The Indiana Pacers are three wins away from being crowned the 2025 NBA champion.
For head coach Rick Carlisle, star guard Tyrese Haliburton and the Pacers, three is the only number that matters.
But for us, the audience, we need to look at some more numbers to make sense of what we’re watching. Because words can sometimes fail. Especially after the Pacers mounted yet another last-second miracle in Thursday’s win over the Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 1 of the NBA Finals.
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Here are the 10 most mind-boggling facts about the Pacers’ heroics in clutch moments this postseason:
1. Tyrese Haliburton is shooting 13 of 15 (86.7 percent) this season on shots to tie or go-ahead in the final two minutes of games.
That’s right, in the final 120 seconds of games this regular season and postseason combined, with an opportunity to tie or take the lead, Haliburton has missed only two of his 15 attempts from the floor, according to Stathead.com shot tracking. Six of those makes were 3-pointers. Actually, one of those was a 4-pointer at the buzzer against Milwaukee back in March. It was an impossible shot, soaring above Giannis Antetokounmpo’s outstretched arms.
When we account for the added value of the 3-point shot, Haliburton is effectively shooting 106.7% from the floor on these shots, which is also what we call “effective field goal percentage.”
He’s shooting so efficiently on these close-and-late shots that making 15 straight layups would be less effective.
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Let’s frame this another way: against his peers.
To better understand how remarkable it is that Haliburton has shot 13 of 15 on these super clutch shots, consider that all players total are shooting 38% on these shots. Which makes sense because defenses are locked in on trying to make it extra difficult for shooters in these big moments.
Some really good players have had little success in these moments. Really good players like …
2. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is 0 for 7 on such shots this season.
Granted, the MVP hasn’t been trailing or tied in late-game situations much this season because the Thunder have often been too busy blowing their opponents out. But I can’t help but point out that, in a showdown of these two All-Star point guards, one player is 13 of 15 and the other hasn’t made a single shot in this scenario.
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The most recent example was SGA’s missed midrange jumper at the end of Game 3 against Denver. He tried to take Christian Braun one-on-one and flung an off-balance 12-footer off the back iron. The game went into overtime. He missed six other opportunities this season, all coming in the regular season.
Most players, even All-Stars, miss these shots more often than not. In fact …
3. The following group of current or former All-Stars has collectively missed all 25 such shots this season: Gilgeous-Alexander, Paul George, Zion Williamson, Bradley Beal, Andrew Wiggins and Zach LaVine.
Stack them all together and they’ve collectively gone 0-for-TWENTY-FIVE.
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The aforementioned Gilgeous-Alexander is still searching for his first made bucket of the season in this scenario, after seven tries. That’s a little better than 2021-22 All-Star forward Andrew Wiggins, who fired up eight errant shots without a make in Golden State and Miami this season. That’s the most for any player without a made field goal in this situation this season. Again, Haliburton has made – count ‘em – 13 of these clutch shots.
Zach LaVine has also missed all four of his offerings. Paul George is 0 for 3. Zion Williamson has missed both of his shots and Beal misfired on his only opportunity — a layup against Dallas back in November. Six All-Stars, zero makes, 25 tries. That’s how good Haliburton has been.
What about just this postseason?
Well …
4. Haliburton is shooting 6 of 7 on shots to tie or take the lead in the final 90 seconds this postseason.
This one is courtesy of the great Keerthika Uthayakumar who has been churning out bangers all season long.
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She tells us that Hali’s six made buckets in these situations is the most such shots we’ve seen in any one postseason since 1997.
To drill this down even further, Haliburton has made more of these shots (six) than the Thunder, Timberwolves, Warriors, Cavs, Lakers, Clippers, Rockets, Pistons, Magic, Heat and Bucks combined this postseason (five). That’s 11 entire teams compared to one man.
But those are just seven shot attempts. Let’s expand the criteria.
