DURING A REPLAY review wiht 22.8 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter of Game 1 of the NBA Finals,the path to Tyrese Haliburton’s game-winning shot was set.
The Pacers were awaiting the outcome of a challenge from coach Rick Carlisle, who wanted officials to double-check whether Pascal Sakak was fouled or had touched the ball last before falling out of bounds.
It was a pivotal swing with Indiana trailing by one point, and Carlisle wanted to make sure his team was prepared for either outcome. If the review was accomplished, the Pacers would have possession of the ball. If not, he instructed his crew to play defense and get a stop without fouling. And with about an eight-second difference between the shot and game clock, the message was clear. There would not be another timeout. Get the rebound and go.
“get the ball in Tyrese’s hands,” Carlisle said after the game that evening. “And look to make a play.”
First,the Pacers got the stop — easier said than done against the league’s reigning Most Valuable Player,Shai Gilgeous-Alexanderbut he missed a 15-foot fadeaway with Andrew Nembhard glued to his hip on defense. Aaron Nesmith corralled a tough rebound over Lu Dort before a crowd of players swarmed to the paint. Nesmith quickly shuffled the ball to Siakam, who found Obi Toppinwho swung the ball to Haliburton, giving him possession just before half court with six seconds remaining on the clock.
What followed was one of the most clutch shots in NBA Finals history. Haliburton dribbled and jab-stepped along the Pacers’ sideline before curling back inside the arc and rising up to score the game-winning basket, a 21-foot jumper with 0.3 seconds remaining as the Pacers stole Game 1 of the series in Oklahoma City.
It may have seemed easy for Carlisle to trust Haliburton in that moment,especially given the budding Pacers star’s propensity for hitting big shots in the biggest moments — Game 1 was his fourth game-winning or game-tying shot in the final seconds of these playoffs — but such faith is years in the making.
The freedom the Pacers play with on offense is born out of the relationship between Carlisle and Haliburton, a bond that began the night after Indiana traded for Haliburton in February 2022. But the groundwork also dates back to Carlisle’s tenure with the Dallas Mavericksstarting in his first season with the team in 2008-09 when he butted heads with Hall of Fame point guard Jason Kidd and continuing when Carlisle was tasked with the handling of another emerging superstar: Luka Doncic.
“What I learned my first year in Dallas was to give J-Kidd the ball and get out of the way, let him run the show, let him run the team,” Carlisle said before the start of the NBA Finals. “Tyrese, very similar situation, but didn’t take half a season to figure it out. The situation in Dallas with Luka was the same.
“It’s pretty clear, when you have a player of that kind of magnitude, that kind of presence, that kind of knowledge, vision and depth, you got to let them do what they do.”
the philosophy has paid off for the Pacers, who took a 2-1 NBA Finals lead over the Oklahoma City Thunder on Wednesday night with a 116-107 victory at Gainbridge Fieldhouse.
Haliburton and Carlisle have been the masterminds behind this Pacers’ offense, which is scoring 116.7 points per 100 possessions in the postseason while featuring a fast-paced style and comeback ethos that has fueled an improbable playoff run through the Eastern Conference.
At the center of it all sits a coach who has learned to adapt through the years with a point guard he happily turned over the reins to.
“When he gave me that nod, that was like the ultimate respect,” Haliburton said after practice Tuesday. “That was the ultimate trust that I could get from anybody, because he is such a brilliant basketball mind. He’s been around such great guards, great players. For him to give me that confidence, I think has really taken my career to another level.”
THE EMPOWERING OF Kidd, a development that followed a lot of headbutting between coach and point guard, could be considered a turning point in Carlisle’s career.
Carlisle carried a reputation for being controlling when he first arrived in Dallas. he was known to clash with players during the early days of his coaching career in his first go-round with Indiana from 2003 to 2007, when he was coaching Metta Sandiford-Artest, Stephen jackson and Jamaal Tinsley. Those Pacers won 61 games and whent to the Eastern conference finals in 2003-04, but they also played a meticulous style with Carlisle calling plays on nearly every possession.
When Carlisle arrived in Dallas a few years later, he tried to do the same, even with Kidd, 35 years old with nine All-Star appearances, on the roster. It didn’t go over well.
“It wasn’t easy for [Carlisle] to let it go,” former NBA guard J.J. Barea, who played with the Mavs from 2006 to 2011 and again from 2014 to 2020, told ESPN. “To be more free about it. But he knew for us to win he had to let it go. J-Kidd and him went to battle, but it worked out at the end.”
Kidd emphasized how he wanted the offense to be more free-flowing, stressing that a savvy point guard dictating the flow of the game would lead to better rhythm than a coach on the sidelines trying to manufacture it. Carlisle resisted for more than half a season. It wasn’t until midway through the 2010-11 season — his third year coaching Kidd in Dallas — that Carlisle really gave his point guard the reins. The Mavs won the championship that season.
Carlisle didn’t wait nearly as long to give Doncic the keys to the Mavs’ offense. That occurred while Doncic was a teenager in the midst of his Rookie of the Year campaign during the 2018-19 season.
The personal relationship between Carlisle and Doncic was frequently enough rockybut the partnership between coach and point guard produced outstanding offensive results.In Doncic’s second season, the Mavs set the NBA record at the time for offensive efficiency by averaging 115.9 points per 100 possessions.
Carlisle constructed an offensive system that suited Doncic, one that was drastically different from the one that Kidd operated. Carlisle’s Mavs played a heliocentric style with Doncic dominating the ball, emphasizing spacing with stationary spot-up shooting threats as he ran pick-and-roll after pick-and-roll.
The pacers are succeeding with Haliburton operating a system that is fueled by playing fast and off-ball movement.
“One thing you can say about Rick is he coaches his talent,” Haralabos Voulgaris, the Mavs director of quantitative research and development from 2018 to 2021, told ESPN. “His system is whatever maximizes the talent that he has. He understands that the game is changing and he has to always keep on changing and learning and adapting and growing.
“It’s not many older coaches that have had that mentality, especially ones that had success when they were younger.”
Carlisle’s track record with point guards hasn’t always been perfect. He clashed with Rajon Rondo a few years after Doncic’s rookie season, with Rondo wanting to play more methodically while carlisle advocated for pushing the pace. The rocky relationship led to Rondo’s tenure in Dallas lasting just 46 games.
“It wasn’t a good fit for either of them,” Barea said.
Carlisle wasn’t a fan of the Mavs’ trade for Rondo, agreeing to it only because dirk Nowitzki wanted it, and d
