bureau.
Indiana’s 22 turnovers were the second most it has committed in a game all season and contributed to 32 points for Boston, the most for the Celtics in any game this season.
“A lot of things had to go wrong for us and right for them,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said.
Turning the ball over was uncharacteristic of Indiana, which entered the game with the second-fewest turnovers per game among playoff teams.
Over the final 5:30 of the game, including overtime, the Pacers had more turnovers (5) than field goals (2).
“We showed our age a little bit tonight,” Pacers center Myles Turner said. “Being a young team and being in a high-stakes game, those unusual mistakes just disappeared.”
Despite losing the opportunity to win the opening game of this conference final, the Pacers did not leave TD Garden with their heads down. Boston took a 12-0 lead entering the game and looked ready to turn the game into a rout. In fact, the Celtics led by double digits twice in the game and the Pacers responded to take the lead both times.
“All year long, our battle cry has been ‘keep playing, keep pushing the pace, keep executing, keep playing no matter what,'” Carlisle said. “It’s served us well and it did tonight too. So, we had… it’s unfortunate that we did so many good things in this game that it came down to a couple of mistakes at the end. But, this is the NBA Playoffs .And, We have to learn from it and we have to recover.”
The Pacers lost Game 1 in each of the previous two rounds of the postseason and then won a long series. That left Haliburton at least feeling encouraged along with the disappointment of losing like that, especially when he considered how well they played Tuesday night.
“We know we can play with these guys,” he said. “We know we belong. It’s discouraging just because of the plays that happened down the stretch, we felt like we were in position to win the game, but we didn’t win the game.
“But what I will say is encouraging, we had been garbage in Game 1 of the first and second series. Today we played very well for about 47 minutes, but we couldn’t hold on for 48.”
The second game is Thursday.
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