Indiana Pacers coach Rick Carlisle finally got a chance to celebrate Thursday night.
After his team set the franchise's NBA-era record with 13 consecutive losses and he waited a full month to earn career win No. 1,000. Carlisle became the 11th coach to reach the milestone when the Pacers won 114-112 at Charlotte. He’s the first coach to join the group since Doc Rivers in November 2021.
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All it took was for the Pacers to score final five points in the final minute against the Hornets. For Carlisle, the prevailing emotion was relief.
“I'm so happy for our players,” said Carlisle, who hugged his assistants and players after the win. “The last month has been so challenging in so many ways. We have an amazing group of guys who continue to fight through thick and thin."
As tough as the last month has been, Thursday night was excruciating for Carlisle.
Pacscal Siakam scored on a driving layup with 11.5 seconds left and T.J. McConnell stole the ensuing inbounds pass. But Ben Shepard made just 1 of 2 free throws, giving the Hornets a chance to tie or win. Charlotte's Collin Sexton missed a jumper to tie the game in the final seconds.
“Pascal Siakam is one of the most amazing players I have been around and he put his stamp on things at the end,” Carlisle said.
Carlisle's injury-depleted Pacers lost in seemingly every possible way — embarrassing blowouts, crushing fourth-quarter collapses, giving away leads late. On Thursday, they finally found an answer — as Carlisle's teams often do.
He's succeeded as a coach because he never lowered his standards, always expecting to compete for championships. That unrelenting approach helped him forge a lifelong friendship with Larry Bird and persuaded three teams to hire him as a head coach. He won a championship with Dallas in 2011.
To those who know Carlisle best, it was no surprise he eventually joined the club.
“Obviously, he's a Hall of Fame coach and I learned a lot from him,” New York Knicks coach Mike Brown, one of Carlisle's former assistants, said last week. “I'm extremely appreciative of him giving me the opportunity back in the day. Rick's been great to me and, you know, everybody needs help throughout the course of their journey and he was one guy who gave me a boost in my career.”
Carlisle has come a long way from his small, hockey-crazed upstate New York hometown, where he had to make a short drive to a nearby establishment just to watch NBA games.
He played at Virginia with Ralph Sampson. Then it was off to the Celtics, where he won an NBA title in 1985-86 alongside Bird and the late Bill Walton on one of the greatest teams in league history.
It was as a coach that Carlisle really thrived.
It took him 23 full seasons plus 38 games with the Detroit Pistons, Mavericks and two stints in Indiana to collect No. 1,000. His record stands at 1,000-891.
Carlisle didn’t reach this point by counting wins. He made it because he never wavered from his core principles while adapting to today’s fast-paced, 3-point heavy offenses.
In Detroit, his first stint in Indiana and even in Dallas, where Carlisle spent 13 seasons, he called plays from the sideline and publicly critiqued defensive lapses. Over time, he learned to trust players such as two-time All-Star guard Tyrese Haliburton, who led the Pacers to the NBA Finals last season. It's a transition Rivers, now Milwaukee's coach, has watched closely.
"I think all of us have had to change,” Rivers said last spring during the playoffs. “Where Rick has been always good, in my opinion, he just coaches the team he has, and I think he realized early on with Haliburton, this may be one of those teams where ‘I just have to wind them up and let them go.’ I think that’s why he’s a sensational coach.”
Carlisle has been around so long that each of the other 10 coaches to win 1,000 games was actively coaching in the NBA during his tenure.
“All of the guys on the list (of 1,000 wins) are guys that I know well,” Carlisle said. “I coached against them for many years and have great respect for them.”
Few could have predicted he would wait this long after Carlisle earned No. 993 in April with a 126-118 double-overtime victory at Cleveland to end the regular season. Or after he got No. 999 exactly a month ago.
During the past seven months, Carlisle presided over some of the best moments in Pacers history — eliminating Milwaukee and the top-seeded Cavaliers, beating the New York Knicks 4-3 in the Eastern Conference finals and rallying within one win of the franchise's first NBA title.
He also endured some of Indiana's bitterest moments during the same stretch — the torn Achilles tendon suffered by Haliburton in a Game 7 loss at Oklahoma City, Myles Turner's departure in free agency and a flurry of injuries that have derailed Indiana's season and left the Pacers with the league's worst record at 7-31.
Carlisle's star pupils include Reggie Miller, Dirk Nowitzki, Luka Doncic, Jalen Brunson and Haliburton.
He was with Indiana for a series of stinging losses postseason ousters to the likes of Michael Jordan, Patrick Ewing, Shaquille O’Neal and the late Kobe Bryant as well as the suspensions that decimated his team following the 2004 Malice at the Palace brawl at Detroit. Those punishments short-circuited what may thought would be Indiana's run to an NBA title.
But Carlisle never stopped coaching his way, returned to Indiana following his departure from Dallas in 2021 and now, at age 66, is part of one of coaching's most prestigious fraternities.
“This has never been about me getting a milestone win,” Carlisle said. “It's about our organization and our franchise. As it has gotten tougher and tougher I have leaned into thinking more about gratitude for the things that we have. We have great people and we have terrific players.”
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AP freelance writer Cal Reed in Charlotte, North Carolina, contributed to this report.
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