The Miami Heat are one game away from advancing to the NBA Finals for the third straight year. The Indiana Pacers aren't ready to let that happen. In a back-and-forth series, LeBron James and company will try to close it out against the Pacers Saturday night in Game 6.
Game 6 is on Saturday at 8:30 p.m. ET. You can watch it HERE.
"We're desperate to get back to the NBA Finals," James told AP reporters. "So both teams are desperate in their own sense of they're trying to keep their season alive and we're trying to advance."
Indiana has turned the Eastern Conference finals into a competitive series, alternating wins with the No. 1 seeded Heat and stretching the series to six games. They're fighting for their playoff lives on Saturday, the Associated Press reports. Facing elimination in a Game 6 at home against the Heat is familiar for the Pacers — they fell last year to Miami in Game 6 of the conference semifinals.
"Game 6 will really determine how much we've grown, because we've been in the same ditch, I guess, being in the same predicament," Pacers swingman Paul George told reporters. "Going 2-2, losing in Miami, then coming back home and losing at home. So we'll see where we're at. We've done well all year, especially in the postseason, dealing with adversity and overcoming games where we didn't play as well as we wanted."
Despite Miami not losing back-to-back games since January, Pacers coach Frank Vogel has been confident since the start of the series that his team can dethrone the defending NBA champions.
"It's not just false talk," Vogel said. "There's a reason I'm confident. I like to tell these guys that I'm not an optimist. That's what my image is. I'm a realist. And when I look around at what I see in the room when I'm talking to this team, and what I see on the court, and the level of execution that we're capable of ... it gives me real confidence in this basketball team."
Miami will be without Chris "Birdman" Anderson on Saturday. The NBA suspended the center for his scuffle in Game 5 against Pacers Tyler Hansbrough. Both teams know what each like to run, and at a 3-2, Pacers center Roy Hibbert knows what it comes down to.
"It's about effort," he said. "It's about who wants it more."
