'Drew is cold, man': Pacers Andrew Nembhard's late 3-pointer a fitting game-winner

INDIANAPOLIS -- Tyrese Haliburton barely gave Andrew Nembhard time to think, much less pass. As it turned out that may have been for the better.

After missing a 3-pointer but getting the ball back thanks to an offensive rebound, Haliburton had designs on scoring on a drive. The Pacers' All-Star point guard had the ball near center court with the shot clock having re-set to 14 seconds on the rebound. He noticed Knicks center Isaiah Hartensten on him, so he called for a clear out and began his approach toward Hartenstein with a crossover dribble.

However, Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau demanded a double-team and guard Miles McBride fired over from the left elbow to try to trap Haliburton and force the ball out of his hand. Haliburton retreated to the logo and his safest pass was to Nembhard, who came back to the ball and caught it while probably 38 feet from the bucket with 4.4 seconds to go on the shot clock, 21.5 on the game clock and the game tied at 106.

"I saw me and Hartenstein one-on-one at the top so I just thought, 'Get to my shot,'" Haliburton said. "But I heard Tibs yelling to double. I probably held the ball a little too long. I should have been more aggressive to attack the blitz. I put Drew in kind of a bad situation."

Indeed he did. Nembhard was nowhere near in position to shoot, and when he caught the pass -- which initially slipped out of his hand before he recovered it -- he was 1 of 7 from the floor for the evening. He'd missed two 3-pointers about a minute prior that were both closer to the arc and much cleaner than whatever he was going to be able to pull up. He had been scoreless until the 1:55 mark in the fourth when he finished a layup on a fastbreak and had missed four shots prior in the lane.

But this time he didn't miss. Nembhard collected the ball, crossed over between his legs, jab-stepped, crossed over again, stepped back and splashed a 30-foot 3-pointer over the outstretched arms of Knicks All-Star guard Jalen Brunson. Brunson missed a 3-pointer on the ensuing possession, forward Aaron Nesmith hit two free throws with 9.4 seconds to go and the Pacers claimed a 111-106 win over the Knicks in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference semifinals at Gainbridge Fieldhouse on Friday night, cutting New York's series lead to 2-1 heading into Game 4 at 3:30 p.m. Sunday at Gainbridge.

And Nembhard's 3-pointer immediately took its place as one of the biggest shots in Pacers history, maybe the biggest since the Reggie Miller era.

"When I got the ball, I didn't really realize what the time was (on the shot clock)," Nembhard said. "Ty said something about looking for it and I saw there was like two seconds on the clock. I knew I had to get something off so I created a little bit of space and put it up."

It was a somehow fitting way for the Pacers to win and to survive Game 3 without going into the dreaded 3-0 hole from which no NBA team has ever recovered to win the series. On a very imperfect night when they blew a 12-point first-half lead against the Knicks with a second straight ugly third quarter and spent the entire fourth quarter walking a tightrope, it somehow made sense that they would get a game-winner on a broken play.

And in a way it made sense that it would be Nembhard who hit the shot, because he in a way embodies the spirt of the Pacers' evening. One of the Pacers' superpowers is their ability to take lessons from losses while not dwelling in defeat, and there's arguably no one on the roster better at keeping his cool, staying perpetually unfazed and moving on to the next one than Nembhard. He not only had to endure a difficult shooting night on Friday but a demotion in terms of defensive assignment after two rough games guarding Brunson. However, he handled all that without flinching and then authored the shot of a lifetime.

"He's one of our toughest guys, mentally and physically," Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. 'He's really gained a love for these types of moments and playing on this kind of stage, this kind of level of competition."

Nembhard's fearlessness was one of the things that first endeared Nembhard to the Pacers and to Carlisle. They saw it when he was at Florida and Gonzaga, where he was on the team that reached the national title game at the Indiana bubble NCAA Tournament in 2021. They noticed him elect to play through a quadriceps injury at the NBA Draft Combine in 2022 and actually take part in not only testing but 5-on-5 games before they picked him with the No. 31 pick in that year's draft.

