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Why Thunder’s Alex Caruso had to ‘ignore’ Pat McAfee during NBA Finals
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- Why Thunder’s Alex Caruso had to ‘ignore’ Pat McAfee during NBA Finals
The post Why Thunder's Alex Caruso had to 'ignore' Pat McAfee during NBA Finals appeared first on ClutchPoints .
Alex Caruso and the Oklahoma City Thunder lost just one game to the Eastern Conference in the regular season. However, Tyrese Haliburton and the Indiana Pacers beat them three times in the NBA Finals. The Pacers' crowd played a big role in two wins. They were rallied by former Indianapolis Colts punter Pat McAfee, who rallied them in the second half of their home games .
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Caruso showed love to the Pacers, but was caught off guard by McAfee's speeches at the end of the third quarter. According to the former NFL players, the team approached him and asked him to speak to the crowd. Not one to let the opportunity pass him by, McAfee accepted.
In Games 3 and 6, his speeches worked. The Pacers handled business easily in each game. However, it ended up not being enough to take the Thunder down in the series. It did affect Caruso though, who told McAfee as much during his appearance on the former punter's show on Wednesday. According to the Thunder guard, it was tough for him to tune out McAfee's speech.
"Also, me trying to ignore you giving rally speeches at the end of the third, beginning of the fourth in every game at Indiana was really hard, I'm not going to lie," Caruso said.
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McAfee revealed that his speeches were spontaneous. However, he mentioned that he wanted to call out Caruso in one of them, but wisely chose not to.
"I think you had 13 points in the third quarter, maybe 14 points in the third quarter," McAfee told Caruso. "I was going to start one of them with 'Caruso! Relax!', and then I was going to go into it. But I didn't want to start any s**t, I didn't want to get in any trouble, I already had some heat."
McAfee's speeches became a big part of the Pacers' home games during the Finals, where they almost completely held serve. It took a MVP-performance in the fourth quarter of Game 4 from Shai Gilgeous-Alexander for the Thunder to win.
Unfortunately for Indiana, Haliburton's injury early in Game 7 all but sealed their fate.
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McAfee gave Caruso his props for the Thunder's performance in the NBA Finals, despite his heckling from the crowd.
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