Canada's Mathurin scores 27 off the bench as Pacers rally past Thunder in Game 3 of NBA Finals

Tim Reynolds · The Associated Press

· Posted: Jun 11, 2025 11:35 PM EDT | Last Updated: 3 hours ago

Every clip Indiana has mislaid a crippled successful the past 3 months, it simply has travel backmost to triumph the adjacent one.

Even successful the NBA Finals — against a immense favourite who the Pacers present person successful immoderate trouble.

Montreal's Bennedict Mathurin scored 27 points disconnected the bench, Tyrese Haliburton finished with 22 points, 11 assists and 9 rebounds, and the Pacers retook the pb successful the NBA Finals by beating the Oklahoma City Thunder 116-107 successful Game 3 connected Wednesday night.

"This is the benignant of squad that we are," Pacers manager Rick Carlisle said. "We request everybody to beryllium ready. It's not ever going to beryllium precisely the aforesaid guys that are stepping up with scoring and worldly similar that. But this is however we've got to bash it."

Pascal Siakam scored 21 for Indiana, which enjoyed a whopping 49-18 borderline successful seat points. The Pacers, who mislaid Game 2 successful Oklahoma City, improved to 10-0 since mid-March successful the crippled instantly pursuing a loss.

"So galore antithetic guys chipped in," Haliburton said.

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Jalen Williams scored 26 points, Hamilton's Shai Gilgeous-Alexander added 24 and Chet Holmgren had 20 for the Thunder, who led by 5 going into the fourth.

Game 4 is backmost successful Indiana connected Friday night.

"We had a batch of bully stretches of the game," Thunder manager Mark Daigneault said. "But they had much bully stretches than we did — and outplayed america implicit the people of 48 minutes."

History says the Pacers are successful power now; successful the 41 erstwhile NBA Finals that were tied astatine a crippled apiece, the Game 3 victor went connected to hoist the trophy 33 times — an 80.5% clip.

Advantage, Pacers.

It was back-and-forth overmuch of the way. There were 15 ties; to enactment that successful perspective, determination were 13 ties successful the five-game entirety of past year's finals betwixt Boston and Dallas. The past clip determination was a finals crippled with much ties: Game 1 betwixt Cleveland successful Golden State successful 2018, which was knotted 17 times.

TJ McConnell finished with 10 points, 5 assists and 5 steals for Indiana; since each those stats started being charted, cipher had ever travel disconnected the seat and done each that successful an NBA Finals game.

"We conscionable had guys marque plays aft plays," Haliburton said. "Our seat was amazing."

The Thunder were 61-2 erstwhile starring going into the 4th fourth successful the regular season. They're 1-2 erstwhile starring going into the 4th fourth successful this series. Indiana — astatine location successful an NBA Finals crippled for the archetypal clip successful 25 years, with Caitlin Clark, Reggie Miller, Oscar Robertson and galore different stars successful the assemblage — simply owned the last 12 minutes.

Indiana outscored OKC 32-18 successful the fourth, holding the Thunder to 35% shooting with the crippled and power of the bid connected the line.

"There's a batch of areas we tin cleanable up," Holmgren said. "Everybody who stepped retired determination tin beryllium better."