3 Takeaways From Pacers’ Surprising Overtime Victory Over Celtics

Amidst newly-minted Olympic gold medalist Tyrese Haliburton’s shooting woes, the Indiana Pacers’ 2024-25 season has gotten off to a rocky start. But the team appears to have potentially righted the ship with a critical victory Wednesday.

In an Eastern Conference Finals rematch, Indiana managed to hand the reigning NBA champion Boston Celtics their first loss of the young season, a 135-132 overtime victory.

Mathurin saw himself losing rotation time to Jarace Walker and Ben Sheppard in recent games. But he finally had an offensive outburst befitting his promise this year against Boston. The 6-foot-6 swingman scored a team-most 30 points on 9-of-17 shooting from the field (2-of-5 from long range) and 10-of-11 shooting from the charity stripe, while also grabbing 11 rebounds and dishing out four dimes, in a team-high 42:39 of action.

Time will tell if it sticks, but Pacers fans must surely be hoping it can. For Indiana to get to where it wants to be, the club will need him to step up his output.

If anyone’s looking like an All-Star this year, it’s not Haliburton.

Siakam, the Pacers’ starting power forward, scored 29 points on 11-of-20 shooting from the field (plus a stunningly good 6-of-8 from 3-point range) and 1-of-4 shooting from the charity stripe, while also pulling down 11 boards and dishing out five dimes.

The 30-year-old New Mexico State product is averaging 20.6 points on .547/.458/.625 shooting splits, 7.6 rebounds, 5.2 assists, and 0.8 steals a night.

It’s unclear just how real this 3-point shooting barrage through five games is for Siakam. But it sure looked real enough on Wednesday night. With Boston and Indiana knotted up at 132-132 and seven seconds remaining in overtime, and All-Defensive Team guard Derrick White stuffing a hand in his face, Siakam scored the game-winning triple as time ticked down. The degree of difficulty of that shot, and Siakam’s insane confidence, is quite encouraging. He’s never been a knockdown shooter, but has been effective pretty much everywhere else.

Haliburton, 24, scored 17 points on a paltry 7-of-19 shooting from the floor (2-of-10 from deep) and 1-of-1 shooting from the charity stripe, but he managed to compensate somewhat for his shooting issues with a flurry of passing. He dished out 12 assists against just one turnover, and allowed Mathurin and Siakam to shine as scorers against a talented Boston team.

The 6-foot-5 star point guard has had a shaky start to his sixth pro season out of Iowa State. Though he’s surely looking to build on two consecutive All-Star appearances and his first All-NBA berth, his offense has been shockingly shaky. He’s averaging 14.6 points on .346/.250/.667 shooting splits, 6.6 rebounds, 5.0 assists, 1.4 steals, and 0.6 blocks a night in his first five games with Los Angeles.

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