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No team has ever lost more in one game than the Indiana Pacers did in Game 7 of the 2025 NBA Finals.
The defining image of a postseason that ended with a franchise winning its first ever championship won't be of the Thunder celebrating their crowning achievement, bur rather one of the league's budding superstars writhing on the floor in agony.
It's a scene that was all too familiar during the 2025 NBA playoffs. First when Damian Lillard went down against the Pacers in the first round and again when Jayson Tatum tore his Achilles against the Knicks in the second round. A forceful step forward, a basketball move they had performed a million times before, ending in the most devastating injury that the sport can inflict.
These aren't just career-altering injuries - who knows if Lillard, Tatum or Haliburton will ever truly be themselves again - they are franchise-altering, if not franchise-deflating, ones. In the blink of an eye, the odds that Giannis Antentokoupmo, who brought a title to Milwaukee for the first time in 50 years, would be traded skyrocketed. In Boston, a quest for back-to-back titles and dreams of a dynasty were quickly replaced by the reality of the luxury tax bill, a path to immortality detoured onto off ramps to escape the second apron.
But while Bucks and Celtics fans have every right to be heartbroken by their version of this sick twist of fate, what those two franchises lost was all hypothetical.
When Tatum went down, the Celtics had their opportunity to repeat as champions and inch closer to dynasty status ripped away from them. But even though having your agency stripped away from you is undeniably unfair, Boston wasn't exactly close to achieving its aspirations. Even in a world where Tatum doesn't get injured in Game 4 of the Celtics' second round series against the New York Knicks, Boston was still likely facing a 3-1 deficit, 11 wins away from the ultimate prize.
Indiana's dreams of a championship were different. They were material. The Pacers had earned themselves a spot in the definitive finale of the NBA season: Game 7 of the NBA Finals. The trophy was in the building, and it would belong to them with a victory.
And that's why Haliburton played, despite the high risk for disaster that comes with playing with a strained calf. Because being one win away from a title is an opportunity so rare that even dozens of Hall-of-Famers never had the honor. Being that close to the ultimate prize is the only thing that can make jeopardizing your career, your livelihood, feel like an afterthought.
I doubt modern medicine has evolved to the point where the team doctors could have given Haliburton the exact odds that his Achilles would rupture after viewing his MRI, but if they could, how high would it have to be before he even considered not stepping on the floor? Would telling him there was a 50% chance he would tear his Achilles by playing give him pause? 75%? 90%? Even if the team doctors told Haliburton that it was an absolute certainty his Achilles would tear at some point in Game 7, I think he would still have wanted to play, and I don't think he would have been wrong.
That's how precious the chance to win a championship is. If the Pacers had won Game 7, Haliburton would not have had a care in the world that he needed to be carried up onto the stage to accept his Finals MVP trophy. Even if his recovery from the injury was difficult and he was never close to the same player again, that championship would cement his legacy forever. As SGA said about being a champion after the game: "So much weight off my shoulders, so much stress relieved."
And that's why no team has ever lost more in a game than the Pacers on Sunday night. Because the emotional weight on the franchise will be unbearable for years to come, and the team won't have its best player there to help lift it off them for at least a season. Even a straight up defeat in Game 7 would have been a devastating blow for a fan base that has waited 25 years for a second crack at the title. But waiting 25 years to get to the precipice of a title only to lose the game and also any reasonable expectation that they will have the chance to redeem themselves, all at the expense of a player who has become a beloved hero and pillar of the community, is an entirely new level of suffering.
It's interesting to ponder what Oklahoma City would have done if the roles had been reversed and it was Shai Gilgeous-Alexander who strained his calf in Game 5. Like Haliburton, there's no doubt SGA would be desperate to play despite the risk. But would Sam Presti, with his Thunder so well-positioned for a potential decade of dominance, have allowed it? Perhaps he would have. I'm sure he still has the haunting image, though perhaps less bothersome now, of Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and James Harden huddled together at the conclusion of the 2012 NBA Finals burned into his brain. You are always further away from a title than you think.
Pacers' management wasn't afforded that kind of latitude in their decision making. If Haliburton wanted to play, they had to let him. And now, even in a weak Eastern Conference, Indiana will find itself firmly in the middle of the pack, and perhaps even further away from true contention than that.
Saying the Pacers will almost certainly not be back within a game of a title again in the next decade doesn't diminish them. Rather, it's meant to celebrate and contextualize the kind of run they were on. If the Pacers had won Game 7, it would have made more sense to scroll through Letterboxd instead of Basketball Reference to find a team to compare them to. The Pacers weren't just pulling off upsets this postseason; the sheer drama of their game-deciding moments could only be matched in scripted works of fiction.
The compilation of comebacks that Haliburton's clutch shots and cinematic celebrations capped off during this postseason is legendary and unlike any underdog story we have ever seen in the NBA. And in the first six minutes of Game 7, it seemed like Haliburton was just getting started on his magnum opus, pouring in three pure triples as he barked at the OKC crowd. Haliburton was well on his way to becoming an NBA Champion, the Pacers were about to scale to the top of the NBA mountain.
Instead, they will wake up today wondering whether the past two months have been a dream or a nightmare. But unlike the mystical worlds of fantasy that we forge in our sleep that evaporate as we slowly regain consciousness, the image of Haliburton sobbing on the floor will never fade away. ∎
