1969–70 Indiana Pacers season

(Defeated Stars 4–2) The 1969–70 Indiana Pacers season was Indiana's third season in the ABA and third as a team. Near the end of the regular season, on April 12, 1970, the Pacers would record an ABA record-high 177 points scored in a match played against the Pittsburgh Pipers at home; as of March 27, 2025, their 177–135 win against Pittsburgh would be the highest overall scoring game the Pacers ever had when you include their history in the ABA (if you exclude it, however, their highest-scoring game happened on March 27, 2025, against the Washington Wizards in the NBA with a 162–109 blowout win). In fact, the Pacers' 177 points scored would be a professional basketball record for the most points scored by a team (either in the ABA or the NBA) by one team until both the Denver Nuggets (the current iteration of the Denver Rockets) and Detroit Pistons (who previously won the lowest-scoring NBA game ever recorded back when they were the Fort Wayne Pistons) would break the Pacers' ABA record on the same night on December 13, 1983, with Detroit winning the highest-scoring NBA game recorded (as of 2025) over Denver with a 186–184 triple-overtime score, as well as remain a record for the highest scoring effort by a team without going to overtime in either league and would still remain the third-highest scoring effort ever recorded by a current NBA team if the ABA's records were to count alongside the NBA's records. The Pacers finished first in the Eastern Division and won their first ABA title in their second ABA Finals appearance in franchise history after previously losing the ABA Finals the previous season to the Oakland Oaks (who would move to Washington, D.C. to become the Washington Caps following that season's conclusion due to financial troubles on the Oaks' end).

In the Eastern Division semifinals, the Pacers swept the newly created Carolina Cougars, who were born following new ownership for the previously existing Houston Mavericks agreeing to move that team following their final season under that name to the state of North Carolina as the ABA's first ever regional franchise, in four games. In the Eastern Division finals, the Pacers eliminated their stateside archrivals, the Kentucky Colonels, in five games. The Western Division champion Los Angeles Stars (who made it to the ABA Finals unexpectedly to many people following the team due to them expecting another losing season at the time and only barely making it to the 1970 ABA Playoffs after making it as the #4 seed in their division by the end of the season) appeared in the ABA Championships for the first time, with the Stars being defeated by the Pacers in six games in what later turned out to be the Stars' final games in the city of Los Angeles. Following this season's conclusion, due to over half of the ABA teams from this season moving and/or rebranding their squads to start the 1970–71 ABA season, the Pacers would move from the Eastern Division to the Western Division (which included the recently moved and rebranded Utah Stars, who would become divisional rivals for the Pacers until they folded operations during the 1975–76 ABA season) for the rest of their ABA tenure (excluding a majority of the 1975–76 ABA season leading to there being no divisions at all following the folding of three teams, including the Stars, by the start of December 1975), with them not returning to play as an Eastern team until the 1980–81 NBA season.