Pacers pull out first in-season tournament victory behind Myles Turner, Tyrese Haliburton

INDIANAPOLIS – Could it have been the Pacers’ zany, swimming pool-inspired alternate court they debuted Friday night to kick off their first game of the NBA’s in-season tournament? Or Indiana’s first-primarily-black City edition jerseys?

Or maybe, just maybe, it was Myles Turner’s inability to miss most of the first half that made the difference in the Pacers’ dominant first half that they needed every bit of to eek out a 121-116 win over the visiting Cleveland Cavaliers (2-4).

Led by Turner’s team-high (and season-high) 27 points in an offensive duel with Cleveland’s Donovan Mitchell (game-high 38 points), Indiana jumped out to an 18-point first-half lead, lost it all before the end of the third quarter and fought its way back in a back-and-fourth final quarter at Gainbridge Fieldhouse. The victory marked the home team’s second win against its divisional foe just five games into the 2023-24 season.

The win also snapped a two-game skid that had followed the team’s 2-0 start. Perhaps more importantly, the Pacers’ performance Friday put a 51-point road drubbing at the hands of the Boston Celtics – a 155-104 loss suffered Wednesday – well in the rear-view mirror.

"I thought the first half was one of the best we've played all year," Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said post-game. "And then the third quarter was rough, but the fourth quarter, we held strong and got it done, and it was a strong show of character for our team.

"Cleveland's got a lot of weapons, and they come at you hard, and it was a bend-don't-break kind of game for us."

Here are 4 observations:

Turner paces Indiana's strong first half

The Pacers (3-2) took early control fueled by short spurts of offense from up and down the lineup. Turner scored 7 of the Pacers’ first 10 points (leading to an early five-point lead), followed by seven straight from Bruce Brown and stretches where Buddy Hield and Jalen Smith came off the bench and both quickly scored six of the team’s next eight points.

But the second quarter? That was all Turner’s.

The team’s 6-foot-11 starting center logged 15 points in the second period, powered by a perfect 3-for-3 line from beyond the arc and 5-for-5 overall from the field. Finishing the half 7-for-8 overall from the field, Turner was the only Pacer in the first half in double-figures. His 3-pointer with 1:35 left in the second quarter gave the Pacers their largest lead of the game at that point at 18 (65-47).

Post-game, Turner said that offense wasn't exactly his primary focus early-on, with his eyes on matching the physicality of a divisional foe that returned two starters from injury in Darius Garland and Jarrett Allen. Perhaps, he admitted, a heightened focus on the little things inadvertently led to finding his rhythm after shooting a combined 10-for-26 from the field in his team's last two games -- both losses.

"I think when I get going early, there's confidence there, but more than anything, I have to be a defensive leader on this team," Turner said of his fast start offensively. "I know my shot's going to fall, even though before tonight I wasn't shooting that great.

"I think my focus before the game is more on the defensive side, just trying to anchor what we're trying to accomplish."

With Turner's help, the Pacers would go into the locker room with a comfortable 17-point advantage, 70-53.

Mixed reaction: 'The Pacers court looks great on the radio!' Fans react to Indiana's new court and jerseys

Pacers let off the gas in 3rd quarter

At the half, Carlisle warned his players of what was likely going on down the hall inside the locker room of a Cleveland squad who managed to turn an 18-point home loss Tuesday to the New York Knicks into a road win against the same opponent just 24 hours later -- in a defensive masterclass performance that surrendered just 89 in Madison Square Garden.

"They're probably getting ripped," he told his players. "They're going to come out hard.

"And they did."

At the forefront of those third quarter struggles were the offense of Turner and Haliburton, who missed Wednesday's loss to the Celtics with a sprained right ankle suffered Monday in a loss to the Bulls. Together, the pair combined to shoot just 2-for-6 in the period for 4 total points. Seconds before the halfway point of the quarter, the Pacers still clung to a double-digit lead, but a three-minute stretch where Indiana scored just three points (including four empty possessions) saw the team's lead shrink to two.

Haliburton started just 3-for-10 from the field through Friday’s first 36 minutes. His first half included both good (eight assists) and bad (four turnovers).