5. Haliburton’s “playoff shooting clutch win probability added” is so far beyond anything we’ve seen on record
Some might say that the above four stats are too narrow in scope. What about the daggers? The ones where you stretch a tiny lead late in the game into an insurmountable one? Shouldn’t those count, too?
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Let’s take a more comprehensive look that will also look at shots that ice a game for a team. Over at Inpredictable.com, the great Mike Beuoy has built a metric that aggregates how much a player adds or subtracts to his team’s win probability with his shot-making (or oftentimes, shot-missing). The concept is simple. It takes a reading of a team’s chances of winning before a player takes a shot (say, 60%) and after a player takes a shot (say, 90%). It calculates the difference in those two figures (90%-60% = +30%) and then credits or debits the net figure to the shooting player (+30%). Add it all up for a player’s shots across a postseason and you can see how a player’s makes and misses shake out in the end.
According to Inpredictable data, Haliburton’s “shooting clutch win probability added” this postseason is the highest in the NBA’s play-by-play era, which began in 1997. No player had added more than two “wins” purely by his aggregated shotmaking (+20% here, -2 percent there, +5 percent here, etc).
Until Haliburton.
LeBron James in 2013 and 2018 had held the record in clutch shotmaking since 1997 with 1.86 wins and 1.82 wins, respectively. With Thursday’s shot, Haliburton has now surged all the way to 2.48 wins this postseason alone. He’s 33 percent higher than the previous record.
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Remember, this metric also incorporates your misses. So a player that has just a smattering of clutch makes amid a sea of misses will get docked for the failures, too. That’s why, even though Haliburton has hit several game-winners this postseason, he’s “only” at 2.48 wins added. Misses will drag down a players’ overall score.
Anyway, check out this chart that Beuoy shared on Thursday night:
Kobe Bryant’s best? Hali’s been better. Damian Lillard? Steph Curry? Hali’s shotmaking takes the cake.
Maybe Michael Jordan, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Larry Bird were more clutch in their shot-making back in their day. Unfortunately, we don’t have complete play-by-play data before 1997 to grade them on the same scale. But we can say with reasonable certainty that Haliburton has been the best in this regard in the last 29 seasons of data. (For those keeping score: SGA’s Clutch WPA this postseason is 0.20, which is 28th among players in the 2025 playoffs, and third on OKC.)
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Now, if you want a bespoke version of this win probability added metric, Beouy has you covered. And guess what, when you incorporate assists, rebounds and other box score stats …
6. Haliburton is also No. 1 in clutch win probability added for any postseason since 1997 — not just shot-making
There are other ways to be clutch that aren’t covered in the previous metric. A player could get a critical rebound, dish out a clutch assist, rise up for a big-time block. Or on the other side of the ledger, cough up the ball in a big moment. It’s important to note that the above metric only examines shot-making — like the jumper Haliburton drilled in OKC with 0.3 seconds left. He has loads of those that have gone his way, and almost none that haven’t. That’s why he’s lapping the field.
But Haliburton also almost never turns the ball over. So if he doesn’t miss a ton and he takes good care of the ball, he’s going to be an elite clutch player. But how elite?
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Turns out, Haliburton’s total Clutch WPA stands at 2.54 wins this postseason, slightly higher than his shots-only total, which tells us that his secondary play has only improved his clutch standing. The only player whose postseason ledger comes close to Haliburton’s figure is Dirk Nowitzki’s 2.15 Clutch WPA mark during his epic run to the 2011 championship. Again, Haliburton stands above the rest.
Here is a list of Haliburton’s clutch plays/misplays and the corresponding WPA. LOOK AT ALL THAT GREEN.
Compare that forest of green to All-Star point guard Cade Cunningham, who has the lowest Clutch WPA.
And Haliburton got named by the players as the most overrated player in the game. In terms of clutch play, it’s him and Nowitzki’s 2011 title run and then the rest. There’s a statue outside the Mavericks’ arena commemorating Nowitzki. At this point, we might need to fasttrack a Haliburton statue outside Gainbridge Fieldhouse.
