Caitlin Clark put the Pacers on a pedestal after Indiana rallied to beat the Knicks 138-135 in overtime to steal Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals on Wednesday night.
“PACERS ARE THE GREATEST COMEBACK TEAM IVE EVER SEEN,” Clark, 23, wrote on X after the Pacers came back from behind 17 points in the fourth quarter.
Pacers point guard Tyrese Haliburton hit a clutch long jumper that bounced high off the back of the rim and in to tie the game at 125-125 as time expired in regulation — and Indiana went on to roll past New York in the extra period.
Jade Jones, the girlfriend of Haliburton, reshared Clark’s tweet to her Instagram Story.
The couple is close friends with Clark and her boyfriend, Connor McCaffery, a former team assistant for the Pacers.
“I grew pretty close with Connor McCaffery being an intern with [the Pacers]… and I’ve grown to be pretty close with Caitlin and him,” Haliburton said at Pacers media last September. “Me, her, him and my girlfriend Jade all have a group chat that we talk in pretty often about everything.
“So it’s been cool to just grow a friendship with her. I don’t want to be — everybody just wants to like get more from her, take more from her, get more answers to things and I don’t want to be that.
“We’re friends and I think that that’s a cool part if she wants to talk basketball, we’ll talk basketball. If not, I’m totally fine with that as well. But I think we’ve grown a pretty cool friendship alongside Connor.”
AP
McCaffery — who is a former member of Iowa’s men’s basketball team and the son of University of Pennsylvania head coach Fran McCaffery — was hired as an assistant coach at Butler under head coach Thad Matta last September.
The next month both couples celebrated Halloween together in Indianapolis.
Clark and McCaffery celebrated two years together in April, and Haliburton and Jones commemorated their sixth anniversary that same month.
The Pacers organization and the Fever franchise are publicly supportive of each other — and Haliburton attended a number of Fever games last season, while Clark supported the Pacers at their games.
Clark joined a t-shirt toss with the Pacers’ hype squad when she attended Game 2 their first round playoff series against the Bucks last month.
The Pacers face the Knicks in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Finals on Friday in New York.
