Hoosiers
Tyrese Haliburton and the Pacers and Caitlin Clark and the Fever have made Indiana the center of the basketball universe
Tyrese Haliburton of the Indiana Pacers and Caitlin Clark of the Indiana Fever
I decided to do something different this time. I get bored writing about the same things every week. Besides, how many times can I say, “political parties are bad” or “cooperative politics is good?”
If asked to identify the capital of the basketball world, many fans would choose New York City. New York is home to Madison Square Garden (MSG), uniformly considered by the game’s greatest to be the mecca of the sport. It’s also home to Rucker Park, the storied, outdoor court where bonafide hoop legends have played and been made.
Others might choose Boston, home of the Celtics, who hold the record for the most NBA championships at 18 and the most Hall of Fame inductees at 41. Some people might go with Los Angeles, whose Lakers have the second most titles at 17 and Hall of Famers at 34 and who feature dozens of A-List celebrities that line the front rows of their home games. Still others might select Chicago, whose Bulls, in the Michael Jordan years, left a cultural imprint on society that has never been replicated and whose decade of dominance—winning six titles in eight years and never losing an NBA Finals—in the 1990s is unrivaled in modern NBA history. (The Celtics actually won nine championships in the 1960s, but the league only had between nine and 14 teams in that era; during the Bulls’ dynasty, there were 29, only one short of the 30 teams that there are today). And a subset will say it’s whatever city whose team LeBron James plays for—which is currently L.A.
Sometime in the next two weeks, basketball’s capital may be transferred, at least honorarily, to Oklahoma City. The Oklahoma City Thunder are currently tied 1 - 1 against the Indiana Pacers in the NBA Finals, after having one of the best regular seasons in NBA history, winning 68 games, plus having the league MVP, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Throughout the postseason, the Thunder have been strong favorites to win the title, according to Las Vegas sportsbooks.
I would argue, however, that the capital of the basketball universe right now is Indiana. And even if the Pacers lose to the Thunder, the capital will, at least for the moment, remain in Indiana. Because, win or lose, the story of these playoffs has been the never-say-die Pacers.
The best way to explain the Pacers’ run to the Finals is to say that, if it were pitched as an anything-is-possible-themed, feel-good movie, it would be rejected as too far-fetched. Studio executives would insist that there’s no way that a team could have as many belief-defying wins as the Pacers have.
That adjective is not hyperbole. The Pacers have made three comebacks—one in each of the first three rounds of the playoffs—that were so unreal that they bent the laws of statistical probability. In the first round, the Pacers ended the Milwaukee Bucks’ season in Game 5, despite being behind by seven points with 34.7 seconds left in the game. In the conference semifinals, they wrested Game 2 away from the conference-leading Cleveland Cavaliers, even though they were down seven with 46.7 seconds left. And in Game 1 of the Conference Finals against the higher-seeded New York Knicks in MSG, they won when the Knicks were up nine with 52.5 seconds left. In that game, they began their comeback with the Knicks up 17, with slightly more than four minutes on the clock.
The Pacers added another comeback to their resume in Game 1 of the Finals against the Thunder on Thursday, though a slightly less unlikely one. The Thunder led by nine with 2:36 left in the game, only for the Pacers to go on one of their trademark furious finishes and win by one. The Thunder also led by 15 points earlier in the fourth quarter of that game, making this the Pacers’ fifth comeback of 15 or more points this postseason.
Indiana Pacers comeback wins in the 2025 playoffs
According to number crunchers, the Pacers’ odds of successfully completing all four of those comebacks were one in 17 billion. To illustrate the point further, since the 1998 season, NBA teams have a 4 - 1,640 record when trailing by seven or more points in the final minute of the fourth quarter or overtime of a playoff game. The 2025 Pacers are responsible for three of those four wins.
