INDIANAPOLIS—Roy Hibbert had 23 points and 12 rebounds as the Indiana Pacers charged back late to beat the Miami Heat, 99-92, on Tuesday and level the Eastern Conference finals at 2-2.
LeBron James led the Heat with 24 points before fouling out with 56 seconds to go. Mario Chalmers had 20 points on a night the defending NBA champs failed to take command of the series.
The Heat will host Game 5 on Thursday.
“We’re not going anywhere. We’re going back down to Miami to go out there and fight again,” Hibbert said.
“Our guys rose to the challenge,” said Indiana coach Frank Vogel. “Our defense returned to form. We had a bad game (Sunday) and we made adjustments.”
Lance Stephenson added 20 points for the Pacers, who started fast and spent the rest of the night trying to fend off Miami’s continual comebacks.
But with Indiana leading 81-72 early in the fourth, Miami answered with a 14-2 run that gave the Heat an 86-83 lead.
Indiana leveled the score with Paul George’s three-point play and erased the Miami lead by closing the game on a 16-6 run.
Indiana was desperate—and it showed.
“We know they are the champs and we are going to be fighting an uphill battle but we are never going to give up,” Hibbert said. “They counted us out but those guys in the locker room were ready to play and we went out there and played our hearts out.”
Bodies crashed to the ground all night. An angry George uncharacteristically smacked the floor after being called for a foul in the third quarter, leading to a technical foul on Vogel. And the defense did a far better job against James and his high-scoring teammates. James finished 8 of 18 from the field.
But the Pacers did not get rattled.
Instead, they answered every challenge Miami posed as they had in the first two games of this series.
Indiana also had a 49-30 rebounding advantage and outscored Miami in the paint 50-32. AP, AFP