"I was just trash, I'll tell you," Haliburton said of his performance through the first three quarters Friday night. "I'm just not shooting it well right now. The shots just aren't going in, and I've just got to stay true to what I do and stay true to my work.

"They'll start to fall. It's only Game 5, but I'm a perfectionist, and there's part of me what's wanting to hit the panic button."

After the Cavs' 16-5 run to pull within 79-77, both sides traded buckets, as the Pacers bench unit attempted to keep the team afloat and hold its narrow lead. Eventually, a pair of Darius Garland runaway layups in the quarter’s final minutes gave Cleveland its first lead of the night (85-84).

Importantly, Carlisle noted post-game, Andrew Nembhard’s jumper in the final minute pushed the Pacers back ahead, 88-87, with 12 minutes to play.

"It's got to be a growth thing for us. It's the human element everywhere in sports. There's always going to be a tendency to let up when you have a lead like that," the coach said. "And then we hung our second unit out there during a tough period of time and manufactured enough buckets for us to have a 1-point lead.

"That's big. Leading going into the fourth quarter is a big indicator on probability to win."

Pacers win first late-game battle of season

After starting the game slow from beyond the arc, the Cavs heated up in the fourth quarter, including a trey from Mitchell with 7:46 to go that knotted the game at 100-apiece and another from Max Strus that gave the visitors a four-point lead (105-101).

With a pair of double-digit wins, a 50-plus point loss and just one game overall that finished with a single-digit deficit, Friday's closing stretch was the first chance for this reconfigured Pacers team to stress-test its closing unit.

The Pacers would go on to score the game’s next nine points, capped by a 10-foot jumper from Turner. Just 25 seconds later, Hield dropped in one of his four 3-pointers on the night, and Indiana all of a sudden held a 113-106 lead that even a 6-0 run to follow from the Cavs couldn’t quite erase.

With a one-point lead in the final 30 seconds, Haliburton nailed a lengthy step-back jumper, followed by four clutch free throws in the closing seconds. After just eight points in the first three quarters Friday, the Pacers’ All-Star guard finished with 18.

"(Tyrese) had frustration offensively all game, but in the fourth, he really narrowed his focus and found a way to get the ball in the basket when we needed it," Carlisle said of his All-Star point guard's late-game execution. "That was an important game for us."

Brown added 19 points on 8-for-15 shooting from the field. Hield paced Indiana’s bench with 14 points on a 5-for-9 night from the field and 4-for-7 from three.

Win powers Pacers to 1-0 start for in-season tourney

The Pacers’ win gives them a 1-0 start to the NBA’s new in-season tournament, which features the 30-team league split into groups of five within their conferences. Tournament games will be played throughout the league every Tuesday and Friday from Nov. 3-28 (with the exception of Election Day on Nov. 7), with each NBA team logging four total games during that span on tournament nights.

Each of the six top finishers at the end of group play on Nov. 28 – along with one wildcard team from each of the two conferences that finished as the best runner-up – will move onto the single-elimination knockout rounds. The quarterfinals will be played in NBA team markets Dec. 4-5, with neutral-site semifinals (Dec. 7) and the championship (Dec. 9) played at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. The 22 NBA teams who don’t qualify for the knockout round of the in-season tournament will play two games against other non-quarterfinal teams Dec. 6 and Dec. 8. The losers in the quarterfinals will also play against an opponent from their conference Dec. 8. The championship game does not count toward those two teams’ 82-game regular season slate.

The in-season tournament champion team will earn the league’s first NBA Cup, with its players each receiving $500,000.

The Pacers’ next in-season tournament matchup comes in the form of a road game against the Philadelphia 76ers (Nov. 14), followed by a trip a week later to the Atlanta Hawks (Nov. 21). Indiana closes out its four-game in-season tournament slate with a home game against the Detroit Pistons, which will feature a return of its City Edition uniforms and the team’s…uh, ‘special’ aquamarine-heavy in-season tourney court.

Pacers schedule

Recent and upcoming games

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana Pacers pull out first NBA in-season tournament victory