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Using a free app to hide your internet traffic? The company behind it could be quietly tied to China, where the government maintains the ability to surveil all user data, according to a report published Thursday by the Technology Transparency Project.

The report accuses 17 Apps — six on Apple’s App Store, four on the Google Play Store and seven on both — of having undisclosed ties to China. In several cases, the TTP linked the app developers to a prominent Chinese cybersecurity company, Qihoo 360, which is under U.S. government sanctions.

The apps are all virtual private networks, or VPNs, which allow a user to divert their internet traffic through a company’s internet connection. With names like VPNify, Ostrich VPN and Now VPN, none of them make overt references to China or Chinese ownership on the app stores.

VPNs are primarily used to either protect a user’s privacy by making it harder for a website to know who’s visiting them, or to skirt around censorship measures. But unless a VPN company takes significant steps to automatically and permanently delete its users’ search histories, a company is likely to keep records of its customers’ internet activity.

That is particularly notable if the company is Chinese, as national law there stipulates that intelligence and law enforcement agencies do not need a warrant to view any personal data that is stored there.

“VPNs are of particular concern because anyone using a VPN has the entirety of their online activity routed through that application,” said Katie Paul, the TTP’s director.

“When it comes to Chinese-owned VPNs, that means this data can be turned over to the Chinese government based on China’s state laws,” Paul said.

Justin Sherman, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who studies data privacy, told NBC News that using a Chinese-owned VPN would be tantamount to handing over one’s browsing history to Beijing.

“Capturing data via a VPN could let the Chinese government see everything from websites a person is reading that criticize the Chinese state, to the corporate databases and private portals that person might pull up (and then log into) on the internet for work,” he said.

The TTP, a tech-focused arm of the Campaign for Accountability, an investigative nonprofit that seeks to expose “corruption, negligence, and unethical behavior,” previously published a report on Chinese VPN apps on April 1. Apple soon took down three of the apps with alleged ties to Qihoo 360: Thunder VPN, Snap VPN and Signal Secure VPN. The other apps — Turbo VPN and VPN Proxy Master, which are also available on the Google Play Store, as well as three others that Google offers — are all still available.

None of the apps are listed as being developed directly by Qihoo 360. Instead, they are developed by Singapore-based companies including Lemon Seed, Lemon Clove, Autumn Breeze and Innovative Connecting. The TPP cited business filings in China that show Qihoo 360 saying it had acquired those companies in 2019, and Corporate registration documents for those companies in the Cayman Islands from March that all list the director as a top Qihoo 360 employee.

NBC News reached out to developers listed for the 17 apps. Only one claimed not to have ties to China: WireVPN, where an employee claimed in an email that the company is “an independent service” with “no ties to Chinese entities or government organizations.”

“We are neither affiliated with Qihoo 360 nor any other PRC-based enterprises, and our operations are entirely autonomous,” the employee said.

However, WireVPN’s privacy policy makes clear that users are expected to adhere to Chinese law and bans them from “Violating the basic principles established by the Chinese Constitution” and “Violating the traditional virtues of the Chinese nation, social morality, rational morality, and socialist spiritual civilization.”

Qihoo 360 didn’t respond to a request for comment. But China Daily, a state-run newspaper, has reported that its cybersecurity clients include the Chinese military and “at least eight ministries” of the Chinese government. In a 2016 press release, the company seemed to indicate it was in the VPN business, saying “Qihoo 360 also provides users with secure access points to the Internet via its market leading web browsers and application stores.”

Both Apple and Google declined to address the specific apps that TTP highlighted as tied to Qihoo 360 and told NBC News that they follow U.S. laws regarding sanctions. Neither bans VPN app developers simply for following Chinese law.

Peter Micek, general counsel at Access Now, a tech policy and human rights advocacy nonprofit, told NBC News that he was surprised to see the tech companies had potentially overlooked a sanctioned company offering apps under innocuous developer names.

“It seems like this project has done the homework and due diligence that Apple and Google should have done, and it does seem like those ties would constitute indirect contact with, transactions with folks who are sanctioned,” he said. Tech companies can sometimes face significant fines for violating sanctions, Micek said.

