LOS ANGELES: Tyrese Haliburton scored 31 points as the Indiana Pacers came from behind to defeat the Cleveland Cavaliers 114-105 and send the top seeds tumbling out of the NBA playoffs on Tuesday.
A flurry of six three-pointers from Haliburton helped Indiana wrap up a 4-1 series victory as the Cavaliers’ promising season fizzled out in disappointing fashion on their home court.
Haliburton’s scoring was backed by 21 points from Pascal Siakam while Aaron Nesmith contributed 13 points with 13 rebounds. Andrew Nembhard scored 18 points.
“We’re talking about eight more wins for an NBA championship,” Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle said after guiding his team into the Eastern Conference finals for a second straight year.
“The league is wide open this year. There are a lot of great teams but it’s wide open. We’ve just gotta keep believing. We’ve got a great group of guys who have committed to one another.
“We have a formula that works for us when we are really steadfast about sticking to it.”
Trailing 3-1 heading into Tuesday’s game five, Cleveland looked ready to keep the series alive after surging into a 19-point lead midway through the second quarter at the Rocket Arena.
But Haliburton sparked into life to drain five-of-five from three-point range in a 15-point second quarter to flip the script and slash Cleveland’s advantage to just four points at 56-52 heading into halftime.
The Pacers’ scoring onslaught continued into the third quarter with the visitors outscoring Cleveland 33-20 to open up a commanding 85-76 lead as the fourth quarter got under way.
Cleveland threatened to rally in the final frame after 16 points from Donovan Mitchell, who was clearly still troubled by the sore left ankle that had threatened to rule him out of the contest.
Mitchell, who finished with 35 points, six rebounds and eight assists, closed the Indiana lead to one point at 98-97 with just over five minutes remaining after nailing a three-pointer.
But the Cavaliers’ failure to threaten from three-point range — they managed to convert just nine-of-35 attempts from beyond the arc — continued to be a problem and hopes of a comeback were snuffed out by the Pacers defense.
Cleveland coach Kenny Atkinson lamented his team’s stalled playoff campaign which followed a dominant 64-win regular season.
“They were the better team, they deserved it and they played great,” Atkinson said of Indiana. “But the truth of the matter is we didn’t get to the level we wanted to get to.
“We’re not pleased with that. We’re not celebrating the season. But I do think we made strides. We took a jump — and now we’ve got to figure out this last piece, and how to get over this hump.
“We had some misfortune with injuries, but I still felt like we had enough. It’s disappointing.”
Fourth-seeds Indiana will now meet either the Boston Celtics or arch-rivals the New York Knicks in the Eastern Conference finals, with the winner advancing to next month’s NBA Finals.
The Knicks lead the series with Boston 3-1 and can book a showdown with Indiana if they manage a victory over the Celtics on Wednesday.
Haliburton shines as Pacers advance past top-seeded Cavs
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Haliburton shines as Pacers advance past top-seeded Cavs
Russell, Antonelli lead Mercedes in one-two qualifying positions for F1’s Australian GP
- Russell topped all three sessions in F1’s knockout qualifying format, finally casting aside questions of where Mercedes team was in the new-era pecking order
MELBOURNE: Mercedes has revealed its dominant hand during qualifying for Sunday’s Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix.
George Russell earned his ninth-career pole position Saturday ahead of his teammate Kimi Antonelli for the team’s 83rd front-row lockout and its first since the 2024 British Grand Prix.
Russell topped all three sessions in F1’s knockout qualifying format, finally casting aside questions of where Mercedes team was in the new-era pecking order. His pole time, at 1 minute, 18.518 seconds, was almost eight-tenths faster than the nearest non-Mercedes challenger, Red Bull rookie Isack Hadjar, who completed the top three.
“It was a great day, we knew there was a lot of potential in the car, but until we get to this first Saturday of the season, you never know,” Russell said. “But it really came alive this afternoon, especially when the track temperatures cooled, we know we tend to favor those conditions.”
Antonelli was relieved to have made it onto the front row alongside his teammate after a crash in final practice at the exit of turn two meant it was a race in the Mercedes garage to get him out for qualifying.
“It’s been a very stressful day. Unfortunately, I went into the wall (in FP3),” he said. “But the guys (in the garage) were the heroes today to put the car back on track.”
Hadjar was impressive by qualifying third on debut for Red Bull, his highest-ever grid position.
“The only thing I can do is take them at the start, but they’re just too fast at the moment,” Hadjar said of Mercedes. “I want to keep my position and a second podium would be cool.”
Ferrari showed it’s neck-and-neck with McLaren on pace, with just one and a half tenths seconds covering the four drivers just beyond the top-three — with Charles Leclerc qualifying fourth, McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris in fifth and sixth respectively, and Lewis Hamilton in seventh.
Racing Bulls showed they’ve taken a step forward over the winter, with New Zealander Liam Lawson eighth ahead of his highly-rated rookie teammate Arvid Lindblad.
The big surprise of the session came from four-time F1 world champion Max Verstappen, who triggered red flags at Melbourne’s Albert Park after he lost control of his Red Bull car in braking for turn one in the first half of Q1 and ended in the barriers.
The Dutchman, who was unhurt from the crash, though upset that his brakes locked up, will now start from the back of the grid.
F1 heads into a new era this year, with unprecedented changes across the chassis (car) and power unit, which now feature an almost 50:50 output split between the turbo 1.6-liter V6 engine and electrical energy harvested from the brakes, one that requires a new, often counterintuitive driving style from the drivers.
