'Guys just kept fighting': Pacers stun Suns for arguably their hardest-earned win of year.

INDIANAPOLIS — Aaron Nesmith engaged with Devin Booker underneath the basket in the restricted area of the paint, determined not to allow the three-time All-Star to go anywhere without him on the sideline out-of-bounds play that would determine the game.

Nesmith lost contact when he had to veer around Kevin Durant's attempt at a screen at the right elbow of the free-throw line, but he was right on top of Booker when he got the pass at the edge of the halfcourt logo to such an extent he actually tripped over Booker when the Suns guard fell. Even with just 3.4 seconds left on the clock at the time the ball was inbounded, Nesmith knew that didn't mean it was over, so he gathered himself, turned around and chased Booker to the top of the key where he got a hand up into Booker's hands to alter the shot so that it didn't so much as touch the rim.

Booker fell to the floor and looked for a foul call that never came as Nesmith kept running along the sideline, pumping his fists and flexing as the Gainbridge Fieldhouse crowd showered him with ear-splitting delirium before he turned to halfcourt to chest-bump any Pacers teammate who happened to get in his vicinity.

The final play was emblematic of the entire effort it took for the Pacers to grab a wild 133-131 win over the Suns on Friday night, arguably their hardest-earned win of the season against a team that had claimed seven straight wins going in.

The Pacers remain a team very much in transition as they continue to integrate one newly acquired All-Star in forward Pascal Siakam and wait for another, point guard Tyrese Haliburton, to return from a strained left hamstring. Roles have been thrown into flux because Siakam makes lineups and combinations possible that were not before he was acquired, and coach Rick Carlisle is looking to explore all the options. But through the creative tumult they have developed an edge, and with playing time suddenly up for grabs again, they're getting ferocious effort from everyone they put on the floor.

They needed every bit of it Friday to overcome Booker's 62-point explosion, which included a record-setting 29-point first quarter. The Pacers trailed by as many as 17 points, but after giving up 114 points in the first three quarters — 40 in both the first and second and 34 in the third — they held Phoenix to just 17 in the fourth quarter and got a put-back layup from forward Obi Toppin with 3.4 seconds lleft to take the lead and the stop on Booker to put it away. The win gave them two victories in a back-to-back against the 76ers and Suns, two of the NBA's most-talented teams and puts them alone at sixth place in the Eastern Conference at 26-20.

"The thing that I think everybody likes about our team right now is that there is becoming more and more of a defiant competitiveness with the group," Carlisle said. "These last two games are inexplicably hard. ... But the way our guys hung in, the way everybody supported each other, was huge."

The Pacers won because of the efforts of some players they have been leaning on all season, but also others who have seen their roles fluctuate, which in itself is a sign of the team's togetherness.

In the second category was Toppin, who played more minutes Friday than he had at any time in the past five weeks.

Toppin was acquired from the Knicks in July to step into what had been a gaping hole at power forward. He started 27 of the first 28 games and was every bit the high-flying transition dynamo they thought they were getting when they made the trade, and he still entered play Friday leading the league in 2-point field goal percentage, making 71.3% of his shots inside the arc because so many of them are layups or dunks.

But on Dec. 26, Toppin was moved out of the starting lineup because the Pacers wanted to go bigger and moved Jalen Smith from backup center to starting power forward. And then Siakam stepped into the starting role at the 4 when he was acquired, which seemed to suggest an even smaller role for Toppin. He's still had a steady rotation role off the bench and had been averaging 22.5 minutes per game off the bench but he hadn't played as many as 30 since Dec. 18 against the Clippers when he was still in the starting lineup.

Still, Toppin kept a good attitude about the demotion because he was still getting more time than he ever got with the Knicks, as he averaged 14.7 minutes per game in three seasons and never averaged more than 17.5 per game in a season.

"Anytime I'm on the court, I'm going to play the exact same type of basketball," Toppin said. "The basketball that the coaches wanted me to play when they brought me here. Whether I'm starting or coming off the bench, I'm just going in there having fun and hooping."

