The Pacers played their best, most balanced game in the United Center on Wednesday night to notch a big win over the Bulls in a brewing rivalry. Friday, it will be the Celtics, winners of four of their last five. Here’s another brief video preview of the Pacers’ upcoming game. Inspired by Twitter, I’ll give you my thoughts in 140 seconds or less.
You can follow Jared Wade (@8pts9secs) and I (@TimDonahue8p9s) during the game on Twitter for the Pacers’ side. From the Boston’ side, keep up with @celticshub and be sure to check out our True Hoop sister site: CelticsHub
Enough with the formalities, can the Pacers make Friday their 13th win of the season?
For my fellow stat geeks and obsessive-compulsives, I give you the fact sheets.
If you haven’t heard now, the Pacers’ mascot Boomer recently took his talents to Hancock County High School to display his talents for the school’s pep rally. However, things went wrong when Boomer dunked off a trampoline during the halftime show and broke the backboard.
In other news, to celebrate the ABA’s 45th anniversary, Indiana will be rocking some retro uniforms for the NBA Hardwood Classics month. They will be wearing it for the following games, via Pacers.com:
Indiana will be wearing the blue road uniforms they had when they were in the ABA from 1971-1974.
Wonderful drive and dunk by Paul George last night. On the other hand, he had his fadeaway blocked by a guy much shorter than him. As noted, it was a high-level performance overall by George, even if he didn’t cover Rose as much as expected.
The Bulls were a vaunted one seed with the best record in the league when last year’s playoffs began. They considered the Pacers a speed bump on their way to the Eastern Conference Finals. It was a competitive series in the sense that the games ended with the teams having scores that were close to one another, but there was really no doubt which franchise had the better squad. It was the classic “gentleman’s sweep” in which the superior team is gracious enough to give the scrappy underdog a bone before sending them fishing.
So in that sense, Indiana/Chicago is far from a rivalry. But after a big Pacers win tonight in the United Center, which the Indiana players were apparently pretty excited about, and this quote from Derrick Rose, we might be able consider this a fued.
DRose: “I will never forget how they celebrated just from winning this game. I can’t wait to play them again.”
Indiana and Chicago of course had some pretty heated games back in the 1990s. Reggie Miller used to get under the skin of the best player ever as Reg yapped at MJ like a little lap dog. We’ll see if anything comes of this or it just blows over.
