The Indiana Pacers regularly deliver victories to their fans’ Easter baskets.
The Pacers franchise boasts a 14-3 all-time record in games played on Easter Sunday. That history includes a 12-game winning streak in games played on Easter between 1991 and 2018.
Some perspective: 14 wins in 17 games projects to a 67-15 record over a full season. How impressive is the 12-game winning streak? The actual franchise record for consecutive wins is nine.
If you are a Pacer fan, you wish every day could be like Easter.
ABA beginning
The Pacers played just one Easter game during their ABA days. Indiana beat the Denver Nuggets, 128-121, late in the 1974-75 season as George McGinnis - the eventual 1975 ABA co-MVP - scored 30 points. The result proved to be a postseason preview. Denver finished with the best record in the ABA that year, but the Pacers beat the Nuggets in seven games in the Western Division finals to reach the ABA Finals for the fifth and final time.
Postseason starts and finishes
An Easter game started a Pacers playoff run in 2000 and ended one in 2018.
The most significant of Indiana’s Easter wins was Game 1 of the Eastern Conference first-round series against the Milwaukee Bucks in 2000. Indiana was a No. 1 seed for the first time in the franchise’s NBA history, but eighth-seeded Milwaukee proved a tough matchup.
The Pacers won the series opener 88-85 as Jalen Rose hit several timely 3-pointers in the fourth quarter and a key free throw in the final seconds. The Game 1 result proved pivotal. Indiana needed a one-point victory in Game 5 to win the series 3-2. It’s safe to say that if the Pacers had lost Game 1, they would have lost the series. The franchise’s 2000 NBA Finals appearance would not have happened.
Indiana’s only other Easter Sunday playoff game was in 2018. The Boston Celtics completed a first-round sweep of the Pacers by a 110-106 score. From Indiana’s perspective, it was a depressing end to a season that held great promise until Victor Oladipo sustained his career-altering quadriceps injury in January.
Holiday streak
Indiana lost its first two Easter games after joining the NBA, in 1978 and 1988.
The Pacers would not lose another Easter contest for more than 30 years.
Indiana’s streak of 12 consecutive Easter victories started with a 127-120 home overtime win against the Golden State Warriors in 1991.
The most significant – and most one-sided - regular-season win during that run was a 114-75 demolition of the Minnesota Timberwolves in 1995. The blowout gave Indiana its first 50-win season since joining the NBA and positioned the Pacers to clinch their first Central Division title a few days later.
Rik Smits set the franchise record for most points in an Easter game with a 40-point effort in a 103-96 win at the Los Angeles Clippers in 1997. The 1997 game was the first of six consecutive years that the Pacers played – and won - on Easter.
The last game in the streak was a 111-104 win, again at the Clippers in 2018, as Oladipo scored 30 points.
Start of a trend
Indiana’s regular-season Easter winning streak technically is intact at 12. The Pacers have played just once on Easter in the 2020s. Indiana won at New York on the last day of the regular season in 2023. The Pacers put up a 41-point fourth quarter to establish a franchise record for most points in an Easter game.
As Pacer fans know, it was just the first of many significant wins for Indiana against New York in the mid-2020s.