Sanctions are put in place by the federal government as a penalty on foreign entities and individuals, preventing U.S. companies and individuals from doing business with them. They are often imposed after a foreign entity or individual is shown to have conducted some sort of condemned behavior or have links to condemned groups, such as cybercriminals or terrorist organizations. Qihoo 360 faced sanctions from the Commerce Department in 2020, which said the company could become involved in supplying materials to the Chinese military. The sanctions prevent American companies from exporting technology or software to Qihoo 360. It’s not clear if app stores hosting apps tied to Qihoo could be in violation of those sanctions.

The Commerce Department did not respond to a request for comment.

INDIANAPOLIS — Early in the second quarter of Game 3 of the NBA Finals, the Indiana Pacers’ home crowd was in a bit of a lull.

After leading nearly the entire first quarter, the Oklahoma City Thunder began the second period with an eight-point advantage, a sobering continuation from Game 2, which the Thunder led for the last 38 minutes of play.

Despite it being the first finals game in Indiana in 25 years, the energy in the arena was fading.

But then T.J. McConnell went to work.

In the first three and minutes and 52 seconds of the second, Indiana went on a 15-4 run, taking its first lead of the finals since the first quarter of Game 2.

In that time, McConnell recorded four assists, three steals, two points and one offensive rebound — a scintillating stretch of play that brought a tense home crowd back to life.

“He’s a guy that inspires a lot of people,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said postgame. “He inspires our team a lot.”

“His energy is unbelievable,” guard Tyrese Haliburton said. “You guys know he’s definitely a crowd favorite. I joke with him, I call him the ‘Great White Hope.’ He does a great job of bringing energy in this building.”

“He’s just so dynamic in terms of running the floor for us,” forward Pascal Siakam added. “And when you add those steals and just bringing the crowd into the game the way he does, he was special tonight.”

McConnell’s energy boost and clutch play played a critical role in Indiana’s 116-107 win, which also gave the team a 2-1 lead in a series that very few expected the Pacers to win. McConnell finished the game with 10 points, five assists and five steals, the first player in NBA history to post those numbers off the bench in a finals game. He was also a plus-12 in only 15 minutes.

Three of McConnell’s five steals came via what’s become his signature play — lurking in the backcourt and taking advantage of unsuspecting and/or lazy inbounds passes for turnovers. Two of those steals led to points for Indiana, including a game-tying bucket in the fourth quarter, and all of them drew huge reactions from the crowd.

McConnell, who is listed at 6’1”, is the shortest player on either team in the finals. But despite taking up little space on the court, and playing the second-fewest bench minutes on the team, his impact was outsized.

“In a series like this what’s so important is the margins,” Haliburton said. “You have to win in the margins. It’s not necessarily who can make the most shots or anything. It’s taking care of the ball, rebounding, little things like that…[McConnell] did a great job of consistently getting there and making hustle play after hustle play, and sticking with it, and I thought we did a great job of just feeding off of what he was doing.”

The entire Indiana bench, in particular, seemed to feed off McConnell.

The Pacers’ backups made a massive difference in Game 3, outscoring the Thunder reserves 49-18. Pacers guard Bennedict Mathurin was the game’s leading scorer, racking up 27 points in only 22 minutes.

A 10-year veteran in his sixth season with Indiana, McConnell has always been the type of player to make the most of his opportunity. He hasn’t started more than eight games in a season since 2017, and he’s never averaged more than 26.3 minutes a night in his career.

On Wednesday, though, he changed the course of the game, and perhaps even the series.

“He’s been like a big brother to me since I’ve gotten here,” Haliburton said. “You look at T.J. McConnell and his story is unbelievable. So I just enjoy being able to play alongside him and the energy he gives his teammates in this building is — he’s a lot of fun.”

McALESTER, Okla. — Oklahoma prepared to execute a man Thursday whose transfer to state custody was expedited by the Trump administration.

John Fitzgerald Hanson, 61, is set to receive a lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. Hanson was sentenced to die after he was convicted of carjacking, kidnapping and killing a Tulsa woman in 1999.

Hanson, whose name in some federal court records is George John Hanson, had been serving a life sentence in federal prison in Louisiana for several unrelated federal convictions. Federal officials transferred him to Oklahoma custody in March to follow through on President Donald Trump’s sweeping executive order to more actively support the death penalty.

