Though the 2024-25 NBA season isn't even ten days old, the Indiana Pacers and Boston Celtics delivered an early candidate for game of the year on Wednesday night. The defending champions erased a 24-point 3rd quarter deficit, sent the game to overtime, and had a two-point lead with under a minute to go before Pascal Siakam drilled a mid-range jumper to tie the game, and a straight-away game-winning three pointer with just six seconds remaining.
Even though Pascal Siakam was the hero of the night, it was an off-the-bench performance from third-year wing Bennedict Mathurin that not only set the tone for Indiana, but also made Pacers franchise history.
According to StatMuse, Bennedict Mathurin's 30 point, 11 rebound double-double was the first of its kind by an Indiana Pacers bench player in over twenty years. With the help of StatHead, we can determine that the last Pacers player to come off the bench and put together a 30-10 performance was Austin Croshere, who put up 32 points and 12 rebounds in a February 2002 loss to the Dallas Mavericks.
Bennedict Mathurin was the 6th overall pick in the 2022 NBA Draft, and he was brought to Indiana to be a cornerstone piece of the franchise for years to come. However, all of Mathurin's momentum was stalled when an early-March shoulder injury knocked Mathurin out of action and prevented him from stepping on the floor at all during the Pacers' surprising run to the Eastern Conference Finals.
As the 2024-25 season began, it looked as if Mathurin's role was going to diminish. Through the first four games of the season, the 22-year-old was only playing 21 minutes to per, and averaging just over 12 points per game. But against the Celtics, Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle leaned heavily on Mathurin, playing him a 43 minutes in the overtime victory.
After the game, Carlisle told reporters that the Pacers did rebounding and loose ball drills in their afternoon prep for the game, per Dustin Dopirak of the Indy Star. Bennedict Mathurin clearly got the memo that closing out possessions was something Indiana needed to improve on, as he finished with double-digit rebounds for just the fourth time in his NBA career.
Pacers look to overcome sluggish start and return to 2023-24 form
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Before taking the floor against the Celtics, Indiana was 1-3 and hadn't come close to resembling the offensive dynamo they were last season. Even after the win over Boston, the Pacers are just 13th in scoring and 20th in offensive rating after finishing 1st and 2nd in those categories respectively last season. But behind a career-best performance from Mathurin, and a pair of double-doubles from Pascal Siakam and Tyrese Haliburton too, the Pacers finally looked the part of an Eastern Conference contender.
After the game, Haliburton noted that the win was big for the Pacers not just because it put an end to a three-game skid, but also because it came against a team that Indiana has some demons with.
“I can't say we really had the ability to do that last year,” Haliburton said. “For us to go into overtime, I think a majority of people would say we didn't have a chance to win that game. For us to finally figure that out was big. … It's part of the maturation of this group. It's easy to go into that overtime pretty negative because you felt like we had the game won for the most part, you know? But we've been in this exact same position with this exact same team. It's a big win for us.”
