The Pacers are a miracle

Good morning. The Indiana Pacers are back in the NBA Finals for the first time since 2000. Their style, their construction, their path: it's all a miracle. Let's basketball.

I wrote last week about the Tyrese Haliburton trade, which now becomes the most impactful deal of the 2022 NBA trade deadline, edging out Derrick White to the Celtics, James Harden to the Sixers, Norm Powell to the Clippers or C.J. McCollum to the Pelicans. Only the White deal ended up with one of the teams in the NBA Finals sooner (Boston got there in 2022 and 2024, of course). Haliburton's Pacers join that list after beating the Knicks 125-108 in Game 6 on Saturday.

For his part, Haliburton was quiet on the scoreboard until the fourth quarter, though he made plays for teammates all night. He finished with 21-6-13. His teammates Pascal Siakam picked up a well-earned Eastern Conference Finals MVP trophy after averaging 25 on 57% eFG in the series. The duo was incredible and their offense was the biggest reason the Pacers advanced.

The Haliburton trade still gets all of the attention, but the Siakam trade was a huge bet that has totally paid off for Kevin Pritchard and Chad Buchanan in Indiana. Siakam was a mainstay in the rumor mill as Toronto completed its teardown of the 2019 championship team last spring. The Pacers ponied up three firsts plus Bruce Brown's seemingly (at the time) valuable contract to get it done. Isaiah Collier and Ja'Kobe Walter were the first two draft picks; there's one more outstanding next season. WORTH IT. The Pacers' braintrust thought they were a top-20 big away from being really, really good and they were right: the immediate results were a conference finals followed by an NBA Finals.

The Pacers picked up a young, mostly discarded Aaron Nesmith from the Celtics in the Malcolm Brogdon trade, and helped mold him into a top-25 defender in the league. Andrew Nembhard was the first pick of the second in 2022, acquired from Cleveland in the Caris LeVert deal; Nembhard go top 10 in all likelihood in a re-draft today. Obi Toppin was famously a Knicks lottery pick that New York offloaded to Indiana for two seconds to cut salary two years ago. Myles Turner and T.J. McConnell have been around forever. Even Thomas Bryant came up huge in Game 6 after losing his spot in the rotation in this series; the Pacers landed him for a 2031 second-round swap early this season as a center position insurance policy. Insurance policy paid out!