With one more victory, the Indiana Pacers will cap arguably the most improbable championship run in league history, and an unlikely hero has underscored that journey since Indiana’s upset of the Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 1 of the NBA Finals.
Reserve guard T.J. McConnell has created all sorts of problems for the Thunder defense this series, which happens to be among the best in recent memory in terms of defensive rating, turnover margin and several other meaningful statistical categories of both the advanced and traditional varieties.
In fact, one can make the argument that McConnell is having the best NBA Finals of any bench player ever through six games based on the numbers he’s put up. According to the Pacers official X account, McConnell is the first bench player in league history to record more than 60 points, more than 25 assists and more than 15 rebounds across a Finals series — and he still has Game 7 on Sunday night, June 22, to add to those totals and potentially help the Pacers claim their first NBA title in franchise history.
Indiana won three ABA titles in the mid-1970s before the ABA-NBA merger.
Suffice it to say, prominent players around the league have taken notice. Among them is Los Angeles Lakers superstar and four-time champion LeBron James, who gave McConnell his flowers during a live episode of the “Mind the Game” podcast with co-host Steve Nash at Fanatics Fest in New York City over the weekend.
“You look at TJ McConnell, he’s not the tallest or fastest guy, but you don’t know what he’s going to do,” James said. “He’s the KEY reason there’s a Game 7 tomorrow night.”
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