Undrafted and Undaunted

Game 7 of the NBA Finals is here. You may want to keep an eye on the Pacers' T.J. McConnell.

Sixty players were selected in the 2015 NBA draft. The top pick was Karl-Anthony Towns. No. 2 was DeAngelo Russell. The 58 names that followed did not include Timothy John McConnell Jr., a 6-foot-1 point guard who played college ball at Duquense and Arizona after a legendary prep career in western Pennsylvania, where he was coached by his father, Tim Sr., at Chartiers Valley High School. The Philadelphia 76ers saw something in McConnell and invited him to training camp. He has been in the NBA ever since

Tomorrow night at 7 p.m. CDT, the final game of the NBA season will be played at Paycom Center in Oklahoma City, just a ten-minute walk from Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar and Grill on Johnny Bench Avenue. It will be Game 7 of a wild and riveting NBA Final, the Thunder and the Indiana Pacers taking turns being dominant. If you predicted that 33-year-old T.J. McConnell, who looks as if he came right off the set of “Hoosiers,” would emerge as perhaps the most improbable story line of the series, well, you are either lying or you’ve spent too much time at Toby Keith’s.

These finals were widely expected to be a coronation for the top-seeded Thunder. Winners of 68 games, they were the league’s best team, led by league’s best player, MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. They came into the finals having won 12 playoff games by an average of nearly 20 points, even with the Denver Nuggets pushing them to seven games in the Western Conference semifinals.

For sure, the Pacers have had their own impressive playoff run, crushing the Cleveland Cavaliers, the No. 1 team in the East, in five games, and then dispatching the favored Knicks in the conference finals, doing it in part with a mind-blowing fourth-quarter comeback on the road in Game 1, when they trailed by 14 with under three minutes to play.

It was the fourth time the Pacers had erased big deficits in the playoffs, including a pair of 20-point holes against the Bucks and Cavs. They started the Finals by doing it again, coming back from 15 down early in the fourth quarter to stun the Thunder on a Tyrese Haliburton jumper at the buzzer. The Pacers won, 111-110. It was the first time they had led the whole game.

The battle was on, and the series went back and forth. The Thunder took a 3-2 series lead behind 40 points from Jalen Williams and 31 from Gilgeous-Alexander in Game 5, and headed back to Indianapolis one victory from their first championship since arriving in Oklahoma City in 2008.

Here’s where McConnell, backup point guard, brought his best stuff. He’d actually been a major contributor throughout the series. In Game 3, he had 10 points, 5 steals and 5 assists in 15 minutes, bringing an instant infusion of energy. Every time McConnell comes into a game, he slaps the floor with both hands, as if to say, “Time to get to work.” His intensity is as palpable as the No. 9 on his jersey. All that’s missing is the lunchpail.

“T.J. just brought a will – a competitive will to the game,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said.

Two of McConnell’s steals in Game 3 came on in-bounds passes, a move he has been pulling for years. In one dazzling spree in Game 4, he scored 13 points in six minutes, muscling into the paint for floaters, or hitting his trademark fadeaway, and then came Game 6. He hadn’t been on the floor for a minute when he stole an outlet pass and fed teammate Obi Toppin for a three-pointer. The smallest man on the floor, he did what he always does, diving for loose balls, taking charges, playing dogged defense, hitting tough shots under pressure. He missed two free throws, but after stuffing the stat sheet in 24 minutes – 12 points, 9 rebounds, 6 assists, 4 steals – the Pacers gave him a pass.

“We call him the ‘Great White Hope,’ Haliburton said. “It’s cool to see what he does.”

With one game yet to play, McConnell is the first NBA player to surpass 60 points, 15 rebounds and 25 assists coming off the bench in a Finals series. He fits just about every time-honored description typically applied to small white guards. He’s gritty. Fiery. Smart. An overachiever. Deceptively athletic. Does the little things. Contributes way more than a box score will tell you. That he fits a stereotype in no way diminishes the impact he has had on this series.

“He’s had to fight and claw and scrap for everything he’s gotten in this league,” teammate Myles Turner said. “For someone who was undrafted, for someone who was constantly (over)looked. … I know how bad he wants this.”

McConnell comes from the first family of Pittsburgh basketball. In a storied career spanning more than three decades, Tim McConnell Sr. went 684-160, coaching both boys and girls. His sister and T.J.’s aunt, Suzie McConnell-Serio, was a Penn State All-American, Olympic gold medalist and WNBA standout who is in the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame. Two other aunts played collegiately, as did an uncle. The newest star in the family is little sister, Megan McConnell, 23, who starred at Duquense and is now in her rookie year with the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury. She was undrafted, just like her brother.

T.J. McConnell completes his ninth NBA season tomorrow night. He’ll get the call from Carlisle, slap the floor and get to work.

“To play to the last day possible of the season, Game 7,” McConnell said, “you dream about that as a kid. So I know we have to be ready for the challenge.”