And in his two years in the NBA, they've seen him back down from nothing. In the first two months of his rookie season, Carlisle noticed that the 6-4, 191-pounder brought more physicality to his defensive assignments than just about anyone else on the roster. Even when Nembhard was a rookie last year, Carlisle started to use him as the primary defender against some of the top offensive players in the world. He and teammate Aaron Nesmith would take the top two defensive assignments, and Nembhard would sometimes even take the bigger option. He guarded LeBron James in the Pacers' game against them in the Crypto.com Center in November of 2022 and he not only helped hold James to 21 points on 8 of 22 shooting, he also drilled the game-winning 3-pointer that night in James' face.

"Drew has been doing this," Pacers veteran center Myles Turner said. "Drew is cold, man."

Though he's a point guard by trade and has always held that position, he started at shooting guard for 63 games of his rookie season so that he could take on those assignments and start next to Haliburton. He began this year on the bench as the second-unit point guard with the Pacers having signed veteran Bruce Brown for that role, but when Brown was dealing with injuries and then traded for All-Star forward Pascal Siakam, Nembhard moved back into the starting lineup at the 2.

It's not a natural fit offensively because Nembhard doesn't shoot very much for a shooting guard. He took fewer than half as many shots as Haliburton's 1,048. He shot 49.8% from the field, a modest 35.7% from 3-point range and averaged 9.2 points and 4.1 assists per game.

But he's done what he's been asked to do, increasingly taking on more ball-handling responsibilities to allow Halliburton to spend more time off the ball so that he's harder to double team.

The combination of previously foreign offensive role and defensive assignments on players who are nearly impossible to shut down has forced Nembhard to have a short memory for mistakes, but he was already built that way. He's known for maintaining a slow heart beat and facial expressions that don't change much based on how the game is going. He almost never seems visibly frustrated or rattled, even when things are noticeably not going well.

"Basketball's a game of many mistakes," Nembhard said. "It's about being neutral and not being high or low based on good or bad plays. Just trying to move on and understand the next play is the most important."

Nembhard did that well in the Pacers' first-round series when he has the assignment of guarding future Hall-of-Famer Damian Lillard. Though Nembhard’s first two games against him were brutal and he allowed Lillard to score 35 points in Game 1 and 34 in Game 2, he hung in there and held him to 28 points on 6 of 20 shooting in Game 3, and 28 on 7 of 16 shooting in the clinching Game 6.

Brunson proved to be an even tougher cover. The leading scorer in these playoffs had 43 points in 43 minutes in Game 1 and 29 in 28 minutes in Game 2 though he missed the second quarter with an injured foot. Brunson had 14 points in the fourth quarter in Game 2, leaving many, including TNT analysts Stan Van Gundy and Reggie Miller, to wonder if Carlisle should have left sixth man T.J. McConnell in to guard him. Between Game 2 and Game 3, Carlisle decided not to continue to use Nembhard on Brunson, instead putting Nesmith on the assignment and using Nembhard there only when Nesmith was off the floor.

But Nembhard didn't let that bother him either.

"I found out last night," Nembhard said. "My reaction was I think it was fine. Sometimes with good players with that you need to switch it up and give them a different feel, a different type of defender on them. I think I did a solid job the first two games of contesting and being right there. He was making a lot of tough shots."

Nembhard bounced around on defense, taking on guards Donte DiVincenzo and Josh Hart. DiVincenzo burned him and others and scored 35 points and Hart had 10 points and 18 rebounds. Nembhard had six assists and five rebounds, but also committed five fouls before he scored a point.

But the Pacers still didn't have a problem putting the ball in his hand for 3-point attempts with 1:35 and 1:16 to go in the fourth with a one-point lead and they had belief he could make the last 3 he took as well.

"I knew he was going to make a big shot," McConnell said. "He was kind of just out there, anchoring us defensively like he always does. It might seem like a lie, but you can ask him. I said, ‘You are going to hit a big shot.’ In those type of moments, he welcomes it and he knocked it down. We were all expecting that.”

The Pacers were down nine with 10:30 to play, but rallied quickly to make it a 98-96 game with 7:42 to go. Buckets were hard to come by on both sides the rest of the way, but the Pacers were better on defense, holding the Knicks to 16 points on 4 of 19 shooting in the fourth. They won on the glass, and Nembhard gave them the biggest shot of his career in the most improbable of circumstances.

"He just made an unbelievable shot," Haliburton said. "Big, big shot. Just really stepped up to the moment when we needed him the most."

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Pacers Andrew Nembhard's late-clock 3-pointer beats Knicks in Game 3