A season championship provides additional incentive for Haliburton and the Pacers

Additionally, with all knockout stage matches shown on national television, the tournament will create an opportunity for unseen teams to play their part in the national spotlight.

In other words, it was created for a team that looks exactly like the Indiana Pacers.

“The in-season championship is probably the first time I’ve really competed to win a championship at the NBA level,” Pacers guard Tyrese Haliburton told ESPN. “I’ve never been to the playoffs or anything like that, so this gives me the opportunity to be able to do that, which is exciting for me.

“There’s definitely more excitement in those games, which is exciting. It’s an exciting time for the league, and you know, I think we’re all trying to push the in-season tournament to be something bigger because everyone wants there to be some meaning to it.”

Indiana has had one nationally televised game this season: Jan. 30 at Boston on TNT. It was the first time in Haliburton’s career that he appeared on the gridiron — even putting the Pacers into the quarterfinals of the season’s tournament with a 157-152 win over the Atlanta Hawks on Tuesday night, which clinched the Eastern Conference. A for the Pacers.

For a Pacers team trying to re-establish itself as an Eastern Conference playoff contender, the opportunity to play in real stakes games in the opening weeks of the season is something they don’t take for granted.

“Opportunities to be in more important stages is important for young teams,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle told ESPN. “I’ve been to over 300 playoff games in my career as a player, assistant coach and head coach. For me, my job is to develop a style that helps our group have the best possible chance to win.

“However, having the opportunity to compete on a more significant platform is very important.”

The NBA hopes the in-season tournament will become a universally accepted event, not just an interesting wrinkle to the first part of the regular season. The first step to doing this is convincing players and teams, something that was in question this summer when the event was announced. Enter the Pacers, who finished 11th in the East a season ago, five games out of position, and were projected to finish ninth in the East this season, despite the presence of Haliburton, an All-Star a year ago who is averaging… ​23.5 points per game this season.

“The acceptance of our teams and players is what will ultimately capture the interest of the fans and help create a new tradition,” Silver told ESPN. “Players across the league, whether rising stars like Tyrese Haliburton or all-time greats like LeBron James and Steph Curry, have spoken about what is at stake in these championship games of the season and how that translates to a more competitive game on the court.”

Haliburton leads the league in assists (11.6 per game), and leads an offense that plays a style reminiscent of Steve Nash’s “seven seconds or less” Phoenix Suns; Indiana leads the league in pace and points per 100 possessions. They could still qualify for the playoffs even if they lose to Atlanta, although it will take a little help from the rest of their group. Now with the Pacers in the quarterfinals, the league will get a chance to showcase one of the most exciting young teams in the league to a new level of interest from casual sports fans.

However, there are plenty of reminders along the way that Indiana is still a work in progress. Even as he spoke Saturday about his team’s start and the potential impact of a win over Atlanta, Carlisle cautioned that his group is eyeing another young team, the Orlando Magic, in a non-tournament game on Sunday.

The Pacers then fell behind by as many as 40 points at home, leading the Magic in a wiry rout.

“We have to keep our eyes on the ball,” Carlisle said. “But with Teres, offensively we can do some special things, and defensively we are improving.”

The Pacers will need to rank much better than their current No. 27 defensive rating to make the kind of playoff run that Haliburton & Co. eventually hope to achieve. They currently sit in seventh place in the East, and are in strong contention in the playoffs and chase, so they are expected to play meaningful basketball in March and April for the first time since 2021, when they lost to the Washington Wizards in play. Competition.

For a league hoping to turn this event into a cornerstone of the NBA calendar, it has at least succeeded in getting one of its brightest young stars on board with the idea.

“Guys might think: ‘Oh, the season is long. If we lose this season, we’re fine.’ “But I think there’s some juice in that to be like, ‘No, no, no. Yeah, the season is long. But we want this game, we want it now,'” Haliburton said. “I loved that aspect of the tournament during the season. It was a lot of fun.”