CLEVELAND — As a lifelong WWE fan, Tyrese Haliburton is a believer in showmanship and in making the most of the stagecraft opportunities in sports. He’s intentional about on-court celebrations, understanding how they can become part of sports lore and iconography and add a measure of immortality to moments because of the images they produce.
So there was a celebration he was waiting to break out for just the right time. One he could only use once because, well, it’s vulgar, and it’s almost certainly going to lead to a chunk of money going to the NBA’s bank account rather than his. It involves letting one’s hands fall below his waist and cupping them in such a way as to suggest certain unmentionable parts of a man’s anatomy metaphorically associated with fortitude are particularly large. It’s a celebration point guard Sam Cassell first brought to the NBA during his career from 1993-2008, but he got the idea from the baseball comedy movie Major League II in which fictional Cleveland Indians Japanese outfielder Isuro “Kamikaze” Tanaka and first baseman Pedro Cerrano celebrate a Cerrano home run by noting his “marbles.”
And if there was ever a time for Haliburton to make the argument the celebration makes — for himself and for the Pacers as a team — Indiana’s incredible 120-119 comeback win Tuesday over the Cavaliers in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference semifinals was the time. The win will go down as one of the most stunning and remarkable in franchise history, right there with Reggie Miller’s eight points in nine seconds miracle in 1995, but for these Pacers it was the latest and greatest in a series of awe-inspiring rallies.
The Pacers had an abysmal first quarter, fell behind by 20 points in the second quarter and the third quarter and were down by 14 when the fourth quarter started. They were still down by 11 with 8:27 to go and they were down by seven with 48 seconds to go. But they had been in dire straits like that more than once. So just as they did in a similar situation in Game 5 of the first round against the Bucks last week, the Pacers strung together a series of improbable plays to pull off a nearly impossible comeback.
And just as he did against the Bucks with his game-winning layup, Haliburton made the last of those plays. This time he missed a free throw, but pulled down a rebound tipped out to him by teammate Myles Turner, ran back behind the 3-point line and sank a cold-blooded rainbow jumper with 1.1 seconds to go to complete a four-point possession and put the Pacers up one.
Then he turned around as the Cavaliers’ Sam Merrill missed a last-second heave and performed a celebration Cleveland fans didn’t need to have translated before he was mobbed by teammates.
“Yeah, man, I’ve been waiting for that moment,” Haliburton said. “I’ll take that fine gladly.”
The comeback gives the No. 4 seed Pacers a commanding 2-0 lead after two games at No. 1 seed Cleveland, which gives them a chance to put the series away when they return to Indianapolis for Games 3 and 4 on Friday and Sunday. The Cavaliers were playing without two injured All-Stars in point guard Darius Garland and forward Evan Mobley as well as one of the NBA’s best subs in forward De’Andre Hunter, but they got a legendary performance from All-NBA guard Donovan Mitchell, who put Cleveland on his back with 48 points. They also got stellar performances from center Jarrett Allen (22 points, 12 rebounds) and sharp-shooting wing Max Strus (23 points on five 3-pointers).
But for all Cleveland did right, they couldn’t put away a Pacers team that is proving to be arguably the toughest team in the NBA to kill. After the game, the Pacers posted on their social media accounts a stat saying in the past 20 years, teams that have trailed by at least seven points with 48 seconds to go are 3-1,679. The Pacers have accounted for two of those three wins in the past eight days with their other being the Game 5 win over the Bucks.
The Pacers were not just drawing on that experience but in so many others throughout 2024-25 and even the past three seasons. In the last two weeks of the season, the Pacers won seven of eight games, but five of those wins were within six points. They were 24-14 this season in “clutch” games — games that were within five points at any point in a game’s final five minutes or overtime — with the 24 wins putting them in a tie for fourth in the league in the category.
“We’ve seen a lot these last three, four weeks of the season and it prepared us for moments like such,” Turner said. “It’s a thing of beauty right now. We’re playing some great basketball. … There’s always time on the clock. That’s what we keep telling ourselves. We know how our pressure wears on teams.”
Said Haliburton: “The end of our season has looked a lot like this. We’ve had many games where you could take a screenshot at any moment and be like, ‘How did they win this game?’ But we just have a resilient group, man. We just figure out ways to win. We don’t give up and we’re battle-tested. As a group we’ve basically been together for about two years now. That continuity has been really good for us. We’ve had to figure out so many different ways to win.”
They’ve had to figure out how to recover from bad starts before, which was helpful because their first quarter was atrocious. The Pacers made their first three shots in the game’s first 90 seconds to take a 7-2 lead, but then proceeded to make just 2-of-13 field goals the rest of the period, falling behind 32-15. They finished the period 5-of-16 from the floor and 1-of-8 from 3-point range while turning the ball over nine times for a miserable efficiency figure of 0.61 points per possession.
The Pacers, however, were in territory they knew well. They also fell behind by 17 points after the first quarter in Game 5 against the Bucks with an equally abysmal start as they scored just 13 points in that period.
