INDIANAPOLIS — The Indiana Pacers were clearly feeding off their crowd Wednesday night in Game 3 of the NBA Finals. Nobody more than T.J. McConnell.
McConnell’d in the NBA Finals 😈
T.J. McConnell feeds it to Aaron Nesmith for two and immediately picks off the inbound pass. pic.twitter.com/7w8tWmIaRS
— Indiana Pacers (@Pacers) June 12, 2025
“Every little run, the crowd gets hyped. You get hyped with the crowd,” the Pacers’ Aaron Nesmith said. “You feed off the energy. Makes it tough for them. They got to fight against 20,000 people in here.”
Oklahoma City Thunder players will be quick to tell you the same things about their crowd, how the energy they bring matters.
But how much does having home court really matter in the NBA Finals?
Comforting routines
These are professionals, guys who have played on stages large and small all over the globe since their childhood. It’s tempting to think of Coach Norman Dale from Hoosiers measure the court: The basket is still 10 feet high, the free throw line 15 feet from the basket, which doesn’t matter if it’s in Indianapolis, Oklahoma City, or anywhere else.
Ask the players, and it’s as much, if not more, about the routine and comforts of home in their preparation than it is about the energy they get from the fans.
“Just being back, it’s good energy, being back in front of our home fans is big,” Myles Turner said. “Stick to your regular routine, sleep on your own bed, get your own meals. All that type of stuff is a big factor.”
“It’s a good reset,” Aaron Nesmith said of returning to Indiana. “You get to sleep in your own bed, get back to your home-game routines, kind of take a breather after being on the road for six days.”
The NBA cliche is that role players perform better at home, while stars are stars everywhere.
When role players from both teams were asked about that at the Finals, to a man they shot down the idea with some version of “basketball is basketball.” Yet, watching the Pacers’ dramatic Game 3 victory, it was Bennedict Mathurin and McConnell off the bench that sparked things as much as Tyrese Haliburton and Pascal Siakam. The Pacers’ role players were better at home.
Those players admit being home is an advantage, but both teams are on the NBA Finals stage because they have won big games on the road. Ask players if they prefer the roar of a home crowd after a big bucket or silencing a road crowd with the same shot, most answer silence.
Still, the advantage of being home is a real one.
“It definitely is an advantage. I don’t know if it’s, you know, it’s not the thing that’s going to swing the pendulum one way or another,” OKC’s Alex Caruso said. “Obviously, we’ve seen them go on the road and win games in hostile environments all playoffs, as well as us…
“I don’t think either one of these teams derives their energy and their competitiveness from playing at home, but it is nice to have that comfortability of playing in front of your fans”.
The Pacers get that comfort again Friday, and if those fans can help lift them to another win Indiana will have control of the series.
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