Pat McAfee Reveals Pacers' Advantage Over Knicks in Conference Finals

There are keys to every team's success when it comes to finding that winning formula in the playoffs. For some teams, it is relying heavily on its key players. For other teams, such as the Indiana Pacers, it is clearly about their pace of play.

The Indiana Pacers team plays with a blistering pace that makes it very difficult for teams to keep up with. For the 2024-2025 season, the Pacers posted the seventh quickest pace of play in the league this year. The only playoff team that played with a quicker pace was the Oklahoma City Thunder.

The way that they spread the ball around and are constantly capitalizing on turnovers makes it very difficult for teams to match their conditioning. Head coach Rick Carlisle can constantly be seen on the sidelines urging his team to continue to push the pace. Pat McAfee, former Indianapolis Colts punter, spoke about this very topic recently.

"Everybody gets hurt against the Pacers," Pat McAfee said. "Everybody gets hurt. ‘Oh, they're playing against hurt teams,’ that's because they run their asses out of the gym. They will run you out of the gym. That is the style that they play. Everybody talks about how lucky they get. It's like, what if the style that they play is actually a part of their strategy in making you not be able to keep up? They're in great shape. They're seemingly more healthy than they were last year. They're confident. They're mature. They've been here before, last year with this entire thing.”