Cavaliers vs. Pacers: Key matchups, schedule and prediction for explosive East showdown
The Eastern Conference’s top-seeded Cleveland Cavaliers (64-18) will face the fourth-seeded Indiana Pacers (50-32) in the first round of the 2025 NBA playoffs. The two franchises have not met in the playoffs since the opening round in 2018, when the Pacers pushed prime LeBron James to a Game 7.
What we know about Cleveland
Following last season’s second-round playoff exit, there were concerns about Cleveland’s roster. The overlap between Donovan Mitchell and Darius Garland in the backcourt and Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen in the frontcourt seemed too much to overcome. Something had to be done about redundancy.
Except nothing was. The Cavaliers instead hired Kenny Atkinson to replace J.B. Bickerstaff as head coach and told him to figure it out. Which he did. Atkinson installed a more motion-based offense. It clicked. Cleveland’s 121 points per 100 possessions this year marked the NBA’s best net rating by a wide margin.
We already knew what a defense backed by Mobley — this year’s Defensive Player of the Year — and Allen was capable of, and they delivered on that promise, submitting the league’s eighth-rated defense. The end result was 64 regular-season wins, the No. 1 seed and a net rating second only in the Eastern Conference to the defending champion Boston Celtics. The leap from pretender to contender was vast.
It helps to have Mitchell and Garland, two wonderfully creative ball-handlers, as multiple points of attack. Both can play on the ball or off of the other. Mitchell, especially, ceded control of the offense this season.
Nobody benefited from Cleveland’s egalitarian brand of basketball more than Mobley, who increased his workload as both a playmaker and a floor spacer this season. Allen does the dirty work alongside him, and together they form arguably the league’s best rim-protecting duo. It is quite a foursome. Each has made at least one All-Star team, and no longer are we concerned about the redundancies on the roster.
The Cavs even made a roster-bolstering trade at the deadline, adding De’Andre Hunter from the Atlanta Hawks. Hunter is the most versatile of a collection of wings that includes Max Strus, Isaac Okoro and Dean Wade, each of whom holds his own strength as a fifth man. And Cleveland’s sixth man, Ty Jerome, was one of the league’s best this season, bolstering a stacked (if defensively deficient) guard rotation.
Together they rattled off win streaks of 15, 12 and 16 during the regular season and made quick work of Miami in the opening round of the playoffs, outscoring the Heat by a 112-point margin in a clean sweep.
What we know about Indiana
After a surprise visit to the 2024 Eastern Conference finals, the Pacers went about the business of a 50-win season, securing a home playoff seed for the first time since a pandemic-shortened 2020 campaign.
They have Tyrese Haliburton, a supreme playmaker, at the helm of another powerhouse offense. It was not always pretty. Both he and the Pacers had their struggles in the first few months of the season, particularly on defense, as they took a 16-18 record into January. Since the turn of the calendar, though, only the Cavs and Celtics have had a better net rating than Indiana (+5.3) in the Eastern Conference.
When the dust settled, Haliburton had averaged 18.6 points (on 47/39/85 shooting splits), 9.2 assists and 3.5 rebounds in 33.6 minutes per game. It was his first full season with All-Star forward Pascal Siakam, who added a 20-7-3 on 52/39/73 shooting splits in 32.7 minutes a night. Both are on the fringes of All-NBA consideration. When playing together they yielded a net rating of +6.8 points per 100 possessions.
Throw in Myles Turner, their stalwart two-way center, and that rating improves to +8.6. From there the Pacers rotate a handful of wings: Andrew Nembhard, Aaron Nesmith, Bennedict Mathurin, Obi Toppin and Ben Sheppard. All of them are credible shooting threats. None of them guard at an All-Defensive level, though Nembhard and Nesmith — Indiana’s other two starters — are committed on that end.
We cannot forget T.J. McConnell, their spark plug off the bench, either. He is energy personified.
The Pacers are deep and good, and they have been better over the final month of the season, when they finished
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