The Indiana Pacers and OKC Thunder played in an NBA Finals that should be remembered for a couple of things.
First, it was an epic, seven-game battle that would be celebrated by the masses if the two teams involved were considered “marquee” franchises. If that was a Lakers-Celtics series, it would have gone down as one of the best Finals ever. Too many people didn’t pay close enough attention to what was happening.
Second, and more importantly for teams around the NBA trying to figure out how to navigate this new era, this was a series between two deep teams with one true star, rather than two or three-headed monsters of the past. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was the MVP last season, and his only other counterpart on the All-NBA teams was third-teamer Jalen Williams. Tyrese Haliburton only made third-team All-NBA and his only teammate that sniffed inclusion was Pascal Siakam, who got four third-team votes.
The Cavs had Donovan Mitchell on the first team and Evan Mobley on the second, with Darius Garland also getting votes. The Knicks had Jalen Brunson on the second team and Karl-Anthony Towns on the third. The Celtics had Jayson Tatum on the first team and a championship in their back pocket. But it was Indiana who forced a Game 7 and might have actually won it if Haliburton didn’t rupture his Achilles tendon.
At different points in the Finals, Benedict Mathurin, TJ McConnell, Andrew Nembhard, and Obi Toppin all had monster stretches that helped Indiana win games. In a new podcast with “Basketball, She Wrote” host Caitlin Cooper, Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle said his team is part of a sea change.
“The NBA game has now become a play hard league. It's not just being top-heavy with stars,” Carlisle said. “Roster construction is changing. It's become more important to have more good players than be top-heavy with two or three great players that get all the touches.”
On one hand, we’d expect Carlisle to say something like this because he coaches a try-hard team that nearly won a championship. He’s not going to sit on a podcast for an hour and talk about how he’s the exception to the rule.
On the other, we just watched two try-hards battle it out in the Finals, so maybe Carlisle has a point.
Jalen Williams is obviously a great player on the rise for OKC, as is Chet Holmgren, so the Thunder are probably ascending past the “try-hard” phase of their existence. They will look very much like a team with talent at the top and role players behind them. But they are also a very try-hard team. It’s why they were so good last season and why they won a championship sooner than expected. Yes, they are reliant on SGA for a lot, but that just supercharges their overall, effort-based success.
The Pacers had seven guys averaging double figures in the Finals, and Aaron Nesmith (9.4 ppg) was a couple of makes from being the eighth. The Pacers were third in playoff pace, averaging 98.5 possessions per 48 minutes. The Thunder were second in the playoffs at 100. Most notably, OKC’s pace didn’t change from the regular season and Indiana’s dropped by just 1.5.
Compare that to Boston’s pace, which was 96.6 in the regular season and 91.7 in the playoffs. The two Finals teams managed to continue playing their style while other teams, especially Boston, gave in to the normal formula of slowing down in the playoffs.
The Celtics, as I’ve noted many times in the past, are a slow team with top-heavy talent that likes to take a lot of the shots. Tatum took 20.3 per game last season. Jaylen Brown took 17.7. The top two took as many as the next three, which is normal. Both guys love to slow things down, assess the defense, make their individual moves, and then read how the defense reacts to determine how they finish plays.
It has worked in the past. They have won a lot of games together, including a championship. But the championship team was a sort of supercharged version of what Carlisle is talking about. The Celtics had Derrick White, Jrue Holiday, Kristaps Porziņģis, Al Horford, and Payton Pritchard to take the pressure off them. They were the ultimate deep team despite playing slow.
But those days are over. This upcoming season is not only a transition year for Boston, but it’s an audition year for a lot of the players. It’s also, potentially, an opportunity to shift more towards Carlisle’s style of play.
With Tatum out, Brown has a chance to put his stamp on the team. He has notably said many times that he likes to play fast. This is his chance to make that happen. At the same time, Brad Stevens has harped on Boston’s lack of cutting, which is something the Pacers do very well. With a lot of the talent gone this season, the Celtics will have to rely on Indiana-style tactics to make up for some of their deficiencies. All of which sets the Celtics' front office up for some interesting decisions.
If they can find some success with faster play, more cutting, and maybe even some increased full-court defensive pressure, it might change the types of players they pursue to fill out their roster around Tatum and Brown. An emphasis on a deeper roster of players more willing to move on both ends of the floor could take some of the emphasis off just shooting and put more of it on other aspects of the game.
And if it works, then it would force Tatum to evolve more as a player and lean on quicker decisions rather than holding the ball.
“Pascal is living proof,” Carlisle said. “He made a lot of tough adjustments where a lot of vet players would have come in and just said ‘hey, I’ve been an All-Star twice, I’ve been all-league twice, you guys gotta get more with me.’ But he’s a great example of sacrifices that are made so that a group like ours can have a run like we had this year.”
Of course, Siakam went to Indy and had to make a decision, whereas Tatum is an established future Hall of Famer who will have his number retired by the franchise. Tatum has already made adjustments to his game. Would he have more in his bag whenever he returns from injury?
We can fly through a million hypotheticals and what-if’s. Carlisle’s declaration that his team is helping push the NBA in this new direction does carry weight. Every team is different and all it would take to change this discussion is a championship by a team playing a slower, star-heavy style. If the Lakers ride LeBron James and Luka Dončić to a title, then we can rip all these words up and toss them into a fire.
But with the new CBA putting a lot of financial pressure on teams, it feels like Carlisle might be onto something. Deeper teams with less top-heavy talent but more willingness to push on both ends feels like the ultimate direction of the NBA. With top-tier stars making 35% of the salary cap, teams are going to think long and hard about committing another monster portion of their cap to only one other player.
The CBA is designed to spread talent around the league. Teams leaning into that and finding the mid-tier guys who can make up for the little less talent with a little more effort could be the one who find more sustained success. How Boston navigates that over the next few years begins with this upcoming season.
