Whether or not the Indiana Pacers pull off the improbable and win the 2025 NBA Championship, head coach Rick Carlisle will have solidified his place in basketball history with not one, but two of the most unlikely Finals runs the league has ever seen.
In 2011, Carlisle led a Dallas Mavericks team built around a single All-Star — 32-year-old Dirk Nowitzki — past the superteam Miami Heat, featuring LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh. That Heat team was expected not just to win titles, but to dominate a new era. Yet it was Carlisle’s aging, blue-collar Mavericks who shocked the world in six games.
Now, in 2025, Carlisle is at it again. This time with an Indiana Pacers roster no NBA team has ever won with before — a squad without a true superstar, relying instead on balance, chemistry, and smart basketball. The similarities to 2011 are unmistakable. The odds, if anything, are even steeper.
The 2011 Mavericks: A Veteran Group, One All-Star, and One Goal
In a league beginning to be defined by “superteams,” the 2010-11 Mavericks were the outlier:
- Dirk Nowitzki (27.7 PPG) was the lone All-Star — and turned in one of the most clutch playoff performances in league history.
- Jason Kidd, at 37, was long past his prime but orchestrated the offense with precision.
- Shawn Marion, Jason Terry, Tyson Chandler, and key role players like J.J. Barea and Peja Stojaković filled out a roster built on experience, not star power.
This team beat the defending champion Lakers in a sweep. They stopped Kevin Durant’s Thunder. Then they did what few believed possible — they outplayed the Heatles on the biggest stage.
Carlisle’s strategic brilliance — from inserting Barea into the starting lineup to deploying a matchup-zone defense — completely shifted the series. Dallas didn’t have more talent, but they had more toughness, execution, and belief.
2025 Pacers: Even More Improbable
If the Pacers win the title, this will become the most unexpected championship in modern NBA history. There is no MVP candidate. No player with deep Finals experience. No one on the All-NBA First or Second Team.
Their best player, Tyrese Haliburton, is an All-Star but wasn’t on most MVP ballots. Pascal Siakam was a midseason addition. Andrew Nembhard and Aaron Nesmith are role players turned playoff heroes. Myles Turner is one of the longest-tenured Pacers never to make an All-Star team. They’re playing rookies and former cast-offs in heavy minutes against the league’s most expensive and most talented rosters.
And yet, here they are — pushing through Giannis and the Bucks, toppling Jayson Tatum’s Celtics, and standing toe-to-toe with the defending champion Nuggets.
This run doesn’t just echo 2011. It may surpass it.
Carlisle’s Place in History
Coaches don’t usually get remembered for how they win. They’re remembered for if they win.
But Carlisle is carving out a special category: coaches who do more with less — and redefine what’s possible.
His 2011 Mavericks and 2025 Pacers (even without the ring) are the closest thing the modern NBA has seen to the 2004 Pistons — teams that weren’t built to dominate the regular season, but emerged when it mattered most taking out a Dynastic Lakers team with Kobe, Shaq, Malone and Payton.
And if Indiana finishes the job?
It will be the greatest Finals upset of the salary cap era. Period.