Hanson’s attorneys argued in a last-minute appeal that he did not receive a fair clemency hearing last month, claiming that one of the board members who denied him clemency was biased because he worked for the Tulsa County District Attorney’s Office when Hanson was prosecuted. A district court judge this week temporary halted the execution, but an appeals court later cleared the way for it.

The U.S. Supreme Court late Wednesday rejected a separate appeal that alleged a key witness testified against Hanson in exchange for favorable treatment from prosecutors in a criminal case, information that was never disclosed to his defense team.

Prosecutors allege Hanson and accomplice, Victor Miller, kidnapped Mary Bowles from a Tulsa shopping mall. Prosecutors allege the pair drove Bowles to a gravel pit near Owasso, where Miller shot and killed property owner Jerald Thurman. The two then drove Bowles a short distance away, where Hanson shot and killed Bowles, according to prosecutors. Miller received a no-parole life prison sentence for his role in the crimes.

During last month’s clemency hearing, Hanson expressed remorse for his involvement in the crimes and apologized to the victims’ families.

“I’m not an evil person,” Hanson said via a video link from the prison. “I was caught in a situation I couldn’t control. I can’t change the past, but I would if I could.”

Hanson’s attorneys acknowledged he participated in the kidnapping and carjacking, but said there was no definitive evidence that he shot and killed Bowles. They painted Hanson as a troubled youth with autism and who was controlled and manipulated by the domineering Miller.

Renting is taking off in the suburbs as homeownership remains out of reach for many would-be buyers.

Between 2018 and 2023, rentership surged by at least 5 percentage points in 11 out of 20 suburbs surrounding the largest U.S. metro areas, according to a recent analysis by Point2Homes, a rental market research company.

During the same period, 15 suburbs went from being predominantly composed of homeowners to majority-renter communities. The trend spans fast-growing Sun Belt metros like Dallas, Houston and Miami as well as Northeastern cities like Boston and Philadelphia.

In five of those top 20 metro areas — Dallas, Minneapolis, Boston, Tampa and Baltimore — the suburbs are gaining renters faster than the urban centers they surround, Point2Homes found. The share of residents who rent surged in the Dallas suburbs by 17.6% from 2018 to 2023, while that rate rose just 7.9% in the city itself — with the nearby suburbs of Frisco, McKinney and Grand Prairie each gaining over 5,000 renter households apiece during that period.

Back in 2018, it was harder to buy a home in Dallas County, where most of the city sits, than it was in the metro area’s more suburban counties, like those including Frisco, McKinney and Grand Prairie — suburbs where the ranks of renters have swelled faster than virtually anywhere else, Point2Homes found. That’s no longer the case: Homebuying is now more difficult in the suburban counties surrounding Dallas than it is in Dallas County itself, the NBC News Home Buyer Index shows.

Housing affordability is a nationwide problem spanning cities and suburbs alike.

Mortgage costs have risen sharply since the pandemic, pricing out many prospective buyers in all sorts of in-demand areas. Average interest rates on the popular 30-year fixed home loan currently hover just under 7%, levels not seen since before the 2008 financial crisis. In a market this tough, some housing experts say the proliferation of rental properties has helped keep suburban lifestyles accessible to people who otherwise couldn’t afford them.

“You have your own land, you have kids or you have a dog, and you want that space,” said N. Edward Coulson, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, and the director of its Center for Real Estate. “They get all that amenity from having a single-family home.”

Mark, a suburbanite just outside Chicago who asked to be identified by his first name to avoid professional blowback for weighing in on hot-button housing issues, said the type of property he has rented for three years is out of budget for him to buy. He estimated many comparable properties in the area would cost 30% more in monthly housing payments than his current rent, and he’s considering leaving the area so he can purchase someplace else.

“If I want to stay here, it’s basically not tenable,” Mark said.

Andrew Decker, a renter in Lake Villa, Illinois, halfway between Chicago and Milwaukee, said he and his family would love to buy the property where they live now, which he said was offered to him for $340,000.

“We would like to make it our forever home if we could afford it, but it’s just so expensive,” Decker said. “If they were to come at me and tell me that, ‘Hey, you can buy this house for 200 grand today,’ I’d pull the trigger tomorrow. I wouldn’t even hesitate. But 340’s crazy.”

