Pacers eliminate top-seeded Cavs, advance to Eastern Conference Finals

CLEVELAND, May 15 ------ Indiana coach Rick Carlisle put it best in summing up his team’s finishing punch in the Eastern Conference semifinals. “The winning team writes the script,” he said. The Pacers’ 114-105 victory over the Cavaliers in Game 5, was similar to the first two games of the series. Cleveland jumped out to a big first-half lead, but Indiana’s quick tempo eventually took a toll. “I have to give our guys credit, they earned this,” Carlisle said. “This was one of the best teams in the league. I’m sorry their season had to end like this. They had the perfect season, and we came along and were hot at the right time.” 

Tyrese Haliburton scored 31 points and Pascal Siakam added 21 as the Pacers reached the conference finals in consecutive years for the first time since 2013-14. Donovan Mitchell, who missed the second half of Sunday’s game due to a sprained left ankle, led Cleveland with 35 points. Evan Mobley added 24 points and 11 rebounds. The top-seeded Cavs swept their first-round series against Miami, but were unable to match up against the up-tempo Pacers. “We were not favored in one game. The lowest point spread was 5½. That was something that fueled our guys, too,” Carlisle said. 

The fourth-seeded Pacers will now await the winner of the matchup between the Boston Celtics and New York Knicks. New York leads 3-1 with Game 5 on Wednesday night in Boston. Indiana rallied from a 19-point deficit in the first half and took control after halftime and won all three games at Cleveland’s Rocket Arena. It was the first time since a 2005 first-round series against Boston that the Pacers won three road games in a playoff series. 

Meanwhile, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 31 points, and the Oklahoma City Thunder beat the Denver Nuggets, 112-105, to go up 3-2 in their Western Conference semifinal series. Oklahoma City overcame a 44-point, 15-rebound night from Denver’s Nikola Jokic. The Thunder can clinch the series on Thursday in Denver. Gilgeous-Alexander made 12 of 23 field goals and bounced back from a slow start to lead six players in double figures. “What the great players do is they rise in the face of those challenges and adversities,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “And I just thought he got more and more composed as the game went on. And despite the fact that the pressure was mounting and it got hotter in there, he got cooler and just kind of settled into it, made the right plays, let the game tell him what to do.” 

Jokic made 17 of 25 shots. Denver’s Jamal Murray scored 28 points, but he made just 10 of 27 shots. No other Denver player scored more than 13 points. 

Source: mb.com.ph