INDIANAPOLIS — In mid-January of 2024, the Pacers were good, but they weren’t great.
At the time, Indiana owned the NBA’s No. 1 offense — a hyper-efficient attack driven by the pedal-to-the-medal pace-pushing and all-seeing facilitation of Tyrese Haliburton. But while that attack boasted plenty of five-out, bombs-away panache, it lacked a second high-level shot-creator capable of getting the Pacers a good look when everything else had broken down. Indiana needed that elite offense, too, to make up for a dreadful bottom-five defense — a small, often scrambled unit that routinely struggled to match length, strength and athleticism with top-flight big wings.
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That all added up to seventh place in the East: a team within striking distance of home-court advantage, and capable of overwhelming opponents as they did on their way to the in-season tournament finals, but not one that seemed set to go the distance.
But where were they going to find an All-Star-caliber big wing who could cook in isolation, who would fit seamlessly in the Pacers’ uptempo approach, who wouldn’t butt heads with Haliburton, and who shot it well enough to dovetail in Indiana’s five-out offense? Not to mention a dude who could bolster the defense, providing both the size and physicality to more honestly guard bigger opponents and the off-ball savvy to increase Indiana’s ability to muck things up in the gaps?
The answer, it turned out? Toronto.
“He’s the kind of player that would go to any team, at any time, and would blend in in a matter of … days, really,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said of forward Pascal Siakam before Game 1 of the 2025 Eastern Conference finals against the Knicks. “And you know, that’s one thing that makes him special and unique. More time with the team, more time with the group, is always something that is going to increase how comfortable he is and how comfortable his teammates are with him.
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“But really, since day one that he got here, it was like he’d been here a while.”
The Pacers have gone 88-60 with Siakam in the lineup, regular- and postseason combined, since his arrival 16 months ago — a .595 winning percentage, a 49-win pace. They’ve outscored opponents by 551 points in the 4,849 regular- and postseason minutes Siakam has played in 148 games as a Pacer — a good mark, but not a mindblowing one in a world where guys like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Nikola Jokić and Jayson Tatum have been posting single-season plus-minuses well over plus-600. Stretching back to last season, Indiana has outscored opponents by 6.4 points per 100 possessions when Haliburton and Siakam share the floor. Again: good, but not mindblowing.
Siakam didn’t transform Indiana into a no-doubt-about-it juggernaut. What he did, though, was raise both the Pacers’ floor and their ceiling, giving Carlisle a tactical answer to just about any question an opponent can pose — an invaluable resource this time of year — as well as a respected, decorated veteran whose voice would carry in a young locker room.
“He’s been here before, so he’s a calming presence for us and a leader for us,” Pacers guard Andrew Nembhard said after Indiana’s Game 2 win. “We all kind of rally behind that, and he kind of calms us all down.”
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Nembhard offered that assessment after Siakam had calmly, patiently destroyed New York’s defense to the tune of a playoff-career-high 39 points in 33 minutes. He punished the Knicks from every spot on the court — 9-for-12 in the paint, 3-for-6 from midrange, 3-for-5 on above-the-break 3-pointers — in a masterful performance that gave the Pacers a commanding 2-0 lead heading home for Game 3 on Sunday.
“For 48 minutes, it just seemed like he took control of the game,” said Game 1 hero Aaron Nesmith.
“It’s why we brought him here,” Haliburton added. “It’s what he’s here to do.”
The Knicks showed their cards early in Game 2. On Indiana’s opening possession, they reacted to a Haliburton-Myles Turner pick-and-roll by switching the ball screen and allowing center Karl-Anthony Towns to defend Indiana’s All-NBA point guard one-on-one on the perimeter — a strategy New York head coach Tom Thibodeau has long been loath to employ, but that he began dialing up against the Celtics last round.
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Towns held his own as Haliburton danced but didn’t penetrate, eventually side-stepping into a contested 3-pointer that missed. New York won the battle; Indiana promptly went about winning the war.
On their next trip, the Pacers changed up, having Nembhard run the pick-and-roll with Turner. The Knicks didn’t switch that action, but trusted Hart to ride Nembhard to the baseline, with Towns sagging off of Turner and OG Anunoby sagging off of Siakam in the far corner to shrink the floor and make Nembhard play in a crowd. As soon as Anunoby sank down, Siakam stepped in from the arc, giving Nembhard an outlet; as soon as he caught the pass, he attacked, gaining the corner on Anunoby and taking three hard dribbles to set himself up for a rhythm turnaround jumper. Splash.
Just like that, the terms of engagement were laid out. You want to try to limit Haliburton, and you’re willing to switch your center to try to do it? Fine. We’re going to play through that, get it to our queen on the chessboard, and trust that he can make you wrong, no matter what coverage you’re calling.
“Whatever was out there, I just took it,” Siakam said after the game.
He scored the Pacers’ first 11 points in less than four minutes, scoring over the top of former teammate Anunoby in the half-court, sprinting the floor in transition, and ghosting a screen for Haliburton on a secondary action to get himself a wide-open catch-and-shoot 3. He finished the first quarter with 16 of Indiana’s 24 points, and had 23 of its 49 at halftime — the one consistent source of offense for a Pacers team straining to find its rhythm and pace.
