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Rick Carlisle Explains Why He Didn't Call a Timeout Late in Game 3 Loss
Three games have been played in the Eastern Conference Finals between the Boston Celtics and Indiana Pacers. Indiana has been close, but has yet to notch anything in the win column. Now, the Pacers face a 3–0 deficit, which no team has ever overcome in the NBA playoffs.
The narrative of this series has twice now focused on coach Rick Carlisle opting against calling available timeouts. In Game 1, the Pacers saw an overtime game slip through their fingers, and Carlisle admitted he should have called a timeout.
In Game 3, Carlisle had a timeout when the Pacers got a defensive rebound and pushed down the break with less than 10 seconds remaining and trailing by a point. Carlisle again kept the timeout in his pocket, and it backfired. Andrew Nembhard turned the ball over, which essentially sealed the win for Boston.
This time, Carlisle did not take the blame in his postgame presser. He had a reason for not calling the timeout, and it's tough to argue against:
Carlisle on not calling timeout: "I trust our players to create a better shot than calling a timeout and having them set their defense."
— Dustin Dopirak (@DustinDopirak) May 26, 2024
In the end, Carlisle felt the best option was to empower his players to find a shot opportunity and trust them rather than calling a timeout and resetting everything. That might be true, but a creative last-second play that nearly sent the game to overtime seems to prove the point for those who wished the timeout was called: Clearly, Carlisle can draw up or select a good play.
In the end, it has to be onto Game 4 for the Pacers. They now have no room for error.
Josh Wilson is the news director of the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated. Before joining SI in 2024, he worked for FanSided in a variety of roles, most recently as senior managing editor of the brand’s flagship site. He has also served as a general manager of Sportscasting, the sports arm of a start-up sports media company, where he oversaw the site’s editorial and business strategy. Wilson has a bachelor’s degree in mass communications from SUNY Cortland and a master’s in accountancy from the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois. He loves a good nonfiction book and enjoys learning and practicing Polish. Wilson lives in Chicago but was raised in upstate New York. He spent most of his life in the Northeast and briefly lived in Poland, where he ate an unhealthy amount of pastries for six months.