Potential trophy celebration for Celtics among ideas keeping Pacers motivated

INDIANAPOLIS -- Rick Carlisle held back nothing in his pursuit of motivational material for the Pacers as they face a 3-0 series deficit in the Eastern Conference finals against the No. 1 seed Celtics heading into Monday's Game 4 at 8 p.m. Gainbridge Fieldhouse. He even tried to make obvious contingency planning seem disrespectful.

"When you're the head coach of an NBA team, you tend to get information on things," Carlisle said. "One thing I just heard in the last few minutes is that the league is making logistical plans for a trophy presentation on our floor (Monday). That's something that I think should make our players' blood boil and our fans' blood boil. It's just another layer of motivation to extend the series."

Deadpan is Carlisle's default setting and he didn't break character to let on if he was making a joke about that being privileged information, but it obviously doesn't require sources in high places to know that once a team wins three games in a best-of-seven series with a trophy on the line, the NBA or any league for that matter has to be prepared to present that trophy at every game that follows regardless of the teams involved or the locations of those games. If the Pacers were up 3-1 going into TD Garden for Game 5, the NBA would make plans for a trophy presentation there too.

Carlisle's players know this and so do Pacers' fans, but Carlisle's still banking on the visual embedding in their minds of what a Celtics celebration at Gainbridge Fieldhouse would look like and producing a visceral reaction to prevent it from happening.

It also allows the Pacers to go after an obtainable goal as Step 1 in their attempt at achieving one that has to date been unachievable in the NBA.

No team in the league has ever come back to win a series after falling behind 3-0. The Celtics rallied back from 3-0 against the Heat in last year's Eastern Conference finals to force a Game 7, but they were pounded 103-84 once they got there. The 2004 Boston Red Sox are the only Major League Baseball team to rally back from 3-0 and four NHL teams have done it, but those are the only instances in the history of major North American sports.

But several teams have managed to win one game to extend the series and it's easier for a team to stay focused on achieving a manageable goal rather than one that has been to date insurmountable.

"There's plenty of reasons to be motivated for this game tomorrow," Carlisle said.

The Pacers also did walk away from Saturday night's loss with some reasons for confidence. They were missing All-Star point guard Tyrese Haliburton thanks to hamstring soreness, but the first half served as a reminder that they won six of the 10 games in January he missed when working through a strain of the same hamstring. They led by as many as 18 points and had a 69-57 lead at halftime, shooting 63.6% from the floor in the first half.

The Pacers faded in the fourth quarter when they were outscored 33-21 and they blew an eight-point lead in the last 2:38, but they won the rebounding battle 43-36 and made more shots than the Celtics did, proving that even without their best player they can hang in with the NBA's best team.

"There are a lot of correctible things that we've got to get better," Carlisle said. "There are some mistakes defensively that are fixable and some things offensively that we have to do better. We did a lot of things very very well. We led for a great majority of the game. There certainly are positives. So we always show our guys things that need to be corrected but also always show our guys the things we do well and that we need to continue to do well."

Carlisle refused to provide an update on Haliburton's hamstring and status for Game 4 -- "I'm not going to talk about that today," he said -- but Saturday night was proof that the Pacers have two viable point guards behind him who can score. T.J. McConnell, who has manned the second unit all year, scored 23 points on 10 of 17 shooting. Andrew Nembhard, a point guard by trade who has functioned as a secondary ball-handler in the nominal shooting guard position, started in Haliburton spot and scored 32 points while dishing out nine assists.

"He's played plenty of point guard for us," Carlisle said. "There have been stretches when Ty's been unable to play both last year and this year. He has experience there. Guys who put the work in and are prepared tend to have more confidence because they've done the work. He's one of those guys, and our team really as a group, we have really conscientious guys who are great workers who love to compete."

And whether they focus on his visual of a Celtics trophy presentation or not, he knows they'll be motivated by the prospect of earning themselves one more opportunity to compete together.

"The important thing for us is to learn, to be resilient and stay in this fight and find a way to extend the series," Carlisle said. "We want to keep playing. We want to get back on that plane and go back to Boston. Tomorrow is our opportunity to do that."

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Pacers trying to keep Celtics from celebrating NBA finals trip in Indy