INDIANAPOLIS – Indiana coach Rick Carlisle had started counting off his team’s Eastern Conference championship series from the get-go, not by victories, but by duration.

“This is just Day 1 of 13 days,” Carlisle said after the Pacers pulled off an improbable, exhilarating, overtime victory over the Knicks in the opener in New York. When the Pacers won again 48 hours later, sure enough, it was simply “Day 3” in Carlisle’s world.

It seemed as if he was trying to provide a framework for his players, maybe even for the media and the Indiana fans, not to get ahead of themselves. Beware the irrational exuberance that can bite hard when things go awry, in other words, in a difficult NBA playoff series.

And it did appear to lay a calming blanket over the Pacers when they stunned even themselves in Game 1, dropped Game 3 at home, then fumbled a close-out shot in Game 5 Thursday in their worst performance of the series.

In the end, though, Carlisle was wrong.

The thing didn’t last 13 days.

The Pacers needed only 11 from the opening tipoff to the celebration late Saturday night on the court at Gainbridge Fieldhouse. They sealed the Eastern Conference title and the franchise’s second trip ever to the NBA Finals – the first was in 2000 – with an impressive 125-108 elimination of the Knicks.

The series lasted long enough for Indiana to show itself in full in Game 6, but not so long that it had to face the stresses of heading back to Madison Square Garden for a winner-take-all finish.

There should be plenty of that waiting for the Pacers, anyway, at Oklahoma City’s Paycom Center when the 2025 Finals begin Thursday (8:30 p.m. ET, ABC). First, here are five takeaways from the victory that earned them the trip:

1. Every Pacers ingredient on display

It would be hard to conjure an Indiana outcome more “on brand” than what it served up Saturday. Seven guys put up double-figures. The same seven each hit at least a pair of 3-pointers. The Pacers’ shooting, despite New York’s dialed-up and rugged defensive pressure, was exemplary: 54.1% overall (46-for-85), 51.5% on threes (17-for-33) and 84.2% (16-for-19) from the line. They played fast, running to a 23-6 edge in fast-break points through three quarters, by which time they led 92-77.

And that pace, along with their pesky-enough defense, sprung loose 18 Knicks turnovers, good for 34 of the home team’s points.

Center Myles Turner had a modest stats line, foul trouble limiting him to 21 minutes and 11 points. But he has perspective on this team that no one else matches, his seniority stretching back to his arrival in 2015 at 19 years old, the No. 11 pick from Texas.

Turner rode the Pacers elevator from a playoff contender to three straight lottery finishes and now back up again. He was the subject of endless trade rumors for his first six or seven seasons, until Indiana brought in Tyrese Haliburton in exchange for Turner’s former frontcourt mate, Domantas Sabonis.

“When the buzzer was sounding, it was nothing but joy,” Turner said Saturday. “All the years, all the hate, all the love, all the in-between just made sense in that moment.”

Turner and his teammates are proud of Indiana’s egalitarian roster, the praise, the credit and the blame spread around just like the responsibility. He called the Pacers’ foundation “the power of friendship” in his postgame remarks.

“It’s not the flashiest, sexiest team,” he said, “but it gets results.”

2. Siakam snags the Bird trophy

The vote was close, 5-4 from the media panel that determined the Most Valuable Player of the Eastern Conference championship series. Pacers forward Pascal Siakam edged out teammate Haliburton to take home the Larry Bird Trophy after scoring 31 points with five rebounds, three assists, a steal and three blocked shots in the finale.

Haliburton finished with 21 points, six rebounds, 13 assists, three steals and one block. The lanky, frenetic point guard remains the head of Indiana’s proverbial snake and a reliable win-lose barometer for how their team does, following his lead up or down.

But this was a case of Siakam providing offense when the Pacers needed it most. In a slow Pacers start, it was Siakam’s 3-pointer that slowed New York’s early roll and a breakout layup that put them up 12-11. He hit another 3 to start the second quarter, and by halftime Siakam had a game-high 16 points that were essential to his team’s 58-54 lead.

When Indiana outscored the Knicks 34-23 in the game-cracking third quarter, Siakam had 10 more points. Haliburton was just 1-for-3 in that period, though it wasn’t as if the pair were competing with each other.

Siakam led the Pacers in the series with 24.8 ppg and his shooting – 52.4% overall, 50% from the arc – was a reflection of their offensive strength. He was able to pester Knicks big man Karl-Anthony Towns more than Turner with better mobility and a mighty wingspan.

“The versatility,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said of Siakam. “His ability to run the floor, his ability to play in the paint, his ability to get to the basket … makes him a tough cover.”

