The world loves losers
That life is not a movie, we were convinced of exactly five minutes until the end of the first section. Haliburton rushed to his distinctive entrance, but instead of laying, he slid into the parquet floor. The loudest arena in the league, Payc Center in Oklahoma, prevailed disbelief and that indescribably penetrating, loud silence. Time, really, as if it stopped for a moment.
Year is 2003. During the hot summer, all fans of American basketball talk about powerful San Antonio Spurs who were led by the legendary Team Duncan, decorated with the title Nba Champion winning New Jersey Netse In the finals.
At the same time, in Indianapolis, the aforementioned hot summer, a little under the radar, began to give birth to a team for great things. The thread of the club took over Larry Bird. One of the biggest faces ever walking NBA parquets, after coaching, took over the presidential role in Indiana to the Pacers, a club from his hometown.
At the very beginning of his term, Bird set his former coaching assistant at the main coach, Rick Carlisle. The focal points of the team, Jermaine O’Neal and overwhelmed Reggie Miller They extended their loyalty to the club, and the Pacers were created by a young team that seemed to be able to go to the very end. Carlisle led the team as a debut on the bench to an impressive 61-21 in a regular season, the best in the entire NBA League. The Pacers, then in Playoffs swept Boston Celtics and threw out talented Miami Heat, In order to lose a tight series in six games, they will show, champion – Detroit Pistons.
Although they fell on a step to the grand finale, Indianapolis prevailed optimism. The team had a great blend of youth and experience, and with the talented Carlisle on the bench, it worked that next year it could be ‘ta’ for Indiana.
But the dreams were ended early, in just one, a fateful match. On that fatal November 19, 2004, a scandal that does not remember.
It was a rematch of the conference final between Detroit and Indiana. Tensions were at a high level for obvious reasons, and everything culminated in the last minute of the already resolved match, when it was Ben Wallace violently failed Indianin Ron Artesta. Artest, which was completely justified by the reputation of the ‘hot head’, went to the record table to calm down, and then the chaos was created. One of the fans threw a drink on him and it was a shutter for a notorious event, later in a basketball anthology appointed as Malice at the Palace.
The biggest massive fight in the history of American basketball, at the very start of the season, stood at the end of the Indiana Pacers dreams, which, due to numerous Draconian suspensions, practically lost half of the roster. The main actors were crucified in the media, although no one took into account that players should be better protected from fanatical fans.
Reggie Miller, the greatest he has ever wore a Pacers jersey, took over the threads of the team that played with only six players in one period. Although he was already aware that even in his last NBA season, he would not reach the unprotected championship title, ‘Uncle Rega’ proved his size once again. However, there was no enough in the playoffs of fuel, and as is usually the ruthless NBA world, the so -called window conquest window has strongly strayed and closed the Pacers in front of the nose.
Today, 21 years later, we watched Reggie Miller in the NBA final again. But not on the floor, but in the first place the stand.
Dressed in the jerseys of his former teammates, Miller cheered heartily for his old coach, Rick Carlisle and the new generation of Indiana Pacers, who came to defeat demons from the past and print the epilogue of that story, which has been unfinished for more than two decades. And she stayed. After a bunch of shocks, magical turns and shots with the sound of sirens, the Indiana Pacers were tragically defeated in the seventh game of the NBA final.
A few days ago, I was tasked with the editor to write my own review after the seventh game of the finals. Then I was convinced that this text would be dedicated to the winner, the new NBA champion … because, as the title of Colonia’s hit – the world loves the winners. Probably then wondering, so why, forbid, I don’t write about Oklahoma City Thunderi who won the first title in the history of their franchise. The truth is, the winners are those who bring all the glory at the end of the day, they are written and praise is written, but this series has shown to us that these rare cases are possible in which the world loves losers and ultimately stands on its side.
Maybe this is unfair to Oklahoma, which definitely deserves its flowers, leaves and praise. However, this may be the first time ever that the NBA Playoff will not be remembered for the champion.
The Indiana Pacers have entered a brutal undervalued by the basketball public in the recently completed playoffs. Honestly, I was also a part of that mass that was not even the thought of the thought that these Pacers could go to the finals. On the contrary, before the start of the Playoff, I compiled a list of eight teams that have any chance of winning the trophy Larry O’Briena, and Indiana was not even in trace on that list.
The Pacers cheated us all well in the regular season. Until January, their roster lacked important links due to injuries. They looked awful at the start of the season that walked away from the top of the east, and that was enough to take the excellent form in the second half of the season. Indiana entered the fourth place in the playoffs, and their first opponents were their crippled Milwaukee Bucks.
As if it were written in the stars, shortly before the playoffs, the results of an anonymous survey conducted among a few NBA players on the most prevalent League player came out to the public. The infamous victory in the aforementioned survey, he took the Pacers Playmaker – Tyrese Haliburton. No one could even suspect that this survey would become one of the main narratives of this year’s playoffs.
When Rick Carlisle returned to the Indiana bench after almost 15 years, he laid the foundations for the implementation of one of the most modern and eye of the most comfortable game styles in the NBA League, which is a bit reminiscent of the mythical San Antonio Spurs from the beginning of the story. The surreal rapid, flowing and selfless game with a murderous pace that mercilessly consumes, and often in the end of the opponent – this is a style that adorns Indiana Pacers, and the “most prevalent NBA League player” was the driver of that fantastic system.
