Thunder vs. Pacers NBA Finals: Tyrese Haliburton, Indiana once again r

INDIANAPOLIS — The ultimate game.

That’s what coach Rick Carlisle kept saying following the Indiana Pacers’ somewhat improbable Game 6 win over the Oklahoma City Thunder, sending the Finals to a decisive Game 7 for the first time since 2016.

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It feels like a window into the Pacers’ collective psyche, that all they had to do was take care of business Thursday night and in front of them would be the opportunity of a lifetime.

“One game,” Carlisle said. “I mean, this is what it’s all about. I mean, this is … this is what you dream about growing up, this kind of opportunity.”

The notion is simplified, but if you look at the Pacers as a team that has grown in confidence since the NBA Finals have begun, a team that didn’t feel it threw away its best chance at an upset two games ago with the Game 4 collapse, this makes sense.

They aren’t supposed to be here, but they don’t know that.

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But they knew something we didn’t, something our eyes wouldn’t allow us to.

If they had a reasonably healthy Tyrese Haliburton — who went through round-the-clock treatment and consultation over the last 72 hours — they could do more than make this elimination game respectable.

Haliburton didn’t come out of the tunnel like Willis Reed. He wasn’t limping around like Isiah Thomas on a bad ankle. It was hard to tell just how hurt Haliburton was, although it surely seemed like he was ailing walking out of Game 5 in Oklahoma City.

He had what he called an “honest conversation” with Carlisle, given how ineffective he was in Game 5 when the Pacers clawed back from a big deficit only to let it slip away with five disastrous minutes, to make sure he wasn’t dragging his teammates down.

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But not going out there for Game 6 was not an option.

“I just look at it as I want to be out there to compete with my brothers,” Haliburton…