After that tough loss in Game 2, the Indiana Pacers made use of home-court advantage as they rallied to beat the Oklahoma City Thunder with a crucial scoring stretch in the fourth quarter. Pacers come out on top with a 116-107 win, but most of all, a 2-1 series lead with still one more game to play in front of their home crowd.

The Thunder led by 89-84 entering the fourth quarter, but the Pacers were undaunted by those leads – as they have been in the entire postseason. Indiana hammered and outscored OKC, 32-18 in the closing frame to put the game to bed, hampering the team on both ends of the floor all the way to the final buzzer.

Fans in Indiana celebrated as they went on to win their first NBA Finals home game since 2000, which says a lot about the passionate fanbase that has its crowd roaring for most of the game. It was a blast, and now the Pacers are moving two wins away from their first NBA title with the hopes of showing that they can prove their worth as a dominant team in the league.

A Pacers Burst

As expected, Tyrese Haliburton stepped up his level of play after scoring just 31 points combined in the first two games. He flirted with a triple-double of 22 points, 11 assists, and nine rebounds – and Indiana improved to a 20-1 record whenever he goes for 20+ points and 10+ assists for the team. But what made him more lethal was his ability to dictate the pace of the game, which certainly happened for most of the night.

Pascal Siakam scored 21 points and nine boards, but it was the explosive bench performance from Bennedict Mathurin that proved to be the difference. The guard dropped 27 points in 22 minutes, along with TJ McConnell scoring 10 points that felt like more with the way he has impacted the game.

The Thunder looked lost for most of the game and could not find answers to the surging Indiana offense, which is certainly the best that the game has seen since January. OKC did try to come up with some runs of their own, but the Pacers always clapped back and poked holes in the majestic OKC defense.

The Bench Battle

Indiana’s strength rests in its depth aside from its star power. In this Game 3 win, the Pacers outscored OKC in bench points at 49-18. That is a huge difference considering that both teams have been always lauded for having a deep rotation. However, the difference was that Indiana was playing at home – which was always a factor in bench performance.

McConnell finished with five assists and five steals as well. Three of those steals came from the Thunder inbounding the ball. No player has ever managed to do that in an NBA Finals game, so the guard has certainly earned his spotlight.

It is also the first time that we have seen the most points by a player off the bench with Mathurin dropping 27. The last time we saw an elite performance from a bench player was by Jason Terry back in 2011 against the Miami Heat.

The bench battle has been the deciding factor for the series so far, and Indiana has won them twice, and now holds a 2-1 series lead.