Given the way Indiana guard Tyrese Haliburton was limping out of the postgame news conference after Game 5 of the NBA Finals, it’s safe to assume he’s a fan of the schedule right now.

Put simply, he could use a couple of days off — at least.

Haliburton has a lower leg injury — no one’s saying exactly what it is, whether it’s an ankle, calf or something else — and it seems to be the sort that, if this were a back-to-back in December, he’d likely be missing at least one game. But these are the finals, this is June, and there are no back-to-backs in the playoffs. By the time the league reaches its final series, two-day breaks between games aren’t uncommon.

“Amen to that,” the Pacers are probably saying.

“The Finals, the NBA Finals, is one of the great stages in all of sports,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. “And so, it shouldn’t happen quickly and abruptly. It should happen at the right pace and the right tempo, and the space in between games does help player health. That’s a very important aspect of it.”

This year’s finals included a one-day gap between games only once, separating Games 3 and 4 in Indianapolis. Every other game has come with a two-day break, including Game 6 at Indy on Thursday night. If the Pacers win to force a Game 7 back in Oklahoma City, there will be two more days off before the deciding game Sunday night.

It should be noted that the Thunder don’t mind the drawn-out schedule either.

“We recover,” Oklahoma City coach Mark Daigneault said. “The finals are great because you get extra time in between the games. I think that’s huge in terms of rest and recovery at this time of the year. I think it’s good for the product. I think it’s a good thing and by the time the ball goes up in the air, everybody is going to be ready to play and everybody is going to be excited.”

Even players who aren’t injured appreciate the extra rest.

“It’s a lot of games. It’s tiring, for sure,” Thunder star and league MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander said. “But every game is tiring. When you’re giving your all, every possession, you’re going to be tired. I don’t think I’m the only one out there that is tired.”

It wasn’t always this way. 

The first NBA Finals were in 1947, before the league was even called the NBA — it was the Basketball Association of America then — and before the title round was known as the finals. (After being called the BAA Finals in the early years, it was known as the NBA World Championship Series until the mid-1980s.)

That first year, Philadelphia and Chicago played five games in seven days. Such a pace would be unthinkable now; the NBA hasn’t even scheduled that kind of stretch in the regular season for years.

Minneapolis and New York did the same — five games in seven days — in 1953. Boston and the Los Angeles Lakers played a five-game series in eight days in 1965. Golden State and Washington played four games in eight days in 1975, with two cross-country flights. And that was long before charter flights became standard in the NBA.

“We’re fortunate in this series. Travel is pretty reasonable. Not a long distance,” Carlisle said. He’s well aware that this finals matchup has the shortest distance between the two cit-ies — Oklahoma City and Indianapolis are 688 miles apart by air — of any finals series since 1956. “Not a long flight. I do believe it’s a better circumstance for the overall integrity of the competition.”

The two-day gaps give everyone — Haliburton, coaches, everyone — more time to prepare. Daigneault, who has kids ages 3 and 2, said it even gives him more time to be a dad between games.

“I do twice as much parenting,” he said, “not twice as much work.” Carlisle said the extra time lets coaches study more film, though by this point the Thunder and Pacers know each other about as well as possible. Haliburton will get another 24 hours of whatever treatment plan the Pacers’ medical staff can devise to get his leg ready for Game 6.

“All these guys playing in this series on both sides. I think it’s pretty clear now that we’re going into the sixth game, and all the attention and the crowd noise in both arenas, everything — this is a lifetime opportunity,” Carlisle said. “Not many guys are going to sit, even if they are a little banged up.”