The Indiana Pacers stunned the world once again on Thursday night when they opened the 2025 NBA Finals with a 111-110 victory over the Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 1 of their series. In the wake of their thrilling rally, an old quote from Boston Celtics superstar forward Jaylen Brown reemerged on social media.
Throughout the 2025 NBA Playoffs, Indiana has made a habit of pulling off absurd rallies that typically have gotten capped with an extremely clutch shot from Tyrese Haliburton. That’s what happened on Thursday night, as Haliburton nailed a game-winning shot with just 0.3 seconds left on the clock.
Jaylen Brown and the Celtics did not get a chance to face off against the Pacers in the playoffs this year, as they were eliminated by the New York Knicks in six games during their Eastern Conference semifinals series.
However, they are quite familiar with this Indiana squad since they ran into them in the Eastern Conference Finals last season. The C’s swept the Pacers in four games, but every game was tightly contested, as evidenced by the fact that they won these four contests by a combined margin of 27 points.
Perhaps the closest game of this series was Game 3, which Boston managed to win thanks in large part to Jrue Holiday’s superb steal of Andrew Nembhard with seconds left in the fourth quarter. After the game, Brown went viral for his unique comments on Indiana’s performance.
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“They were shooting the ball well,” Jaylen Brown said. “Some of those guys turned into (expletive) Michael Jordan or whatever, and it was like, ‘Man, what is going on?’ We couldn’t figure it out.”
With Haliburton and the Pacers continuing to embrace their underdog role and hitting a bevy of shots no one is expecting them to, Brown’s comments from last year have resurfaced. Did he realize something about Indiana that nobody else picked up on at the time?
Many folks believed Indiana’s run to the Eastern Conference Finals last year was a fluke, but they have proven everyone wrong on their run to the 2025 NBA Finals. Jaylen Brown, however, may not be as surprised as everyone else, as he seemed to know just how good the Pacers were a full year before their wild 2025 postseason run.
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