Siakam, 31, was the NBA’s Most Improved Player in 2018-19 when his team at the time, the Toronto Raptors, won the NBA championship in his third season. It has taken him six years to return to the Finals, a trip he has said he took for granted.

All the Pacers know is that, since they acquired him 16 months ago for three players and three first-round draft picks, they have gone to the conference finals twice and now are four victories away from taking home the Larry O’Brien Trophy.

Said Haliburton: “When we brought him here, we envisioned something like this.”

3. This ending ‘sucks,’ but the Knicks’ run did not

New York point guard Jalen Brunson has been in that city long enough to know how the tabloid newspapers work. So he gave them easy back-page fodder with his first postgame comments Saturday.

“It sucks,” Brunson said, providing the stuff of big, rude headlines. “Simple as that. It sucks.”

Of course it did. New York ground out 18 games of postseason drama only to spit out the bit in the second half Saturday, when they got outscored 67-54. The Knicks never led after halftime, never really got close after Indiana reeled off the first nine points of the third quarter.

Frankly, it was a near-miracle that they got up one more shot than the Pacers, considering their 18 turnovers. If you’re going to get outscored by 24 points on 3-pointers, you had better not give up 34 easy points by throwing the ball away or snuffing possessions with offensive fouls.

“Some of it was our own doing, some of it was their ball pressure,” Thibodeau said.

Said Brunson, who had five turnovers to go with seven assists: “I try to control the things that I can control, and that’s one of them. That’s terrible on my part.”

Zooming out a few thousand feet, however, the Knicks’ season looked better than their final 24 minutes. They pushed through an injury-riddled season to win 51 games, their most in a dozen years. They had a major piece dropped in their laps, Towns, on the eve of training camp and patched around the departures of Isaiah Hartenstein, Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo.

New York handled a scrappy Detroit team in the first round, then bumped off the defending champions from Boston in six games with a pair of 20-point comebacks. They got a round further than when they lost in the East semis to Indiana a year ago.

“There were a lot of people saying we couldn’t do a lot of things,” Brunson said. “A lot of negativity around what we were trying to accomplish Just kind of put blinders on and went to work.”

Any speculation about Thibodeau’s job status, an inevitability for a New York fan base, will be premature at best. Folks fretted about the heavy minutes he loaded on Knicks starters, then never explored why they were as healthy as any team eight months in. Thibodeau has steered the Knicks to the postseason four times in five seasons, compared to three times in 16 seasons by the nine guys who preceded him in the job.

4. Carlisle’s golden touch once more

Backup center Thomas Bryant had played in just three of the series’ first five games for a total of 22 minutes. So he goes out in Game 6 and gives the Pacers 11 points in 13 minutes, hitting three of his four 3-pointers, grabbing three rebounds and blocking a shot.

It went that way with Bryant in the previous round too. In the first four games against Cleveland, he totaled nine points in 42 minutes. In the decisive Game 5, Bryant responded to Carlisle’s tap on the shoulder with nine points in 11 minutes to help defeat the Cavaliers on their own floor.

It’s chicken-or-egg stuff at this point: does Bryant play well in clinchers or do games become clinchers because Bryant plays well? Let’s not forget, the much-traveled 27-year-old (five teams) was on the 2023 Nuggets championship squad.

Said Siakam: “I told him, the basketball gods reward you.”

🗣️ “4 more, that’s all we are worrying about right now.”

A 2023 NBA Champion with Denver… Thomas Bryant is going back to the Finals 💯🏆 pic.twitter.com/PvSB3v8tn0

— NBA (@NBA) June 1, 2025

5. Low-wattage Finals? More like high concept

Siakam and Turner both took knees to the groin from attacking Knicks players in Game 6 – and both got called for the fouls on the two plays. But in the grand scheme, that might serve as solid prep work for the force the Pacers can expect when they face the Thunder in the 2025 NBA Finals.

Oklahoma City plays the league’s most physical and smothering defense, the sort of the-refs-can’t-call-every-foul style that can stymie opponents competitively and mentally. Indiana just demonstrated how potent it can be when it plays fast, attacks both inside and out, and pushes its point total north of 110 points (11-0 in the playoffs so far when doing that, 52-23 in the regular season).

So it’s offense vs. defense in a Finals that will lack a major TV market for the people focused on ratings. But it shouldn’t lack much for basketball fans who can watch without worrying if the folks across the hall or down the street are doing the same. If the neighbors miss out, they miss out.

* * *

Steve Aschburner has written about the NBA since 1980. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on X.

The views on this page do not necessarily reflect the views of the NBA, its clubs or Warner Bros. Discovery.