The Indiana Pacers: A Surprise in the NBA Finals
On Wednesday, the Indiana Pacers will host Game 3 of the NBA Finals at home, marking the first time in a quarter of a century that Indianapolis has hosted a game of this instance. However, the Pacers’ trajectory has exceeded all expectations, even if it had not been foreseen at all.Despite reaching the Eastern Conference finals last spring, Indiana was considered a clear underdog to return as the number 4 seed, let alone advance further. The Pacers had to overcome the Cleveland Cavaliers, who won 64 games, in the second round, and then win a second series against the number 3 seeded New York Knicks, without having the home-court advantage.
According to data from SportsOddsHistory.com, only two finalist teams in the last four decades had worse odds of winning the title at the start of the season than the Pacers, with odds of +5,000 (50-1) at ESPN BET Sportsbook: the 2020 Miami Heat (+7,500) and the 2002 New Jersey Nets (+6,000), with the 2022 Boston Celtics also at +5,000. The story of other unexpected finalists tells us that their success does not usually translate into championships. But between the comebacks and achievements along the way, the Pacers have made history by achieving the improbable.How do the Pacers Compare to Other Surprise Finalists?
The disbelief surrounding Indiana at the start of this season might have stemmed from what has happened to recent teams that have reached the conference finals almost out of nowhere. Last year’s run as the No. 6 seed benefited from injuries to Giannis Antetokounmpo and multiple Knicks players. Since the first round went to a best-of-seven series in 2003, five teams have reached the conference finals with odds of winning the title of +5,000 or more, according to SportsOddsHistory.com. Surprisingly, all five have come since 2018, as upsets have become more common in the NBA playoffs.Of those five teams, Indiana is the first to return to the conference finals, let alone advance further. Three of the five clubs ended up losing in the first round the following year. Before the Pacers, only the Celtics returned to the conference finals at some point after their improbable run, doing so in 2020 before reaching the NBA Finals in 2022 with only a handful of players from 2018 and a new coach.
Like Indiana, the 2018-19 Portland Trail Blazers and the 2020-21 Atlanta Hawks hoped that reaching the conference finals, thanks to surprises and a favorable bracket, would be the beginning of something. Instead, it proved to be the highlight of their careers. Neither has won a playoff series since then.Given the age of the Pacers’ star, Tyrese Haliburton (25), and the team’s supporting players, that kind of outcome seemed unlikely for Indiana. But something similar could have been said of Trae Young and Atlanta four years ago. It certainly wasn’t certain that the Pacers’ success in the 2024 playoffs would translate again this spring.
The Surprising Victory over the Cavaliers
Indiana benefited from Boston being eliminated from the opposite side of the Eastern bracket a year after the Celtics swept the Pacers on their way to last season’s title. However, to take advantage of that, the Pacers had to pull off a shocking upset. Several factors conspired to diminish the impact of the Pacers eliminating Cleveland, whose 64 wins were the third-most among teams that failed to reach the conference finals. In addition to New York defeating a 61-win Boston team simultaneously, in the West, the Oklahoma City Thunder, with 68 wins, were at a disadvantage on multiple occasions in a seven-game series against the Denver Nuggets. Those other series divided attention. Additionally, Indiana may have been a victim of its success. The victory over the Cavaliers almost came too quickly. After one of their characteristic comebacks to win Game 2, with Cavaliers stars Darius Garland and Evan Mobley absent, the Pacers lost Game 3 at home by 22 points. But they responded with a 20-point victory and eliminated any potential drama from the series by closing it out on the road in five games. Even so, according to the pre-series odds, Indiana was one of the 10 most improbable winners since 2000. And of the surprises that took place in the first two rounds, the Pacers joined the 2023 Heat as the only teams in that span to turn the result into a trip to the Finals.Where Does Indiana Rank Among the Most Surprising Finalists?
That cut of preseason data from SportsOddsHistory.com leaves out some other notable preseason surprises. The 1977-78 Seattle SuperSonics, coming off a 40-42 season that cost coach Bill Russell his job, presumably would have had higher odds of winning the title compared to this season’s Pacers. The same would go for the 1976-77 Trail Blazers, who had a 37-45 record the previous season, with Bill Walton limited to 51 games due to injuries.
However, all of those teams had established themselves as stronger Finals contenders at the start of the playoffs. The 1977 Blazers, the 2002 Nets, and the 2022 Celtics were all top two seeds, while the 1978 Sonics and the 2020 Heat benefited from very open playoffs due to uncertainty surrounding Walton’s injury and the Orlando bubble, respectively. If instead we look at the title probabilities at the beginning of the postseason, the Pacers (+6,600 on ESPN BET) are again in rare company. SportsOddsHistory.com data goes back to 1973 and, again, only two finalists were bigger surprises: the 2023 Heat (+12,500 coming out of the play-in tournament as the number 8 seed) and the 1981 Houston Rockets (+10,000). The 1981 Rockets arguably stand alone as the most surprising Finals team since the ABA-NBA merger. While not holding preseason title odds, Houston was coming off a 41-41 season and had a worse record in 1980-81 (40-42), but eliminated the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers in the first round and a 52-win San Antonio Spurs team in the conference semifinals before a conference finals matchup with the sub-.500 Kansas City Kings. Like most of these teams, the Rockets’ run ended with a Finals loss. If Indiana were to win the Finals, they would be the least likely champion by a wide margin in terms of pre-playoff odds. Now, that honor is shared by the 1995 Rockets, who were the defending champions but seeded sixth in a loaded Western Conference, and the 2011 Dallas Mavericks, both at +1,800 entering the postseason. According to the percentages implied by the probabilities, those teams were considered more than three times more likely to win the title than the Pacers.
