Gregg Doyel

gregg.doyel@indystar.com

INDIANAPOLIS – Lance Stephenson was knocking down 3-pointers and bellowing along with the loudest crowd of the season.

“This is my (expletive) house!” Stephenson was screaming Thursday night at Bankers Life Fieldhouse, the noise swallowed whole by a crowd of 17,923 that had come to see the Indiana Pacers stand up to the defending NBA champion Cleveland Cavaliers.

The Pacers were standing up to Cleveland, and more. They were humiliating the Cavs. Myles Turner was dunking on Tristan Thompson, Paul George was just about triple-doubling, Lance Stephenson was bellowing and the noise was deafening.

"It was effortless," Paul George was saying, remembering the good times Thursday night. "We were feeding off the crowd. It was effortless."

And then it was gone. The emotion. The good times. The crowd noise.

The crowd.

A sea of empty seats turned its back on the Pacers as Paul George and his teammates walked off the court after this 119-114 loss to Cleveland, a loss that puts them in a 3-0 hole – on the verge of being swept Sunday in Game 4 and starting an offseason that could bring chaos.

That’s a story for another day, but a loss like this leaves a stain that cannot be cleaned easily. This wasn’t just a blown lead, but historical ugliness. The Cavaliers trailed 74-49 at the half, making this the largest second-half comeback in NBA playoff history.

• EPIC: Pacers squander at 26-point lead

• REACTION: Oh, there was plenty

• INSIDER:Bankers Life Fieldhouse becomes James' house

What's next? Well, Sunday is next. Game 4. Either the Pacers win that game and send this series back to Cleveland, or – more likely – the Cavaliers finish off a 4-0 sweep that will start a fascinating offseason for the Pacers. The coach, the front office, the superstar – who comes back after a season like this? We’ll see. But again, that’s a story for another day.

For now, the story is this team’s character: Does it have any? Not in the second half on Thursday night, when the Pacers coughed up a 25-point lead. When the collapse was finished, coach Nate McMillan walked into his silent locker room and gave his team a challenge.

“As I told the team,” McMillan was saying late Thursday night, “Sunday’s game will be a test of our character. It just comes down to that: Who’ll show up and fight to win a game?”

Now’s really not a good time to ask that question, Nate, because the answer seems too harsh. Who’ll show up and fight? “Nobody” would seem a sensible place to start after a second half that saw the Pacers shoot 25.5 percent while allowing the Cavs to shoot 55.3 percent from the floor overall, 57.1 percent on 3-pointers (12-for-21).

“Here we are, up 26 (late in the second quarter) and had a chance to put our foot on their throats and we came out relaxed,” Paul George said of the third quarter. “They were walking into open 3-pointers. Can’t do that.”

A loss like this doesn’t happen with a goat here or there. A loss like this, a barnyard-smelling defeat, has a herd of goats. Not that it’s his fault, but even Paul George – on a night he had 36 points, 15 rebounds and nine assists – cannot elude some blame. As good as he was overall, he was lousy in the third quarter. George didn’t score a single point as the Cavs outscored the Pacers 35-17, cutting a 74-49 halftime deficit to a more manageable 91-84 entering the fourth quarter.

Myles Turner, who essentially had his manhood challenged after Game 2 by George, did not meet that challenge. While he did have that monstrous dunk on Tristan Thompson early in the second quarter, Turner finished with six points and five rebounds; the same totals his posted in Game 2. He was 3-for-12 from the floor overall, and in the fourth quarter he stayed as far away from Thompson as he could, shooting his only three 3-pointers of the game. And missing them all.

McMillan did himself no favors with the Pacers’ increasingly angry fan base by giving Monta Ellis – whom he removed from the starting lineup after a dismal performance in Game 2 – so many minutes in the fourth quarter. Ellis was stuck guarding LeBron James too many times, and James feasted. He scored 15 points in the final quarter, many on Ellis, who shouldn’t be blamed for that. Not his fault he was on the court in the first place.

James finished with 41 points, 13 rebounds and 12 assists, an astonishing triple-double that dragged the Cavaliers to the lead midway through the fourth quarter and led to this bizarre sight: The Pacers fouling one of the greatest players in NBA history, because for all his skills, James is a head case at the foul line. He was 7-for-14 from the line on Thursday night, and missed four free throws in the fourth quarter.

James couldn’t hit a free throw but he was burying 3-pointers from Stephen Curry range, scoring from 25 feet, then 27 feet, then 32 feet, and running past the scorer’s table and nodding his head at the fans in the first few rows.

George was 10-for-28 from the floor, 5-for-15 on 3-pointers, and was reduced in the second half to jumping into James on shots, looking for whistles that weren’t coming and then flapping his arms in anger at the nearest referee.

In a season that has had far too many of them, this was the worst loss of 2016-17 for the Pacers. It’s possible this was the worst loss in franchise history, given that no team in NBA history – not this team, not any team – had blown a second half playoff lead as big as the one the Pacers blew on Thursday night.

The offseason can’t get here soon enough. On the bright side, it could be less than 72 hours away.

Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at@GreggDoyelStar or atwww.facebook.com/gregg.doyel