Disaster Half For Indiana Pacers In Game 3 Shows Improvement Needed To Beat Milwaukee Bucks

MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN - APRIL 25: Bennedict Mathurin #00 of the Indiana Pacers is fouled going up for ... More a shot in the first half of game three of the first round of the 2025 NBA playoffs against the Milwaukee Bucks at Fiserv Forum on April 25, 2025 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Photo by John Fisher/Getty Images)
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MILWAUKEE – With five minutes to go until halftime of Game 3 in the Indiana Pacers vs Milwaukee Bucks first-round playoff series, the Bucks were ahead 39-38. It was a choppy game to that point with both teams missing threes, but Indiana was about to go on a run. The visitors finally erupted to close the second period, carrying a 57-47 lead into halftime.
It felt like a huge moment for the blue and gold, who led the series 2-0 at the time. Yet four minutes of game action later, the game was tied. Before the third quarter ended, the Bucks were the team up double digits. Milwaukee’s lead reached 20 near the middle of the final frame.
It was a 30-point swing in about 18 minutes of play. The Pacers looked out of sorts and had to figure out what exactly just happened to them. Where did their lead go? Why did they look so hopeless after a promising surge going into halftime?
“We were bad on both sides of the ball. They were great, we were bad,” Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle said of the second half.
What went wrong for the Pacers?
The Pacers were poor on both ends in the second half on Friday night. It cost them the game, though it may be easy for the blue and gold to shrug it off as one half of one game. But they can’t do that. Two-way struggles are concerning and show that the Pacers must be better to win the series.
On offense, the Pacers were slowed – both in scoring and in tempo. Indiana takes pride in their pace and movement. They often generated quality shot attempts in the first two games of the series. Yet in the second half of Game 3, they couldn’t. Many of their scoring possessions ended with one-on-one play rather than a shot created by ball movement. They were taking too much time finding space that the shot clock became another defender.