7. Tyrese Haliburton and the Pacers players have just two turnovers in 33 minutes of clutch time.
On Thursday night after the shocker, Kevin O’Connor made the astute point that Indiana goes against the grain by running their stuff in critical moments without getting bogged down in iso-ball. Teams usually try to slow things down and go one-on-one to avoid turnovers that can happen as a result of passes getting intercepted.
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But the Pacers are indeed unique in this way. Haliburton has just one clutch turnover this postseason in 33 minutes of action and a whopping eight assists. Andrew Nembhard has three assists and one turnover. Pascal Siakam also has an assist, with no turnovers. Individually, that’s 12 turnovers to just two assists (they also had one team turnover). Contrast that assist-to-turnover ratio in the clutch with the New York Knicks, who logged 13 assists to 14 turnovers in their 49 minutes of clutch action.
The exquisite ball-handling for the Pacers has kept teams like the Knicks and Thunder at bay in crunchtime. How good are they as a team in these clutch situations? Glad you asked …
8. The Pacers are 8-1 in clutch games this postseason
The only loss came against the Knicks in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Finals after KAT rattled off 20 points in the fourth quarter.
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Other than that? The Pacers haven’t been beaten in eight games that entered the league’s official clutch zone (game within five points in the final five minutes). They stole two from Milwaukee, three from Cleveland and one each in the last two rounds. Eight wins and just one loss in these nerve-wrecking games.
How good is that record? There have been 73 teams since the 1998 playoffs that have played in at least nine “clutch” games. The Pacers’ .889 win percentage in those close games is the best record for any of them.
It tops the 1998 Bulls and the 2007 Spurs, who went 9-2 (.818) in their respective title runs. The Pacers have been more victorious in these tight games than the Hall of Fame rosters of the Warriors, the Kobe-Shaq Lakers and the LeBron squads that went to eight straight Finals.
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Before this run, could you say there were any surefire Hall of Famers on this Pacers roster? That might change if they win this whole thing …
Is Indiana the most clutch team we’ve ever seen? The data points to one answer: Yes ‘Cers.
9. Three of the seven biggest playoff comebacks since 1996 belong to the Pacers. All in this postseason.
Per Inpredictable.com’s win probability charts, the Pacers have won three games this postseason when they had, at one point or another, 1-in-434 or longer odds to win based on clock, score and possession.
In the Eastern Conference finals Game 1, the Pacers had just a 0.05 percent chance of winning (1-in-1999 to be precise) in the fourth quarter when they were down 14 with 3:44 left. They won 138-135. In Game 2 against the Cavs, Cleveland enjoyed a seven-point lead with 48 seconds left, leaving the Pacers with a measly 0.21 percent chance of winning. The Pacers won 120-119. In the closeout game against Milwaukee in the first round, they pulled off a similar miracle, turning around a seven-point deficit with 43 seconds left, bottoming out at 0.23 percent odds to win. The Pacers won 119-118.
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The craziest part? The OKC reversal on Thursday night doesn’t even make the cut.
In Game 1 of the Finals, the Pacers faced just a 2.3 percent chance of pulling off the upset, down nine with 2:52 remaining in the game. Of course, they won 111-110 after Haliburton’s clutch jumper. That’s the sixth-largest comeback of this postseason. The top three, you guessed it, belong to the Pacers.
So, to recap, the Pacers won games in which they had just a 0.05 percent chance, 0.21 percent chance, a 0.23 percent chance and a 2.3 percent chance. To pull off one of those wins is a miracle. But to do all four?
If you do the math …
10. At their lowest points, the Pacers had 1-in-17 billion odds to win all four games of Game 5 vs. Bucks, Game 2 vs. Cavs, Game 1 vs. Knicks and Game 1 vs. OKC.
That means if we ran those four games again, at their lowest points, 17 billion times, we’d only see it happen once.
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And we were alive to see it.
How’s that for clutch?
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