Tara Raghuveer, who runs the tenant advocacy group Tenant Union Federation, said affordability issues that have fueled the suburban rental boom threaten to push people farther from urban cores.

“As people are moved out of the city, they’re further from transportation, they might be further from employment, they might be living in homes that are not necessarily connected to other people like them, which impacts things like child care, Social Security,” Raghuveer said.

Landlords, however, tout the benefits that come from renting in the ’burbs.

“The ability to have one payment that covers all your expenses generally — you don’t have to deal with the mortgage payment and the home insurance and maybe the HOA and then a lot of maintenance expense, so on — has been something that for a lot of people has been worth it,” said George Ratiu, vice president of research at the National Apartment Association trade group, which represents rental operators.

Developers have also been building different types of properties for suburban tenants, including multifamily complexes. Jay Parsons, a housing economist and host of “The Rent Roll” podcast, points to the rise of “suburban downtowns,” partly fueled by the pandemic-era shift to remote work. These mixed-use developments are typically aimed at offering younger families a balance between urban convenience and suburban amenities, he said.

“You can still be close to your job. You can be close to nice restaurants and shops but live in a suburban area where you’re still using a car, and you still have probably a rent that’s more affordable than living in most downtowns,” Parsons said.

Coulson doesn’t expect the appeal of the suburbs to fade anytime soon, which could prop up prices in many of them for buyers and renters alike.

“If you work downtown, it’s still an advantage to live downtown, but it’s not as great an advantage” as it used to be, he said, now that remote work remains commonplace — despite an ongoing drumbeat of return-to-office mandates. “What that does is also raise the cost of living in the suburbs, because now more people want to live in the suburbs.”

“That’s a dynamic that’s going to have to work itself out a little bit more before we know the final impact on suburban versus downtown pricing,” he said.

An Air India plane with 242 people on board crashed Thursday near a major international airport in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad, the airline and the country’s government said.

Air India, the country’s flagship carrier, said in a post on X that Flight 171 from Ahmedabad to London Gatwick had been “involved in an incident” and that it was “ascertaining the details and will share further updates at the earliest.”

The flight was scheduled to depart at 1:10 p.m. local time (3:40 a.m. ET). Reuters reported that 242 people were on board and cited police in adding that the plane crashed into a civilian area.

“Shocked and devastated to learn about the flight crash in Ahmedabad,” said Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu, India’s civil aviation minister said in a post on X. “I am personally monitoring the situation and have directed all aviation and emergency response agencies to take swift and coordinated action.”

“Rescue teams have been mobilised, and all efforts are being made to ensure medical aid and relief support are being rushed to the site,” he added. “My thoughts and prayers are with all those on board and their families.”

London’s Gatwick airport confirmed the crash in a post on X. “We can confirm that flight AI171 that crashed on departure from Ahmedabad Airport today was due to land at London Gatwick at 18:25,” it said.

The aircraft involved is a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, according to flight tracking site Flightradar24, which said it received the last signal from the aircraft just seconds after takeoff.

This is a developing story. Please check back for further updates.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Seven Arkansas families filed a lawsuit Wednesday challenging an upcoming state requirement that public school classrooms have posted copies of the Ten Commandments, saying the new law will violate their constitutional rights.

The federal lawsuit challenges a measure Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed into law earlier this year, similar to a requirement enacted by Louisiana and one that Texas’ governor has said he’ll sign.

The Arkansas law takes effect in August and requires the Ten Commandments to be prominently displayed in public school classrooms and libraries.

“Permanently posting the Ten Commandments in every classroom and library — rendering them unavoidable — unconstitutionally pressures students into religious observance, veneration, and adoption of the state’s favored religious scripture,” the lawsuit said.

The suit was filed on behalf of the families by the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State and the Freedom from Religion Foundation. The lawsuit names four school districts in northwest Arkansas — Fayetteville, Bentonville, Siloam Springs and Springdale — as defendants.

A spokesperson for Fayetteville schools said the district would not comment on pending litigation, while the other three districts did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

A spokesperson for Attorney General Tim Griffin said his office was reviewing the lawsuit and considering options.

