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The Indiana Pacers had been the underdog in each of their first two series in the 2024 NBA Playoffs. And yet, Myles Turner and company are still standing against all odds. They were widely predicted to lose to the Milwaukee Bucks in the first round but they managed to send Doc Rivers' squad home. Granted that the Bucks dealt with major injuries, the Pacers still can be credited for making sure they took full advantage of such circumstances.
It was the same case in the second round versus the New York Knicks. After going down 2-0 in the early goings of the Knicks series, Indiana fought back to tie it all up at 2-2. New York won Game 5 to move a win away from eliminating the Pacers, who then won the next two games to keep their title hopes alive while showing the banged-up Knicks the door.
And once again, the Pacers will be the underdogs in the next round versus the best team in the NBA based on regular-season record, the Boston Celtics.
Myles Turner, Pacers embracing underdog label
For Turner, being the underdog isn't new for the Pacers. Having played his entire NBA career so far with Indiana, Turner is a credible resource about what it's like to play for a team that doesn't always enjoy the attention and the shine of bigger market teams and traditional powerhouses.
“That’s life as an Indiana Pacer. It was the same thing as the last series. If you look at every single poll on ESPN, everyone picked the Knicks to win. If you look at the series before that with the Bucks, it might’ve been 80 percent of the people picking Milwaukee to win,” Turner said in a recent appearance on the HoopsHype podcast.
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Turner seems fine with everyone thinking the Pacers are the underdogs, and he'd rather have his team use that label as bulletin board material.
“That’s something that, since I’ve been here, at least in my career, it’s been like that every single season. We don’t get TV games, and we’re not publicized like that. In the press, it’s never the Pacers won. It’s the Knicks lost. That’s regular stuff for us. We use it as fuel and as a chip on our shoulders. We definitely go in there, and it’s less pressure on us because if we’re the underdogs, we’re the uninvited guests. It’s up to us to go out there and prove everybody wrong. That’s the goal at the end of the day.”
Turner was the Pacers' first-round pick (11th overall) in the 2015 NBA Draft. In each of his first five seasons in the NBA, Indiana made the playoffs. However, none of those trips to the postseason went beyond the first round. The Pacers then missed the playoffs for three consecutive seasons before being good enough to be a playoff team again in the 2023-24 campaign. It has been a decade since fans last saw the Pacers go this deep in a season.
Beating the Celtics is a tall order for the Pacers but not an impossible task.
In five meetings this season with Boston, the Pacers took two victories.
Can they shock Boston in the Eastern Conference finals?
After surviving two tough rounds in the playoffs, Turner and the Pacers have no reason not to believe that they could pull off a stunner.
