Indiana Pacers couldn’t reach the playoffs in the past three seasons, but they were able to turn the tables this season, reaching the Eastern Conference finals for the first time since 2014.
The Pacers won their first playoff series in more than a decade. However, their campaign ended when they were clean-swept by the Boston Celtics. They lost the fourth game of the series by 105-102 on Monday.
Indiana Pacers center Myles Turner was frustrated after they could not get over the line in matches, which went down to the wire.
“It’s still very fresh for all of us,” Turner said. “Very frustrating to have all these games in your grasp and let it slip through.”
Indiana played the last two games without star guard Tyrese Haliburton, who suffered a left hamstring injury.
The Pacers had their chances as they led the Celtics by 117-114 with the ball and 9 seconds remaining in Game 1. They were ahead by 109-101 with 2:25 seconds left at home in Game 3. And again in Monday’s Game 4, they were leading 98-90 with 5:40 still left on the clock. However, they veered off the track and the Celtics took advantage.
“For a young team like us, this experience in the playoffs is second to none,” said Pacers guard Andrew Nembhard, who finished with a team-high 24 points. “A lot of our first times. A lot of little things we maybe wanted to do better and we learned how these games go and what being in a series feels like.”
Pacers veteran Pascal Siakam said the team will look to learn from their mistakes and come back even stronger while ruing the opportunities missed this season.
“I can tell you like, yeah, we’re going to learn from it and it’s going to happen, but it’s not guaranteed,” Siakam said. “I know how hard it is to get to this point. It’s unfortunate. You want to give credit to the other team because they took advantage of every mistake that we made. They did well.
“But for us, it’s been hard, like heartbreaking losses after heartbreaking losses. Yeah, you’re going to be encouraged by it and you hope to put the right amount of work to continue to get better. Because we need to be a lot better if you want to compete with those teams. And understand it doesn’t matter how good we played, we didn’t get it done.”
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