Pacers stun Cavs with dominant second half as Haliburton deals with hamstring tightness
The Pacers trailed 10-0 to start the game and by 13 points at halftime. Without Tyrese Haliburton in the second half, they outscored the Cavs by 28 for their sixth straight double-digit win.
The Pacers went into Cleveland and stunned the Cavaliers (and perhaps the entire NBA) on Sunday night.
This Cavs team was an NBA-best 33-4 and had only lost once since Dec. 1, carrying a league-best 12-game win streak into the first of two meetings against a division foe.
At halftime, the team received bad news that Tyrese Haliburton, their point guard in Year 1 of a supermax contact, wouldn’t return in the second due to left hamstring tightness.
Uh oh…
This comes almost one year to the date since this first became an issue for him, slipping on the home court and suffering a left hamstring strain. It bothered him for the rest of the 2023-24 season, even keeping him out of the final two games of the Eastern Conference Finals.
More on that in a moment, but this win had it all. Starting with the surprise.
It was a tale of two halves as the Pacers went from down 13 at intermission to up by six points entering the final period. They never trailed the rest of the way in a 108-93 victory in front of a sellout crowd (19,432) at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse.
“We picked up our level of aggression and force in the second half, and we were really tied together,” head coach Rick Carlisle said postgame. “… Our calling card has got to be our aggression and our depth. And in the second half, we played the way we needed to play to be competitive in a game like this.
“I just thought our connectivity in the second half was as good as it’s been all year.”
Out of the locker room, the Pacers (22-18) then used a 27-5 run to grow their lead to 10 in the third quarter and then to as many as 18. Against the team that had been playing better and more consistently than any other team.