Pacers now 0-4 in NBA Conference Finals games played on Indy 500 day

Indianapolis was the center of the sports world on Sunday night, when the NBA’s Eastern Conference finals and the Indianapolis 500 went on practically back-to-back. The Indy 500 was raced, as it always is, at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Speedway, Indiana, an enclave of Indianapolis named after its most famous feature, while the Pacers hosted the New York Knicks in Game 3 of the conference finals at the Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis proper.

The Pacers blew a 20-point lead and lost, 106-100, cutting their lead in the series to 2-1. Prior to Sunday night, was it unrealistic to believe that Indiana would sweep the Knicks? Did the scope of New York’s collapse in Game 1 overstate the differences between these two teams? Should we be trying to glean meaning from a single game like this at all?

Or maybe we should have seen this coming in the first place, regardless of how the series had gone to this point. After all, the Pacers have yet to win an Eastern Conference finals game at home when it’s played on the same day as the Indianapolis 500.

Karl-Anthony Towns reacts after dunking the ball against Andrew Nembhard and Myles Turner of the Indiana Pacers during the fourth quarter in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Finals. (Photo by Justin Casterline/Getty Images)

Indiana first played an ECF game on the same day as the Indy 500 in 1999, on May 30… against the Knicks. That was a Game 1 matchup, which New York won 93-90 — the Pacers would end up going on to lose the series, 4-2, while the Knicks dropped the NBA Finals to the Spurs. Then, in 2004, the Pacers dropped Game 5 to the Pistons on Indy 500 day, before Detroit went on to the NBA Finals to defeat the Lakers. In 2013, Indiana took on the Heat, led by LeBron James, and would lose 102-90 in Game 4 following the conclusion of the Indy 500.

Which brings us to 2025, and the Pacers losing Game 3 to the Knicks. Not only have the Pacers now gone 0-4 in the games in which they hosted the ECF matchup after the Indy 500 ran earlier that day, but they also lost all three of the completed Eastern Conference finals.

That doesn’t mean it will happen again just like it has in the past — the Pacers do seem as if they’re the better team, after all, and the loss of top defender Aaron Nesmith to a leg injury certainly played a role in their late-game collapse on Sunday.

However, we look for patterns in sports for a reason, even if there isn’t a logic to those patterns or the reasons behind them. And the Pacers are stuck in an unfortunate pattern at the moment, one that only an ECF victory will bring clarity to and cut the superstition around. They’re still up 2-1 in the series, at least, which is not a situation they’ve ever found themselves in to this point in their shared Memorial Day weekend history with the Indy 500, and have four chances left to reach the NBA Finals for only the second time in franchise history… and the first time in a year in which the entire sports world turned its eyes to Indiana, even if just for one day.

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