The Indiana Pacers were eliminated by the Boston Celtics from the Eastern Conference Finals in four games despite playing three incredibly close games.
The Pacers had at least a 90 percent win probability in the fourth quarter of Games 1, 3 and 4, according to ESPN Stats & Information research.
“For a young team like us, this experience in the playoffs is second to none,” said Andrew Nembhard, who finished with a team-high 24 points in Game 4. “A lot of our first times. A lot of little things we maybe wanted to do better and we learned how these games go and what being in a series feels like.”
“I can tell you like, yeah, we’re going to learn from it and it’s going to happen, but it’s not guaranteed,” Siakam said. “I know how hard it is to get to this point. It’s unfortunate. You want to give credit to the other team because they took advantage of every mistake that we made. They did well.
“But for us, it’s been hard, like heartbreaking losses after heartbreaking losses. Yeah, you’re going to be encouraged by it and you hope to put the right amount of work to continue to get better. Because we need to be a lot better if you want to compete with those teams. And understand it doesn’t matter how good we played, we didn’t get it done.”