Game 3: Pacers rally in the 4th,
beat Thunder 116-107 to take 2-1 lead in NBA Finals
[June 12, 2025]
By TIM REYNOLDS
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Every time Indiana has lost a game in the last
three months, it simply has come back to win the next one.
Even in the NBA Finals — against a huge favorite who the Pacers now
have in some trouble.
Bennedict Mathurin scored 27 points off the bench, Tyrese Haliburton
finished with 22 points, 11 assists and nine rebounds, and the
Pacers retook the lead in the NBA Finals by beating the Oklahoma
City Thunder 116-107 in Game 3 on Wednesday night.
“This is the kind of team that we are," Pacers coach Rick Carlisle
said. “We need everybody to be ready. It’s not always going to be
exactly the same guys that are stepping up with scoring and stuff
like that. But this is how we've got to do it.”
Pascal Siakam scored 21 for Indiana, which enjoyed a whopping 49-18
edge in bench points. The Pacers, who lost Game 2 in Oklahoma City,
improved to 10-0 since mid-March in the game immediately following a
loss.
"So many different guys chipped in," Haliburton said.
Jalen Williams scored 26 points, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander added 24
and Chet Holmgren had 20 for the Thunder, who led by five going into
the fourth.
Game 4 is back in Indiana on Friday night.
“We had a lot of good stretches of the game,” Thunder coach Mark
Daigneault said. “But they had more good stretches than we did — and
outplayed us over the course of 48 minutes.”
History says the Pacers are in control now; in the 41 previous NBA
Finals that were tied at a game apiece, the Game 3 winner went on to
hoist the trophy 33 times — an 80.5% clip.
Advantage, Pacers.
It was back-and-forth much of the way. There were 15 ties; to put
that in perspective, there were 13 ties in the five-game entirety of
last year’s finals between Boston and Dallas. The last time there
was a finals game with more ties: Game 1 between Cleveland in Golden
State in 2018, which was knotted 17 times.
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Indiana Pacers guard Tyrese Haliburton (0) celebrates after making a
basket against the Oklahoma City Thunder during the second half of
Game 3 of the NBA Finals basketball series, Wednesday, June 11,
2025, in Indianapolis. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
TJ McConnell finished with 10 points, five assists
and five steals for Indiana; since all those stats started being
charted, nobody had ever come off the bench and done all that in an
NBA Finals game.
“We just had guys make plays after plays,” Haliburton said. “Our
bench was amazing.”
The Thunder were 61-2 when leading going into the fourth quarter in
the regular season. They're 1-2 when leading going into the fourth
quarter in this series. Indiana — at home in an NBA Finals game for
the first time in 25 years, with Caitlin Clark, Reggie Miller, Oscar
Robertson and many other stars in the crowd — simply owned the final
12 minutes.
Indiana outscored OKC 32-18 in the fourth, holding the Thunder to
35% shooting with the game and control of the series on the line.
“There's a lot of areas we can clean up,” Holmgren said. “Everybody
who stepped out there can be better.”
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