How do the Pacers keep doing this?

The Indiana Pacers did it again.

Their latest death-defying act in a postseason full of great escapes saw them steal Game 1 of the Finals from the 68-win Oklahoma City Thunder despite turning the ball over 24 times, getting 17 fewer shooting possessions, trailing for nearly 47 minutes, and facing a fourth-quarter deficit as large as 15 points.

The comeback was punctuated, once again, by a Tyrese Haliburton dagger that gave Indiana its first lead of the game with 0.3 seconds on the clock. That shot came immediately after Shai Gilgeous-Alexander missed a 12-foot pull-up at the other end that he can make in his sleep.

Even after watching them do this over and over, it really didn't feel like the Pacers were going to be able to pull that one off - not against a team as good and defensively dialed in as OKC. It didn't even really feel like the Thunder let go of the rope in the last few minutes. They had one or two static offensive possessions, missed a couple of great looks, gave a couple of bad fouls, surrendered a key offensive rebound, and that was all it took for victory to be wrenched from their grasp by the greatest playoff comeback team we've ever seen.

At the other end, Obi Toppin couldn't miss. Myles Turner banked in a side-step three from the wing. Aaron Nesmith hit one off an improvised pitch play in the corner, with his body turned sideways and two defenders in his grill. Andrew Nembhard hit a filthy stepback over Gilgeous-Alexander. Pascal Siakam crashed from the corner for a putback. And Indiana sustained its defensive pressure, setting the stage for Haliburton's heroics.

How does this keep happening? How does the team that led by double digits in the fourth quarter wind up feeling like the one that had no margin for error? A dash of luck has been involved, sure, but all spring long, whenever they've had their backs against the wall, the Pacers have found a way to capitalize on every mistake while making almost none themselves.

I could tell you how improbable this all continues to be, how we haven't seen a heist like that in any Finals game in the play-by-play era, or how Haliburton is having by far the most clutch postseason in NBA history. But odds are you know all that already. So, let's try to identify some of the factors that have enabled the Pacers to make out like bandits time and again.

The most important ingredient is their 3-point shooting proficiency. They've hit another level in the playoffs, jumping from 37% in the regular season to a league-best 42% from deep. They're one of the rare teams that can create legitimate five-out spacing on offense while still being defensively viable at every stage of the playoffs. Needless to say, none of their comebacks happen without 3-point barrages from a variety of sources, be it Haliburton, Nesmith, Nembhard, Turner, or Toppin.

That always figured to be one of the key battlegrounds in the series, considering OKC's penchant for giving up threes - particularly from the corners - as a consequence of packing the paint and helping aggressively in the middle. The Pacers shot 10-of-16 on corner threes in Game 1. They went 5-for-8 from long range in the final nine minutes while erasing their 15-point deficit, and one of their three misses resulted in Siakam's putback that sliced the lead to one in the final minute.

That offensive rebound wasn't entirely coincidental, either. The Pacers' floor-spreading capabilities prompted the Thunder, who've started two big men together throughout the playoffs, to move center Isaiah Hartenstein to the bench and ultimately close the game with neither Hartenstein nor a struggling Chet Holmgren. That contributed to Indiana - the league's third-worst rebounding team - grabbing 13 offensive boards.

The egalitarian nature of the Pacers' offense has also benefited them in crunch time because opposing defenses don't always know where to focus their attention. It allows them to sow confusion and run decoy actions that successfully occupy potential help defenders. Unlike a lot of offenses this time of year, any play could realistically be run for anyone and nobody will hold the ball for very long.

In Game 1, for example, Haliburton's average touch time was less than half of Gilgeous-Alexander's. Siakam was the Pacers' leading scorer with 19 points, making them the first team in 12 years to win a Finals game without a 20-point scorer.

They have a lot of guys who can create off the bounce and are entrusted with initiating duties, which also played a big part in Game 1. For long stretches, they played through Siakam and relied on him to attack size mismatches. In the fourth quarter, with Haliburton struggling while being pressured on the ball and face-guarded away from it, Indiana gave the keys to Nembhard. The rugged third-year guard was incredibly strong with the ball, withstanding all manner of physicality and pressure to chisel his way into the paint in a way the more willowy Haliburton might not have been able to.

Conditioning also has to be mentioned here. The Pacers play a breakneck style that wears out opponents, which is why they're seemingly always able to execute with more precision in crunch time. Rick Carlisle runs a long rotation - he went 10 deep in Game 1 and played Haliburton and Siakam just 38 and 34 minutes, respectively - which allows the team to sustain its pace and extended ball pressure until the final buzzer.

There are other qualities of this team that are more ineffable and harder to quantify. The Pacers don't panic. When things aren't going their way, they'll rarely, if ever, abandon their principles or their identity. Poise and perseverance are how they limited their second-half turnovers to just five in Game 1 after coughing it up 19 times in the first half, all while continuing to run their quick-hitting offense. Sheer effort and stamina are how they held the rip-and-run Thunder to just seven points off 14 live-ball turnovers.

No matter what happens, they keep playing fast, they keep cutting, they keep moving the ball, they keep sprinting into ghost screens, they keep communicating on defense, they keep trusting one another. And with the game on the line, they know they can trust their superstar point guard, who's now 6-for-7 on shots to tie or take the lead in the final 90 seconds of regulation or overtime this postseason.

Here's the thing, though: Apart from Haliburton's ludicrous late-game shot-making, Indiana isn't the first or even the most talented team to contain all those different qualities. The Pacers are absolutely worth celebrating, marveling at, and possibly even trying to emulate, but you could replay this postseason literally a million times and not witness a spate of comeback wins like the one they've strung together over the last five weeks.

They're a great team, without a doubt, but certain aspects of their magical run simply defy explanation, and there's no sense trying to find logic in the inexplicable. What we can do is enjoy the hell out of this ride for as long as it lasts. We'll probably never experience anything like it again.

Joe Wolfond writes about the NBA for theScore.