Attorneys for the families, who are Jewish, Unitarian Universalist or nonreligious, said they planned to ask the federal judge in Fayetteville for a preliminary injunction blocking the law’s enforcement. The attorneys say the law violates longstanding Supreme Court precedent and the families’ First Amendment rights.

“By imposing a Christian-centric translation of the Ten Commandments on our children for nearly every hour of every day of their public-school education, this law will infringe on our rights as parents and create an unwelcoming and religiously coercive school environment for our children,” Samantha Stinson, one of the plaintiffs, said in a news release.

Louisiana was the first state to enact such a requirement, and a federal judge blocked the measure before it was to take effect Jan 1. Proponents of Louisiana’s law say that ruling only applies to the five school boards listed in the suit, but The Associated Press is unaware of any posters being displayed in schools as the litigation continues.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran and the United States will hold a sixth round of negotiations over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program this Sunday in Oman, the sultanate’s foreign minister said Thursday, as regional tensions have spiked in recent days.

The announcement by Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi comes as the U.S. is drawing down the presence of staffers who are not deemed essential to operations in the Middle East and their loved ones due to the potential for regional unrest.

Meanwhile, there have been warnings that ships could be targeted in regional waters over the tensions.

Al-Busaidi made the announcement on the social platform X.

“I am pleased to confirm the 6th round of Iran US talks will be held in Muscat this Sunday the 15th,” he wrote.

Iran had been saying for days that there would be talks, but Oman, which is serving as the mediator, had not confirmed them until now.

There was no immediate comment from the U.S.

Reaching a deal is one of several diplomatic priorities being juggled by U.S. President Donald Trump and his trusted friend and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff. An accord could see the U.S. lift some of its crushing economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for it drastically limiting or ending its enrichment of uranium.

But a failure to get a deal could see tensions further spike in a Middle East on edge over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.

Iran’s economy, long ailing, could enter a free fall that could worsen the simmering unrest at home. Israel or the U.S. might carry out long-threatened airstrikes targeting Iranian nuclear facilities. And Tehran may decide to fully end its cooperation with the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog and rush toward a bomb.

Iran and the U.S. have held previous talks in Muscat and Rome.

Attorneys for Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man arrested by the government and sent to an El Salvador prison in error and then returned to the United States last week, argue in a court filing Wednesday that he man should be freed from jail pending trial.

“Mr. Abrego Garcia asks the Court for what he has been denied the past several months — due process,” attorneys for Abrego Garcia wrote in a memorandum opposing prosecutor’s efforts to keep him detained.

Abrego Garcia was returned to the United States on Friday to face federal charges that he was involved in a scheme to transport people in the United States who are not legally able to be in the country. He was in federal custody Wednesday night.

Abrego Garcia’s attorneys argued in Wednesday’s memo that he is not a flight risk, as prosecutors have argued. His attorneys say legal standards to keep him detained have not been met.

“The government isn’t even entitled to a detention hearing in this case — much less detention. Mr. Abrego Garcia should be released,” his attorneys wrote.

An arraignment and detention hearing is scheduled for Friday in Tennessee.

Abrego Garcia, 29, was arrested in Maryland on March 12, and the Department of Homeland Security claimed he was a member of the gang MS-13, which he denied.

The government then deported him Abrego Garcia to El Salvador where he was imprisoned in the Center for Terrorism Confinement — despite an immigration judge’s previous order that he not be sent to El Salvador.

A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return to the United States, which administration officials resisted.

The Trump administration then asked El Salvador to return Abrego Garcia to the United States last week to face human smuggling charges filed in Tennessee.

The case became a high-profile battle over whether the Trump administration was bound to return Abrego Garcia under the federal judge’s order. El Salvador President Nayib Bukele said at the White House in April that he would not return Abrego Garcia.

The matter went to the Supreme Court, which disputed the language of “effectuate” in the judge’s order but ruled that the Trump administration was required to “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia.

The two-count federal indictment unsealed in Tennessee charges Abrego Garcia with one count each of conspiracy to unlawfully transport illegal aliens for financial gain and unlawful transportation of illegal aliens for financial gain.