Obviously, this poll set a spark in the cute Tyrese Haliburgon, which is one of the few stars in modern NBA known for preferring to play teammates than to take a shot. And, in this playoff, he showed that he could both.
The Pacers went through Milwaukee relatively easily, then defeated the best team of the East – Cleveland Cavaliers – While in the finals of the conference they overwhelmed the hearts New York Knickse. Indiana was an outsider in every (!) Of these series, and after each we collectively expected that they simply had to stop.
So it was before the big NBA finals. The City Thunderi Oklahoma is by far the best team this season in the strongest league of the world, and honestly, after the relegation of Boston and Cleveland in the East, I thought the season was resolved because I did not see a team that could endanger young Thundere more seriously on the horizon. In translation, for the second time, I wrote down the Pacers in this playoff, but as the old proverb says – who admits, half is forgiven.
If I was wrong, I realized after the first game of the NBA final, which perfectly summarized the path of these pacers to the very end. Oklahoma practically dragged the strings from the beginning and controlled the game, and in the last 10 minutes they entered with a surge of as many as 15 points. However, the Pacers have already shown many occasions that they have not shown that they have no lag for their lightning basketball from which it is impossible to return. ‘Comeback Kids’, as the US media began to be touched by the advantage of Thunder little by little, and Tyrese Haliburton hit the shot for the fourth time (!!!) in one Playoff at the last second to win and complete the new shocking turnaround.
“It’s time to get greedy, we haven’t even played well” yet ”spoke in the tunnel Euphoric Haliburton to the second violin of Pacers, Pascal Siakama, after the first game.
It slowly became clear to me that the seemingly crazy dreams of these Indiana Pacers really had a cover and should not be written off. But when we rewind the movie in advance, to the sixth game of the finals, I made the same mistake for the third time.
In the fifth encounter, at 2-2 in the series, Tyrese Haliburton stretched a leaf of his right leg. He returned to the parquet floor, but it seemed as if there was someone else there, dressed in the jersey of heroes of this year’s Playoff. Oklahoma led 3-2, and it seemed to me that with the injured Haliburgon that series ends in the sixth game. However, ‘Hali’ was the right one again, and it was enough for Rick Carlisle to keep his best player in the game for only 22 minutes. The Pacers declared Oklahoma and secured the seventh game of the NBA final, for the first time after almost the whole decade.
We were expecting a spectacle. The marvelous attacking system of the genius Rick Carlisle against, perhaps the best defense ever seen in the NBA. Two incredible young teams, from small cities, in the last 48 minutes of the season fight for the first title in the history of their franchises.
It started better than expected. On one side, MVP, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander dragged Oklahoma with his impossible shots with half-day, and Haliburton returned the characteristic long-range missiles. One, the second and the third threesome of Tyrese Haliburton in the first quarter, announced the fight that we would recount their grandchildren, and it seemed that the Pacers’ film scenario, as eternal outsiders who go to the very end, would get their happy ending. But that life is not a movie, we were convinced of exactly five minutes until the end of the first section.
Haliburton rushed to his distinctive entrance, but instead of laying, he slid into the parquet floor. The loudest arena in the league, Payc Center in Oklahoma, prevailed disbelief and that indescribably penetrating, loud silence. Time, really, as if it stopped for a moment.
“Of course I’m aware of the risk. But I am a competitor and I want to play. I’ll do everything in my power to go out on the parquet floor. Simple, it’s such a situation”Haliburton said before the game number six, and that risk proved to be fatal.
The tears of the weeping Indiana Pacers star toured the world, and the potentially historical seventh game of the NBA finals was virtually over. Although the official diagnosis has not yet been published at the time of writing this text, Haliburton’s injury seems to be an example of the Achilles tendon cracking as a medical textbook, and when everything is added up, the Pacers have probably experienced the best defeat in the NBA history.
In a split second, they lost the seventh game of the finals at the same time, the main star of the team experienced, perhaps the worst injury in professional sports, and consequently lost all the next season, because Haliburton will not even play in it.
Indiana struggled to the end, but without the engine engine, it just didn’t work.
Otherwise, the fanatical reggie Miller, during the fourth quarter, said a long, long look into the distance. The new generation of Indiana Pacers failed to end the story he and society, under the baton of Rick Carlisle, started more than two decades ago.
Opportunities like this one in the NBA do not come often, especially for franchise from smaller markets such as Indiana and the question of when the Pacers will come this close to this incomplete throne. Where is justice? Well, there is really none. But, sports, and so life is generally not fair. However, Indiana can be comforted by the shabby, but in this situation an incredibly applicable phrase – “they may not have won the title, but they won our hearts.”
And it’s really like that. Because it is practically impossible not to feel empathy for this Pacers team. The day after the big NBA finals, almost no one talks about champions, but this is not a criticism of Oklahoma, it will be time to write to them the ode and the praise they deserve. But these seventh games of the big NBA finals are just proof that, sometimes, the world really loves losers.
