Tyrese Haliburton, Pacers ‘shocking the world’ after ousting Bucks in NBA In-Season Tournament semifinal

LAS VEGAS — Pacers coach Rick Carlisle remembers his team’s first In-Season Tournament game, a home date against the Cleveland Cavaliers in late October.

“No one was really sure where exactly the whole thing was going,” Carlisle said. “The court looked like a skating rink.”

Six of these games later, the Indiana Pacers still haven’t lost.

From the bold colors of the courts, through the mysterious haze of pool play, to the urgency of the knockout rounds, the NBA’s inaugural In-Season Tournament has looked good on them. By Saturday night, it might be looking gold.

Tyrese Haliburton had another monster game on the league’s new, biggish stage, and the Pacers outlasted the Milwaukee Bucks 128-119 in the first In-Season Tournament semifinal Thursday in Las Vegas.

Indiana, which has missed the playoffs three years in a row, will play the Lakers, who routed the Pelicans in the other semifinal, on Saturday at 8:30 p.m. ET for the first championship of NBA commissioner Adam Silver’s creation, intended to drum up more interest in his sport earlier in the league calendar.

“We’re shocking the world right now — nobody expected us to be here,” Haliburton said.

Haliburton, coming off his first triple-double in the IST quarterfinals, finished with a team-high 27 points to go with 15 assists. The Pacers’ lone All-Star from last season who is certainly making a case for himself for the February classic to be held in Indianapolis, Haliburton is averaging 31.5 points and 11.4 assists in his last five games. This was his third game this season with at least 25 points, 15 assists and zero turnovers.

Myles Turner added 26 points and 10 boards, Obi Toppin contributed 14 points and Isaiah Jackson contributed 11 points off of Carlisle’s bench.

“Tyrese is just one of those transcendent players that with him on the court, anything is possible,” Carlisle said. “Tyrese is a great young player that has all the tools, has the personality and has the desire. The month, seven weeks that he’s put together so far in this season, people are talking about him for MVP, and rightly so. All-Star is in Indy this year, so we’re super excited about that, and we feel obviously that he’ll represent us there. We just want to keep winning, and he wants to keep winning.”

Giannis Antetokounmpo, who turned 29 on Wednesday, led all scorers with 37 points. Damian Lillard added 24 points — making all four of his 3s in the Bucks’ third-quarter comeback — and Khris Middleton contributed 20 points. Brook Lopez gave the Bucks 18 points and four blocks.

The Pacers led 63-51 at halftime and were trailing by three headed to the fourth. Milwaukee’s comeback was spearheaded by a zone defense that frustrated Indiana for a while, until Haliburton and the bench figured it out.

The Bucks have extremely high hopes with the new pairing of Antetokounmpo and Lillard. Making an IST semifinal qualifies as a good start.

“I think it was pretty cool to be a part of just, you know, it’s an all-or-nothing situation but it’s not the end of the season, so it’s not quite like the playoffs but it’s something to get up for,” Lillard said. “It’s some new excitement, and you know it’s a surprise in the end that everybody is kind of hunting for, and then you look at the trip to Vegas and they roll out the red carpet. Just all of the different things that they have made of it, and you get to be a part of it and you’re like, man, this is pretty special.”

The Bucks’ reserves were outscored 43-13 by their Indiana counterparts. One of those Pacer reserves, Aaron Nesmith, knocked down a 3 just before the buzzer at the end of the third. Another of those backups, Andrew Nembhard, may have suffered a hyperextension on one of his lower legs in the fourth quarter, Carlisle said.

In a game that featured 16 lead changes and was close throughout, Haliburton beat staunch defender Lopez in isolation with a layup at 1:34 in the final period.

On the next possession, he buried a 3-pointer that basically put the game to bed. Haliburton stared down at his wrist, like Bucks counterpart Lillard does when he makes a big shot at the end of games.

“I think it was just in the heat of the moment, having fun,” Haliburton said. “I know I kind of pounded my chest and said it was my time, whatever, but I think really looking at it, it’s our time. It’s our time as a group. We’re playing the right way, and like I said, we’re shocking the world right now. We’re going to continue to do that.”

Said Lillard: “I learned as a kid, when you dish it out, you’ve got to be willing to take it. For as many times as I’ve done it to people, I can’t be upset when somebody else does it, you know what I mean. I think that’s also a sign of respect and acknowledgment for knowing my history and knowing what I do.”

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The game started at about 2 p.m. local time, in a T-Mobile Arena that was half full — and half quiet — in the early Las Vegas afternoon. Pacers fans wouldn’t have known their team was headed for the desert until Monday night, and the Bucks punched their tickets Tuesday, so, not a lot of time to make the IST a destination vacation.

The NBA implemented stage lighting for this weekend, where lights over the court are amplified, while most of the crowd sat in a hazy, neon-infused darkness, which may have made it harder to see the empty seats on TV.

Fans found their way to their seats throughout the first half, and when Lillard drained a 3-pointer with 6:17 left in the period, thunderous applause poured from every arena corner. The IST, in all the glory Silver could have hoped for, had fully arrived.

With the win, the Pacers’ players have earned $350,000 in prize money, including $200,000 for reaching the finals. A win Saturday over the Lakers, and it’s another $300,000 per player.

“Five hundred thousand is a lot of money, I don’t care how much you make,” Toppin said.

“Look, we’re a disruptor,” Carlisle added. “A lot of people didn’t want us here. We don’t care about that. We earned our way here. We earned our way to three additional national TV games, so people are going to find out about the Pacers and who we are and how we play.”

Required reading

(Photo: Andrew D. Bernstein / NBAE via Getty Images)