LeBron James broke Pacers’ fans hearts once again Wednesday night.
The NBA’s all-time leading scorer only scored 13 points Wednesday, but his tip-in at the buzzer gave the Lakers a 120-119 win and snapped the Pacers’ five-game winning streak in a frenzied Gainbridge Fieldhouse.
The Pacers, up 119-118 with 42 seconds to play, opted to substitute Jarace Walker in for Tyrese Haliburton for defensive purposes. And it worked, with Walker forcing Dorian Finney-Smith into a miss and securing the defensive rebound with 33 seconds left.
But instead of calling timeout to get Haliburton, who had 18 assists, back on the floor with the game on the line, Rick Carlisle elected to have his team play it out.
Bennedict Mathurin missed a wild 3-point attempt with the shot-clock winding down and 11 seconds to play. The Lakers got the rebound, and while Luka Doncic missed a runner in the lane, James was there to tip in the game-winner.
After the game, Carlisle was asked about his decision to not call timeout.
“I considered it,” he said. “Looking back at it now, certainly would have been the thing to do, given the result. But there was a nine or 10-second difference. Had we scored, they probably were going to run it back at us. That group had a good run in the fourth, so I decided to stay with it. But that was my decision. The thing that really also was a big factor was we had a foul to give. We talked about it in the huddle. Everybody on the sideline was yelling it, and we just didn’t do it. And so they got turned loose for a shot, and then we didn’t get a body on LeBron.
Haliburton was at the scorer’s table, but with no timeout called or foul to stop play, was forced to watch the final seconds from the sideline.
“I’m sure if we can have it back, we probably want to call a timeout there,” he said.