The indictment alleges that from about 2016 to 2025, he and others conspired to bring migrants illegally to the United States from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Ecuador and elsewhere, through Mexico and across the Texas-Mexico border.

Abrego Garcia and a co-conspirator “ordinarily picked up the undocumented aliens in Houston, Texas area” after they had crossed the border, the indictment alleges.

The pair then would transport “the undocumented aliens from Texas to other parts of the United States to further the aliens’ unlawful presence in the United States,” the indictment says.

Chris Newman, an attorney who represents Abrego Garcia’s family, said last week that the Trump administration for months engaged in “a campaign of disinformation, defamation against Kilmar and his family.”

Israel is considering taking military action against Iran — most likely without U.S. support — in the coming days, even as President Donald Trump is in advanced discussions with Tehran about a diplomatic deal to curtail its nuclear program, according to five people with knowledge of the situation.

Israel has become more serious about a unilateral strike on Iran as the negotiations between the United States and Iran appear closer to a preliminary or framework agreement that includes provisions about uranium enrichment that Israel views as unacceptable.

A unilateral strike or action by Israel against Iran would be a dramatic break with the Trump administration, which has argued against such a step.

The Trump administration is awaiting a response from Iran about a proposed framework of a nuclear deal, and Trump has publicly said Tehran has become more hard-line in its negotiations.

The notion of a new front in a simmering conflict has prompted the Trump administration to order all embassies within striking distance of Iranian missiles, aircraft and other assets (including missions in the Middle East, Northern Africa and Eastern Europe) to send cables with assessments about danger and about measures to mitigate risks to Americans and U.S. infrastructure, according to two sources familiar.

U.S. and other officials are on alert awaiting the possibility of Israel’s striking Iran, the officials said.

The White House has not briefed senior lawmakers on the issue, according to that aide and a U.S. official.

One major concern is Iran’s retaliating against U.S. personnel or assets in the region for any action.

Israel, which relies on intelligence or other direct and logistical assistance from the United States, may be in a position to take unilateral action against Tehran, the source familiar said. The sources familiar and officials were not aware of any planned U.S. involvement in the possible action. The United States could support with aerial refueling or intelligence sharing rather than kinetic support, but the sources and officials were not aware of plans for that, either, at this point.

U.S. officials have announced that the voluntary departure of nonessential employees from the region. And the Defense Department announced the voluntary departure of military families from locations all across the U.S. Central Command area of operations.

The CENTCOM commander, Gen. Erik Kurilla, was due to testify on Capitol Hill on Thursday, but the hearing was postponed late Wednesday without explanation. A source familiar said Kurilla had to focus on this unfolding situation.

Another possible factor: Iran is rebuilding its strategic air defenses, and manned strikes will soon be exponentially more dangerous for Israeli pilots. In October, Israel damaged nearly every one of Iran’s strategic air defense systems (mainly S-300s), but much of the damage was to the radars or other parts that can be rebuilt. It’s possible Israel’s window for manned strikes, without being threatened by Iran’s coordinated strategic air defenses, is closing.

While Israel would most likely prefer U.S. military and intelligence support for strikes — especially against Iranian nuclear facilities — it showed in October that it can do a lot alone.

Michael Knights of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy said the evacuation of nonessential staff members at the U.S. Embassy in Iraq will send a message to Tehran that Trump will not necessarily hold Israel back from launching a threatened attack on Iran.

“It’s about trying to get Iran to respect the president’s wishes,” Knights said.

Iran has failed to meet a two-month deadline Trump set to reach an agreement on the country’s nuclear activities, and he is frustrated, he said.

Both Knights and a source with knowledge of the matter said it was unclear whether Israel would undertake a limited military strike now or wait until nuclear negotiations played out further.

Trump has expressed growing frustration over Iran’s stance at recent indirect talks, portraying Tehran as inflexible and slow-moving.

“They’re just asking for things that you can’t do. They don’t want to give up what they have to give up,” Trump told reporters Monday. “They seek enrichment. We can’t have enrichment.”

The Indiana Pacers didn’t need one of their signature improbable comebacks to win Game 3 of the NBA Finals. And because of it, the Oklahoma City Thunder, once the heavy favorite to claim the league championship, will now need a rally of their own to keep their title hopes alive.

