Pacers Show Best Quarter to Atlanta : NBA playoffs: Indiana opens second half with 12-2 run, beats the Hawks, 98-79, to advance to Eastern Conference finals.

The little team that they said couldn’t, just did.

The Indiana Pacers, among the longest of NBA longshots as the season began, advanced to the Eastern Conference finals Thursday night with a 98-79 victory over the Atlanta Hawks before 16,552 at the Market Square Arena.

The victory gave Indiana the series, 4-2, and sent the Pacers into the finals against the New York Knick-Chicago Bull series winner.

The Pacers broke open what had been a tense defensive game in the third quarter. They held a 38-35 halftime lead and blitzed the Hawks, 12-2, in the first four minutes of the second half. When the third quarter ended, Indiana had a 72-51 lead, and the fans were making more noise than the cars at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

“That was probably the best quarter we’ve had all season,” Coach Larry Brown said. “Rik Smits has been struggling a little bit, but his play tonight was just incredible. He didn’t worry about double-teams. He just went up and shot the ball.”

Smits, the 7-foot-4 center who had been all but invisible the last two games, scored 11 points in the third quarter and broke out of a scoring slump with 27 points for the game. Most of his scoring came from jump shots around the baseline, where the Hawks couldn’t combat his height advantage, especially after Jon Koncak, Atlanta’s seven-foot center, was injured.

Smits had scored only six points in the Pacers’ 88-76 loss in Game 5 last Tuesday and was four for 16 from the field in his last two games. Thursday night, he was 12 of 16.

“I thought Smits was just unstoppable tonight,” Koncak said. “The Pacers are a totally different team with him out there on the floor.”

The big center from little Marist had plenty of help. Six Pacers were in double figures.

Indiana also turned a suffocating defense on the Hawks, not only blocking shots and stealing the ball, but keeping the Atlanta shooters off balance.

Mookie Blaylock, the Hawks’ perpetual-motion guard who stole two games from Indiana in the series, made four three-pointers to lead Atlanta with 23 points. Danny Manning had 21.

“I think the difference was that, after the half, we came out and missed some easy shots and they came out and hit most of theirs,” Manning said. “I thought I missed quite a few that I usually make.”

For the first time this season, three Pacers had 10 rebounds. Indiana led the rebounding, 49-34.

“I just can’t say enough about our defense,” said Haywoode Workman, the Pacers’ playmaker, who had 10 assists. “When this team plays good strong defense, we can beat anybody in the league.”

Late in the fourth quarter, when it was apparent the Pacers were the winners, veteran Byron Scott made a statement of his own by dribbling nearly the length of the court and slamming home a dunk. The crowd’s roar nearly took the roof off the Market Square Arena.

Scott, who has three NBA championship rings from his Laker career, couldn’t say enough about his new teammates.

“Our defense just shut them down,” he said. “We are becoming stronger and stronger each game. When I came to this team, I thought we could end up like this, and these guys have answered the call.”

They surely answered the call at home. It was the Pacers’ eighth victory in a row here and the 15th in their last 17 games overall, including the regular season. They are 4-0 at home in the playoffs.