The tone was set on opening night for the Indiana Pacers. Paul George torched Harrison Barnes and the Dallas Mavericks for an absurd 41 points, 13 rebounds and eight assists, and while it seemed routine, it was a signal of greater things ahead for PG-13 and his team. George would spend his 2016-17 campaign making the rare leap from stardom to superstardom with an MVP season. George notched career highs with 27.3 points per game, 7.2 rebounds, a blistering 41 percent from three-point range and he matched the 45 percent he shot from the field his rookie year in only 20 minutes per game.
While George’s explosive arrival into his prime was the story of the Pacers’ season, it may have been the continued development of Myles Turner that allowed the team to reach the upper echelon of the league. All the summertime talk of Turner extending his shooting range proved to be more than just lip service as the big man shot a respectable 33 percent from deep, good enough to provide the extra crevice of spacing the shooting-deficient Pacers needed to push their offense into the top-10 in both pace and efficiency.
Indy played their best ball of the season during a 9-1 10 game stretch from March to April that included three huge wins over the Raptors and a scintillating overtime victory over the Cavs in Cleveland. It was there the offseason addition of Jeff Teague truly paid dividends when he nailed a huge three in overtime over Kyrie Irving that gave the Pacers the lead for good and essentially clinched the No. 1 seed in the East.
Turner may have just missed out on the league’s Most Improved Player award to Kings guard Ben McLemore, but it was his aforementioned shooting touch on offense along with his mobility and rim protection on defense that pushed the Pacers over the top in the first round against the Heat. He was able to combat Hassan Whiteside’s length and improved post game with speed and help defense from the long arms of George and Thaddeus Young. On offense, he’d rendered Whiteside moot by the end of the series by constantly pulling him away from the rim, shooting 10-25 from distance in the series while forcing Erik Spoelstra to grasp at straws by starting Josh McRoberts at center in the decisive Game 5. Miami even downsized for long stretches of the series with lineups that included Justise Winslow, Derrick Williams and James Johnson in the front court and no traditional bigs; it was to no avail.
The Chicago Bulls were reinvigorated by the return of Dwyane Wade from injury late in the season, and that helped push them to a sweep over the Raptors in the opening round of the playoffs. George was the MVP, but he struggled in all four meetings against the Bulls in the regular season, shooting just 37 percent from the floor as Jimmy Butler clamped down on him every chance he got. This round it was Al Jefferson who was the x-factor, scoring 11 clutch points in the fourth quarter of Game 6 in Chicago. Throughout the series’ final three games, George and Turner’s length and Jefferson’s mass, clogged the lane for the Bulls’ dribble drives. With three minus shooters on the floor at all times, that was a death knell.
The Cavs were waiting for the Bulls in the Conference Finals after they swept the Celtics in the Conference semifinals, and LeBron was settling into his postseason groove. After dropping the first two games at home, head coach Nate McMillan adjusted, starting a small-ball lineup with PG-13 at power forward. The switch paid off, as it forced a scorching hot Kevin Love into defensive matchups and rotations the Cavs couldn’t survive, and when Richard Jefferson wasn’t able to recreate his 2016 playoff magic, the Pacers were able to get the upper hand and grab a 3-2 series lead.
But the Cavs would not go down easy. They blew the Pacers out in Game 6 in Cleveland behind a monster 45 point outing from Kyrie Irving. In the end, it was the matchup everybody wanted as George and James had a scintillating battle in Game 7, reminiscent of their head-to-head duel in 2012. LeBron finished with 44 points, 16 rebounds and 9 assists, but it was PG that snagged the win with 38 points and 12 rebounds of his own, including a late dunk over Birdman that was deja-vu and redemption all at once.
Surprisingly, it was the Clippers that faced off with Indy in the Finals after Chris Paul and the gang exorcised their demons with an upset of the Warriors in the Western Conference Finals. While Austin Rivers was able to be a scrappy, pest of a defender hovering underneath Kevin Durant and bothering him in that series, he was no match for MVP George in the Finals. Without Luc Mbah a Moute, the Clippers simply had no answer for PG late in two close games to start the series. In Game 3 at Staples, things came down to the wire again, but after hack-a-DeAndre slowed the Clippers’ momentum, it was C.J. Miles who hit a backbreaking three with just under a minute to give the Pacers an insurmountable lead.
Game 4 was little more than a coronation for Paul George, as he clinched his first championship and Finals MVP just a little over an hour away from his hometown of Palmdale. The Pacers won by 25, and George tossed in 22 points including a windmill dunk on a breakaway in the fourth quarter that began the celebration early.
Wiping tears from his eyes in the postgame and sliding his championship snapback over his head, George struggled to find the right words for Doris Burke. “It’ll be three years in August,” he told her, remembering his horrific leg injury in a Team USA scrimmage. “I knew I’d be here, though. I didn’t know how, I didn’t know when, but I knew. I just kept working, every day, and now I finally get to celebrate.”
And with those words, the Pacers wrapped up their first ever NBA championship.