During a bravura fourth quarter Wednesday in Indianapolis, the Pacers unleashed their best defense of the series and hustle on offense to force Oklahoma City into uncharacteristic mistakes and earn a 116-107 win and a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven series.

NBA history suggests that the significance of this victory is hard to overstate: The team that wins Game 3 of an NBA Finals tied 1-1 goes on to win the series 80.5% of the time.

Game 4 is Friday in Indianapolis.

Oklahoma City scored only 18 points in the fourth quarter while making only six of its 17 shots, and it was outscored by 14 points in the game’s decisive final 12 minutes. Thunder star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the league’s Most Valuable Player, was held to just 1-of-3 shooting over that span largely under the harassing defense of Pacers forward Pascal Siakam.

Gilgeous-Alexander finished with 24 points but needed 20 shots, and he committed six turnovers.

Indiana is 24-3 this season when it holds opponents to fewer than 110 points — including 14-0 at home.

“It wasn’t all bad,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “But we definitely have to play our style and impose our will for more of the 48 minutes if we want to come on the road and get a win.”

Tyrese Haliburton scored 22 points with 11 assists and nine rebounds in a performance that was drastically more aggressive than three days earlier in a series-tying loss in Oklahoma City.

Yet the Pacers’ hero Wednesday was reserve Bennedict Mathurin, who failed to play even a single second during the opening quarter yet went on to score 27 points over his next 22 minutes. It was the highest-scoring performance by a reserve in the Finals since 2011, and his offensive outburst helped Indiana’s reserves outscore Oklahoma City’s 49-18.

At halftime, holding a 64-60 lead, Indiana looked like a different team from the one that returned from Oklahoma City with a 1-1 split.

It had scored more points in transition — one of the secrets of the team’s postseason success — in just two quarters than it had scored in either of the two previous games. Indiana finished with 17 fast-break points, nearly tying its total from the first two games of the series.

And the Pacers’ reserves had scored 30 points by halftime, which was not only nearly half the team’s total but also 19 more than Oklahoma City’s own bench, the same unit that had decisively swung Game 2 in the Thunder’s favor.

Indiana point guard TJ McConnell and Mathurin were primarily responsible for that turnaround by the Pacers’ bench. Shortly after they entered, the Pacers trailed by eight points, but McConnell had soon pestered the Thunder into three steals, including two in the backcourt. After turning up the pressure with each steal, McConnell gestured to his home crowd to turn up the noise.

And after having made five shots total in the first two games of the series, Mathurin made five of his six shots in the first half alone of Game 3.

“This is the kind of team that we are,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. “We need everybody to be ready. It’s not always going to be exactly the same guys that are stepping up with scoring and stuff like that. But this is how we got to do it, and we got to do it as a team. And we’ve got to make it as hard as possible on them.”

Their play earned Indiana a halftime lead. Yet Indiana’s poor finish to the third quarter, scoring just five points over the final five minutes, earned it an uphill challenge, and a five-point deficit, entering the final quarter. Oklahoma City’s vulnerability — perhaps its only one — was its lack of playoff experience, and it made the series’ return to Indiana a critical opportunity for the Pacers.

Oklahoma City indeed displayed unexpected flaws. Its 19 turnovers were its most of these playoffs.

Yet despite their youth, the Thunder at times also showed steely resolve. Rather than become rattled by playing on the road, Thunder All-Star Jalen Williams, in only his third season, led Oklahoma City out of tight jams with both his scoring and his passing late in the third quarter, and his layup with seven minutes to play in the fourth quarter helped erase what had been a four-point Indiana lead.

But Indiana, so good at comebacks throughout this postseason, played superbly in the final minutes in building and protecting its lead.

“I was proud of the way we bounced back from a rough ending to the third quarter,” Carlisle said. “That was something that could have shaken us up a lot.”

First with five minutes to play, and again just 35 seconds later, the Pacers grabbed two offensive rebounds that turned into four points when the Thunder failed to box out. Breakdowns like that helped Indiana extend its lead to eight with 3:20 to play.

“They really outplayed us in the fourth,” Daigneault said.

The Thunder have already faced a similar position in these playoffs, when they lost two of the first three games against Denver in the second round and ultimately came back to win the series.