The NBA Finals can turn an unknown role player into a household name overnight. And in the Indiana Pacers’ massive 116-107 Game 3 victory over the Oklahoma City Thunder, that hero was Bennedict Mathurin. The Pacers’ third-year wing had a legendary game. He put up a game-high 27 points off the bench to lead his team to a 2-1 series lead in just 22 minutes! But this wasn’t just some random hot night. As his coach, Rick Carlisle, revealed after the game, Mathurin’s breakout performance was the culmination of a year of quiet, focused, and incredibly dedicated work, a journey he marked off one day at a time on a calendar in the team’s training room.
Man, what a story this is turning out to be. This is the guy who had to sit out the entire 2024 playoff run with a shoulder injury, watching his team battle without him. And now, on the biggest stage in the world, he’s not just contributing; he’s a game-changer. His performance was the most points by a reserve in the NBA Finals since Jason Terry did it way back in 2011. That’s some serious company.
But the most incredible part of this story came after the game, in Rick Carlisle’s press conference. A reporter asked him about Mathurin’s comeback, and Carlisle shared some amazing, previously unknown details about his mindset during his long recovery. “Yeah, I mean, he was with the team, he just wasn’t playing, and he took a lot of notes — a lot of mental notes — and he may have written some things down,” Carlisle revealed. But then he dropped the real gem, a detail that just shows you the kind of focus and determination Mathurin has.
“But I do know that after he sustained the injury… you can order these calendars that start on a specific day and then they count days,” Carlisle explained. “I think it was Dr. ElAttrache who did the surgery, and there was a calendar sitting in our training room, and every day he would come in and take one off. He was counting the days down to being cleared sometime in August, then beginning five-on-five with our guys in September, and then training camp.”
Can you even imagine that?
(This is a developing story…)
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