“We went down 17 in the first quarter and we just talked, ‘Hey, we were down 17 against Milwaukee,” Haliburton said. “We figured out, ‘Let’s win every quarter by six.’ We won the second quarter by six. Lose the third quarter, so we knew we had ground to make up.”
Indeed, the Pacers outscored the Cavs 35-29 and lost the third 37-34, but that was in part because Pacers coach Rick Carlisle used a lineup of all bench players late in the third quarter and left them out there even as Mitchell came back in the game for the final 2:12 of the period. That group didn’t cut too much into the lead, but it didn’t lose too much ground either and it allowed Carlisle to ride his top six players throughout the fourth quarter. Haliburton, Turner and guard Andrew Nembhard each played all 12 minutes and forwards Aaron Nesmith and Pascal Siakam split the remaining time among the three of them.
That group outscored the Cavs in the fourth quarter 36-21, making 15-of-28 field goals while holding Cleveland to 5-of-18 shooting including 1-of-6 from 3-point range. All six players the Pacers used made massive plays and their starting five all came up with tide-turners in the game’s final minute.
Bennedict Mathurin scored 16 second-half points with a key 3-pointer and a tip-dunk being among the highlights, but Mitchell kept answering and holding back charges. He hit two free throws with 58 seconds left to put the Cavs up seven with 58 seconds to go, which figured to be enough to make the Cavs safe.
Myles Turner discusses the Pacers’ win over the Cavs
Myles Turner scored 23 points, grabbed eight rebounds and blocked five shots in a 120-119 win over the Cavs in Game 2 of the East semis.
However after the free throws, Haliburton hit Siakam with a pass under the basket and he drew a foul from Allen. Siakam missed both free throws, but Nesmith flew in from the top of the key and finished a ferocious tip-dunk through contact from Mitchell, the latest in a series of his game-changing displays of athleticism in these playoffs.
“I expect nothing less from him,” Turner said. “He makes plays like that all the time. People don’t really watch us play, so this might be a shock to some people, but that’s the way Aaron Nesmith plays basketball.”
Nesmith also gets himself in people’s way on defense and withstands hard contact, and he did that on the ensuing possession when he trapped Mitchell and in his attempt to stay tough with the basketball, Mitchell swung his elbow and hit Nesmith in the head with one of them to give the Pacers the ball back down five with 46 seconds left. On the ensuing possession, Siakam drove from the left elbow for a layup to make it a three-point game with 27.5 seconds to go.
The Cavs called timeout to advance the ball, but they didn’t have another timeout remaining which put them in bind when the Pacers had everyone covered on the inbound. Strus took a risk by throwing a high pass in the direction of guard Ty Jerome but Nembhard — who had eight turnovers in the game but also had a key steal in the win over the Bucks jumped in front of it to pick if off to give the Pacers the ball with 27.5 seconds to for the possession that would ultimately end in Haliburton’s game-winning 3.
“We weren’t really trying to foul right away,” Nembhard said. “I was just trying to make a play on the ball. They lobbed it up and I just tried to get around him.”
Said Haliburton: “It was a total team effort. There are so many plays that lead up to that shot.”
But someone still has to take the shot, and despite all of the ups and downs from this season for Haliburton and despite all the Cavs did to slow him down on Tuesday, he still stepped up to be the one to take it.
As usual, the Cavs hit the Pacers with every possible brand of defense and plenty of faceguarding to keep the ball out of his hands. He had just one field goal attempt and zero assists in the first quarter. He hit a 3 and a running bank shot in the second quarter but didn’t get a field goal at all in the third quarter.
“They made an effort to cut off his bloodflow,” Carlisle said. “I mean, really. They were making it hard. They were hitting him and they were doing physical things and they had set a tone. It was difficult to get assists, it was difficult to catch the ball let alone get assists or score.”
But in the fourth quarter and in particular in the final two minutes he got a few chance to drive to the rim for layups and he ended up with 11 points in the fourth quarter to finish with 19 for the game. His intent on the last possession was to go to the rim, and he did but he was fouled by Ty Jerome and couldn’t get a good shot off. The Pacers still had time to make both free throws and foul and he didn’t seem to be missing the second shot on purpose, but doing so worked in his favor. As it gave him a chance to win the game.
“I was pissed I missed the layup,” Haliburton said. “I lost the ball. If I would’ve just held on the ball it would’ve been an and-1 and we would’ve tied the game. It’s funny how it works out sometimes. The ball came off and I jumped to grab it. I was gonna shoot the floater right there. I kinda was looking around, but I just wanted to get out to the top. I just saw me and Ty Jerome at the top of the key. I had space. I felt comfortable there and I knocked it down.”
And he found himself in a position he has many times in this and other years, striking a pose just before being swarmed by teammates. In this case he told the world, yet again, that his team has “marbles.”
“He enjoys the moments like you just saw,” Turner said. “He wants the ball in his hands. There’s a lot of guys I’ve seen and guys I’ve played with who don’t necessarily want to take that shot, who don’t necessarily want to be in the mix right there. He relishes those moments and it’s just a testament to his work ethic, his mental toughness, his mentality. Quite frankly, that boy cold, man. He just does it over and over again.”
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