On paper, the Thunder have the edge, but on the bench, the Pacers have their not-so-secret weapon: Rick Carlisle

The Pacers coach is looking to become one of four coaches to win titles with two different franchises.

Tyrese Haliburton hated Rick Carlisle.

See, Haliburton, a teenage boy in Oshkosh, Wisc., was a huge Big Three Heat fan, and was not pleased in 2011 when Carlisle led the underdog Mavericks to a six-game Finals victory over LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh.

“The fact I’m here with him is pretty full circle,” Haliburton said Tuesday before the Pacers departed for Oklahoma City – with a side trip to Tulsa in order to avoid the storms that were hitting OKC. “I couldn’t stand him at the time. I ask these guys about the 2011 run all the time. They went into a lot of their playoff series the way we did, as an underdog. They had a fuck-it-mentality, excuse my language. As long as guys here believe, anything is possible. No analyst or quote-unquote expert will pick us and that’s fine.”

Sam thing for Myles Turner. He’s a Dallas-area native, but like so many, he was enamored with the team they called the Heatles. He grew up having a relationship with Chris Bosh, so he was rooting for Miami.

“For me, personally, I never saw Dallas like that (during the Finals run),” Turner said. “We had local vendors out there selling Finals T-shirts and everybody was hyped. There’s such a buzz now around Indianapolis. You see what the Finals do for a city. These fans deserve this.”

Here’s what you need to remember about the 2011 Finals. The Mavs were prohibitive underdogs. They finish tied for second in the Western Conference and figured to be little more than a foil for the Heat’s traveling road show. They weren’t as big an underdog as the Pacers are heading into this year’s series with the Thunder – the Pacers have the second-longest odds of any Finals team in the last 20 years – but they were close. This was supposed to be a coronation of the Heat’s holy hoops trinity.