Rick Carlisle, the head coach of the Indiana Pacers, spoke after his team’s overtime loss to the Boston Celtics.
Rick Carlisle prepared his team fantastically for the first game of the Eastern Conference Finals. How else can you explain scoring 128 points against a top 5 defense in the NBA, shooting 53.5 percent from the field, recording 38 assists, and taking 20 fewer free throws than your opponent, while spending practically the entire game in the lead? In the end, a few crucial mistakes by Indiana Pacers players decided the game.
“This loss is totally on me. With 10 seconds in regulation, we should have just taken the timeout, advance the ball and found a way to get it in and made a free throw or two and ended the game. It’s unfortunate we did so many good things in this game that it came down to a couple of mistakes at the end, but it’s the NBA playoffs,” Carlisle said. “We’ve got to learn from it and we’ve got to bounce back.”