“We were going home if we didn’t come out and give everything we have and leave it all out on the floor.” That was T.J. McConnell’s promise after Game 6. And in the biggest game of his life, with a championship on the line, he did exactly that. The problem? For a long, painful, and frankly embarrassing stretch of the second half of Game 7, it felt like he was the only one.
The air went out of the building just seven minutes in. That’s when Tyrese Haliburton, the heart and soul of this entire improbable run, went down in a heap. It was a non-contact injury, the kind that makes your stomach drop. He drove, planted, and his right leg just gave out. As he was carried off the floor, emotional and hiding his face in a towel, the devastating report from ESPN came down: a suspected Achilles injury. The engine was gone. The dream was on life support.
For a while, they fought. They scrapped. They hung around. But in the third quarter, as the Thunder started to pull away, the Pacers’ beautiful offense completely fell apart. The free-flowing ball movement that got them here? Gone. The confident three-point shooting? Vanished. After Myles Turner hit a three-pointer with 8:32 left in the third quarter, the well went completely dry. The offense devolved into a painful, predictable, iso-heavy mess.
And then came the stretch that will live in Indiana sports infamy. As John Hollinger of The Athletic pointed out, a Pascal Siakam basket late in the fourth was the first field goal made by a Pacer not named T.J. McConnell in thirteen minutes. Let that sink in. For thirteen minutes of a do-or-die Game 7, the entire Indiana offense was a 6’1″ backup point guard, desperately trying to keep the season alive by himself while his teammates seemed content to watch. It was a shocking, embarrassing, and complete betrayal of the “we over me” mantra that had defined their entire season.
(This is a developing story…)
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