Meanwhile, the Pacers’ Tyrese Haliburton is bending probability laws in his own right. The burgeoning superstar either hit a shot to win the game or send it into overtime in each of the four cited comebacks. In fact, this season, including the playoffs, Haliburton has shot a farcical 13/15 (87%) on shots to take the lead or tie the score in the last two minutes of the fourth quarter or overtime.
No other NBA player has ever come close to this kind of game-on-the-line shooting streak. Not Michael. Not Kobe. Not LeBron. Nobody.
Only Haliburton. He may not be a household name, but he might be the most clutch player to ever step foot on an NBA hardwood.
One Hoosier who is undoubtedly a household name is Caitlin Clark. The first-round draft pick of the Indiana Fever in 2024 turned the Fever into the most-followed team in the state, eclipsing even the deep connection residents have with Indiana’s high school and college basketball programs.
Over the past two seasons, until this year’s playoffs, the Pacers have been the “other” pro ball team in Indiana, even though they have had more on court success. Last season, the Pacers got almost as far they have this season, losing in the conference finals, while the Fever were eliminated in the first round of their playoffs.
But, the Pacers don’t have Caitlin Clark.
The story of how Indiana’s embrace of professional basketball at least temporarily surpassed that of the high school and college variety begins in the fellow midwestern state of Iowa, where Clark became a hoops sensation. Behind her record-breaking scoring and heroic NCAA tournament runs as a junior and a senior, when she led her undersized, underdog Iowa University teams to back-to-back national championship appearances, Clark arguably became the first women’s basketball player to become a household name.
There are legendary figures who trailblazed the history of the women’s game, but they are known mostly to fans of the women’s game and sports lovers in general. Clark was the first female basketball player to break through public consciousness to reach casual sports fans and even non-sports fans.
The attention surrounding Clark led to an overall spike in interest in women’s basketball that some analysts estimate to be worth tens of millions of dollars in terms of bolstered TV ratings and ticket and merchandise sales, as well as increased profits in the hotel and the food and beverage sectors. This phenomenon is known as “the Caitlin Clark effect.”
So, when the Fever had the first pick in the 2024 WNBA draft, immediately following Clark’s senior season, there was zero question as to their selection. Clark’s Iowa basketball career had been like a modern day, real-time sequel to the movie “Hoosiers,” just set in a different Corn Belt state. Now she was becoming a real Hoosier.
The Fever’s top pick quickly showed that she was as good or better than advertised, eventually winning Rookie of the Year. She also helped the team to improve from having had the third worst record in the league in 2023 to becoming a playoff team in 2024.
So far, Clark has been hurt for most of the 2025 campaign, which the Fever have started out 4 - 4. The Pacers, for their part, were just humbled in Game 2 of the Finals, as the Thunder again raced out to a big lead and this time made sure there would be no comeback.
While local fans won’t feel let down if the Pacers and Fever don’t win it all this year, both franchises should be aware that the honeymoon will end eventually. For now, Indiana has fallen in love with in-state professional basketball in a way it hasn’t since the days of Reggie Miller.
But, that love is shallow, relative to Indianians’ affection for “roundball” at the lower levels, partly because the non-professional teams have won a lot more trophies. The Pacers haven’t won any NBA titles yet, and this year’s appearance in the Finals is only the second in the franchise’s history, And the Fever has only one WNBA title, in 2012.
Meanwhile, universities from Indiana have won six NCAA basketball championships, five by the men’s team of the state’s flagship school, Indiana University, and one by Purdue University’s women’s team. All it would take is a resurgence of the of the once proud Indiana college hoops tradition or a rejuvenation of the game at the high school level in the state, coupled with a a string of disappointments by the Pacers and Fever, and Indiana’s passion for hoops will go right back to the grass roots.
This post is unrelated to my book, The Anti-Partisan Manifesto: How Parties and Partisanism Divide America and How to Shut Them Down. But, you can still buy the book here. For the time being, it is only available digitally. To read, download the Kindle app to your phone, your iPad or tablet, your Kindle device or your computer.
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