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“In the first half, he was the guy that got us going, and got us through some difficult stretches,” Carlisle said. “Thought he really picked his spots to be aggressive. He ran great. He did everything.”
That’s Siakam in a nutshell, really: He does everything. Maybe not at a superstar level each and every night, maybe not while demanding a massive usage rate, maybe not generating jaw-dropping highlights. But you’d be hard-pressed to find too many players better equipped to give you whatever you need on a given night than the 31-year-old from Cameroon.
“He’s very versatile in the way he can attack the game,” Nembhard said. He can shoot the 3. He can kind of play off the dribble and go by you. He can post up. He can get it from the mid-post. So I think, based on the defender, he can change up his attack.”
It’s what allows Siakam to take not just whatever is out there, but also whoever is out there:
“It’s hard to score that number of points in a game like this, where you always have a physical matchup defensively, and there’s a guy crashing and flying at the basket,” Carlisle said. “But he did a phenomenal job. It’s a quiet 39 points. It really was.”
“A quiet 39” is perfect for both Siakam, who gets less publicity than plenty of dudes who aren’t three-time All-Stars and two-time All-NBA selections, and these Pacers, perennially overshadowed by bigger stars in bigger markets and overlooked by commentators more focused on personality than production. It’s also in the running for the best playoff performance of Siakam’s nine-year career — up there with putting up 37-11-6 against Milwaukee last spring, hanging 32-8-5 in his NBA Finals debut, and the 26-and-10 double-double he authored in Game 6 of those 2019 Finals — a game he capped with a tough take over the top of no less a defender than Draymond Green, and the series that made him an NBA champion.
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There are only five players left in the postseason field who have played on a title winner: Thunder super-sub Alex Caruso (2020 Lakers), late-season Knicks addition P.J. Tucker and Timberwolves guard Donte DiVincenzo (2021 Bucks), Pacers backup center Thomas Bryant (2023 Nuggets) … and Siakam, whose experience Indiana is leaning on as it continues to get closer to the promised land. The message he’s been hammering home, day in and day out? Gather ye rosebuds.
“I’ve always told this story,” Siakam told reporters after Indiana eliminated Cleveland in Round 2. “In 2019, we got there, and I was in my third year in the league, and I just felt like, automatically, I’m going to be right back. Like, we’re going to do this again. Obviously, we had that year after that where we did well, we went to [Game 7 of the second round] … but after that, it was rough. So you can never take it for granted.”
That’s the mindset that Siakam worked to instill in his teammates during offseason workouts: that progress isn’t linear, that satisfaction isn’t guaranteed, that replicating last year’s success would be exponentially harder this time around, and that moving beyond it would require more from everyone.
“I think we’re a little bit greedy, at the end of the day,” Siakam said after the Cavs series. “We’ve been here before … so for us, that focus gotta shift. We gotta be wanting more, and to me, that’s what I’m going to continue to preach to the guys. I can sometimes sound like I’m trying to kill the party, kind of thing, where everybody wants to be excited, and I’m just like, ‘Man, I want more,’ you know what I mean? That’s the feeling that I have, and I want to continue to just get that to my teammates and make sure that we all have that mindset of wanting more.”
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The Pacers have played for months like a team taking that message to heart. Since an injury-plagued 10-15 start to the 2024-25 campaign, Indiana has gone 50-19 — a .725 winning percentage, a 59-win pace — with a top-five offense and a top-10 defense. The starting lineup of Haliburton, Siakam, Turner, Nembhard and Nesmith has been the best five-man unit in the 2025 playoffs — thanks in no small part to Carlisle’s commitment to keeping them fresh by going deep into his bench with players able to maintain the pace, ball pressure and intensity that makes Indiana special.
At the heart of it all has been Siakam, averaging a team-high 20.3 points to go with 6 rebounds and 3.3 assists in 33 minutes per game, shooting 58% on 2-pointers and a career-best 44% on 3s — equally comfortable falling back to let someone else shine or, when necessary, stepping into the spotlight to show a national audience just how much there is to his game.
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“I think what makes us special as a team is that we have different weapons, and we’re not consumed with who’s going to do what, you know?” he said after Game 2. “You just go into the game, and however the game presents itself, that’s how we’re going to take it and do it that way. It doesn’t matter who scores. … It’s going to take all of us to get where we want to get to.”
They’re just two wins away from having the chance to get where they want to go, and six wins away from the biggest prize the sport has to offer. The air gets thin up here, so close to the summit; a team has to guard against losing its grip, its sense of self. Good thing, then, that Indiana went out and got itself a sherpa who’s familiar with the terrain.
“I just appreciate the opportunity that I have here to have a bunch of guys that, you know, they want to hear my voice,” Siakam said after Game 2. “They want me to say something … it’s been amazing to be in this city, this team, this organization — the confidence that they have in me to continue to just lead, and I just try to do my best, here and there, throw some words in there.
“But they know I care about winning. And that’s why I’m here.”