Game 2: Thunder open another big lead and keep control, topping Pacers 123-107 to even NBA Finals

“We did some things good tonight. We did some things bad,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “We’ve got to be able to get better and be ready for Game 3.”

Tyrese Haliburton scored 17 for Indiana, which erased a 15-point, fourth-quarter deficit in Game 1 but never made a push on Sunday. Myles Turner scored 16 and Pascal Siakam added 15 for the Pacers, the first team since Miami in 2013 to not have a 20-point scorer in the first two games of the finals.

Game 3 is Wednesday at Indianapolis, in what will be the first finals game in that city in 25 years.

“A bad first half, obviously, was a big problem,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. “And we just played poorly. A little better in the second half. But you can’t be a team that’s reactive and expect to be successful or have consistency.”

Gilgeous-Alexander’s first basket of the night was a history-maker: It gave him 3,000 points on the season, including the regular season and playoffs. And later in Game 2, he passed New York’s Jalen Brunson (514) as the leading overall scorer in these playoffs.

But the real milestone for the MVP came a couple hours later, when he and most everybody else on the Thunder got a finals win for the first time.

A 19-2 run in the second quarter turned what was a six-point game into a 23-point Thunder lead. It might have seemed wobbly a couple of times — an immediate 10-0 rebuttal by the Pacers made it 52-39, and Indiana was within 13 again after Andrew Nembhard’s layup with 7:09 left in the third — but the Thunder lead was never in serious doubt.

“They did a good job being disruptive,” Siakam said. “They got out in transition. … They were super aggressive, which is what they do.”

With the noise level in the building often topping 100 decibels — a chain saw is 110 dB, for comparison purposes — the Thunder did what they’ve done pretty much all season. They came off a loss, this time a 111-110 defeat in Game 1, and blew somebody out as their response.

Including the NBA Cup title game, which doesn’t count in any standings, the Thunder are now 18-2 this season when coming off a loss. Of those 18 wins, 12 have been by double digits.

“That’s a long 48 hours when you lose Game 1 like that, coming into Game 2,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “The guys did a great job of just focusing on what we needed to do to stack to a win tonight. That’s how we got it.”

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AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/NBA

Tim Reynolds, The Associated Press

by Canadian Press

Game 2: Thunder open another big lead and keep control, topping Pacers 123-107 to even NBA Finals

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