The Indiana Pacers beat the Atlanta Hawks 157-152 in a rollicking NBA shootout on Tuesday to become the first team to reach the knockout stage of the league's new in-season tournament.
Indiana's Tyrese Haliburton, who said this week the new tournament gave "more juice" to early-season games, scored 22 of his 37 points in the third quarter as the Pacers erased a 20-point first-half deficit.
In the fourth quarter it was Buddy Hield who stepped up, scoring 13 of his 24 points as the Pacers came out on top of a furious back-and-forth finish.
"It's good to clinch," Haliburton -- who also handed out 16 assists -- said after the Pacers improved to 3-0 in tournament play and locked up first place in East's Group A. "Buddy won us the game down the stretch, a lot of big buckets."
Hield's three-pointer put Indiana up 152-150 with 1:20 remaining. After Saddiq Bey pulled Atlanta level with a layup, Hield drained another three-pointer for a 155-152 Pacers lead with less than a minute to go.
Hield capped the outrageous scoring with an alley-oop dunk with five-tenths of a second remaining.
Hield connected on nine of 11 from the field and made all six of his three-point attempts.
Obi Toppin scored 21 points off the bench for Indiana and Bennedict Mathurin added 19.
Trae Young scored 38 points to lead the Hawks, who led by 20 in the second quarter.
In later games, the Los Angeles Lakers had a chance to punch their ticket to the knockout rounds, and claim home court advantage in the quarter-finals, with a victory over the Utah Jazz.
A road win for the Jazz, coupled with a loss for Phoenix against Portland, would see Utah advance.
The quarter-finals will be played December 4-5, with winners advancing to semi-final games on December 7 and a championship match on December 9 in Las Vegas.
It was a tight finish in Philadelphia, where Darius Garland scored 32 points to lead the Cleveland Cavaliers to a 122-119 overtime victory over the 76ers that kept alive the Cavs' hopes of advancing in the tournament via a wild card berth.
Jarrett Allen scored 26 points and pulled down 13 rebounds while Max Strus made five three-pointers on the way to 20 points for the Cavs, who came through despite again playing without injured Donovan Mitchell and Caris LeVert.
Reigning NBA Most Valuable Player Joel Embiid scored 32 points and grabbed 13 rebounds and Tyrese Maxey added 30 points for Philadelphia, but the 76ers were eliminated from tournament contention.
bb/rcw
