When the Indiana Pacers got to within a game of the 2025 NBA championship, taking the heavily favored Oklahoma City Thunder the distance before losing Game 7 with Tyrese Haliburton suffering an Achilles rupture, there was an echo of the team's first run to a title game.
Eighteen months earlier, the Pacers had reached the final of the inaugural NBA Cup, then, temporarily branded as the In-Season Tournament. And though Indiana also lost that final to the Los Angeles Lakers, the lessons learned in Las Vegas proved useful for a Pacers team that hadn't won a playoff series since 2014.