So that's what he did Friday night when Carlisle brought him in as part of bigger lineups. In the second quarter in particular, he helped the Pacers get back into the game with 16 points on 7-of-11 shooting, including a fast-break dunk in which he put the ball in between his legs from right to left. The Pacers were down 13 when he did it, but it seemed to get the crowd reignited.

"I didn't know we were down," Toppin said. "I just heard we were down when I did that. If I'd have missed that, that would have been bad for sure. I was like, 'Thank God I made that,' because I looked up at the scoreboard and was like, 'Damn.'"

Carlisle was apparently OK with it because he gave him 19 second-half minutes, in which he posted seven points and five rebounds including the put-back off a Siakam miss with 3.4 seconds to go that broke a 131-131 tie. Toppin finished with 23 points on 10-of-15 shooting and 11 rebounds for his first double-double this season.

"Obi Toppin is in his fourth year and he has graduated to the point where he has become an NBA pro," Carlisle said. "He knows who he is. He knows how he plays. He plays to his strengths. He's able to put things behind that go wrong and he plays with a pure heart. You can't ask for anything more than that."

The Pacers couldn't ask for much more than what they got from Nesmith either. The defensive stalwart who has found life much easier since Siakam arrived. He's been assigned to defend guards rather than power forwards and was switched from Beal to Booker after Booker had already started rolling. Nesmith took Booker for just a few plays in the 29-point first quarter, then picked him up for good in the second. He started to make a difference there, holding Booker to six points in the last five minutes of the half.

"He had already gotten it going, and when a player of that caliber gets going like that, he's extremely hard to stop," Nesmith said. "So I just tried my best to be as physical as I could be without fouling, make him work for everything, tire him out. He made tough shots time after time and he played a phenomenal basketball game."

Nesmith hung in there through a shot he took from Booker to his groin area which wasn't called a foul — Booker made a point to tell him it wasn't intentional — which actually energized the crowd because they booed Booker every time he touched the ball after that. Nesmith also got rolling on offense himself and scored 22 points on 8-of-13 shooting including 3-of-6 from 3-point range while also dishing out three assists. The more time he spent on Booker, the harder Booker found it to find an open shot.

"He was awesome," Siakam said. "You play against those type of players, it's hard. Every possession they get the ball and you have to defend them. I thought he did excellent tonight, just continuing to fight, working hard every possession."

In the fourth quarter in particular, the Pacers made sure Nesmith had help, blitzing Booker at every possible opportunity to get the ball out of his hands as much as possible. Booker still managed 10 points in the fourth on 5-of-11 shooting, but the rest of the team went 3-of-15 from the field in the period as the Pacers did an excellent job of scrambling and recovering to make sure others didn't get easy shots. After shooting at least 65% from the floor and posting at least 1.30 points per possession in each of the first three quarters, the Suns were 8-of-26 from the floor and 1-of-10 from 3 in the fourth and posted 0.65 points per possession in the fourth.

"In the fourth quarter, our guys just decided that we were going to make one additional effort on each defensive play and find a way to hang in and give ourselves a chance," Carlisle said. "And we did."

The performance created an impression about what kind of team the Pacers can be with Siakam, including on Siakam himself. The two-time All-NBA power forward with an NBA championship ring from 2018-19 with the Raptors, scored 31 points in his fifth game with Indiana, and helped contain Durant, holding him to just 20 points. But he was struck by his new team's bond and its grit, particularly shown by lineups that hadn't played together before he arrived.

"Guys just kept fighting," Siakam said. "We know how tough the other team was, but I just liked our mentality. No matter what was happening, just keep playing our pace and our basketball. That's how we have to keep going every single night. We know we can hang with any team out there, so we just have to have that mentality."

The Pacers don't have the beginnings of a sense of what they can be at full strength yet because Haliburton and Siakam have played just one game together, but when they've played with grit they've beaten some of the NBA's best teams — Boston, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Cleveland, New York and now Phoenix. Friday night's win was another reason for them to believe they're justified in dreaming big.

"We got players on this team," Nesmith said. "We got people who care, people who play hard, people who play the right way, people who want to win basketball games and do something special."

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Pacers stun Suns behind Obi Toppin, Pascal Siakam, Aaron Nesmith play