Rick Carlisle's path to Indiana was made possible by Kevin Durant's toes

The Milwaukee Bucks were rumored for years to be interested in hiring Carlisle. In 2018, the team hired Mike Budenholzer instead, because Carlisle was under contract with the Mavericks. The Bucks won a lot of games under Budenholzer, but after they lost the Eastern Conference Finals in 2019 after leading 2-0, then were upset by the Miami Heat in the second round in 2020, Budenholzer was on the hot seat.

He may have been on the verge of being fired as the Brooklyn Nets, playing without Kyrie Irving, took the Bucks to Game 7 in their second-round series, and appeared to beat them when Kevin Durant drilled a turnaround jumper behind the three-point line.

But Durant's toe was on the line, and the game headed to overtime, where the Bucks pulled out a 115-111 victory.

That game happened two days after Carlisle resigned from the Mavericks. When the Bucks headed to the Eastern Conference Finals, where they were huge favorites against the Atlanta Hawks, Carlisle realized Budenholzer wasn't going to be fired — especially when the Bucks won it all a month later. Instead, Carlisle returned to the Indiana Pacers, where he'd coached from 2003-07, an unlucky tenure where one of the NBA's best rosters was destroyed by the fallout from the "Malice in the Palace" brawl in Detroit in 2004.

The rest is history. 

The Pacers remade their team in Carlisle's first season, trading most of their starters and acquiring Tyrese Haliburton. Carlisle is notoriously tough on young point guards, often wanting to call his own plays from the sidelines. His teams also generally played a slow pace before this stint in Indiana.

Now, he trusts Haliburton and his team plays with one of the fastest paces in the NBA. The Bucks have lost in the first round in three straight postseasons, the most recent two at the hands of the Pacers. Milwaukee is on its second head coach since Budenholzer, who has been fired by the Bucks and the Phoenix Suns since Carlisle returned to Indianapolis.

And if Durant's shoes were half a size smaller, none of this may have ever happened.