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Game Recaps

Pacers Improve to 2-0 After Holding Off the Best Basketball Team in Canada

by Ronald Eugene on December 28, 2011 at 11:21 pm · 11 comments

Saddled with high expectations after a subtly superb offseason and following a dominating win in the season opener, the Pacers defeated a not-as-awful-as-we-thought Toronto Raptor squad in what was the home opener for Canada’s only team.

The beginning of the game looked exactly as we expected in the beginning of the season after an extended lockout and abbreviated training camp. The team were throwing the ball everywhere, except in the basket. At the end of the first quarter, Toronto had just eleven points. Granted, part of that could be the pesky prowess of the Pacers’ rangy defenders. But still. Eleven!

To be fair, the rustiest part of the post-lockout NBA may be the officiating, but more on that later. The officiating has been awful thus far. Great examples in this game included obvious basket interference, an airball free throw that didn’t stop play and a foul called on Lou Amundson when a Raptors player leaned right into him.

Regardless, for the second straight game in as many attempts, the Pacers shot under 40% but came out on top. Tha seems to be a sign of better things to come (and the team is already on pace to go 66-0).

Speaking of things to come, Paul George appears to be dramatically improved from his rookie season. It’s prudent to avoid any outlandish predictions, especially since the opponents combined for just 52 wins last season (a sum less than that compiled by seven individual teams). Thus far, however, he appears confident and improved, a legitimate force that teams will need to game plan for defensively.

George still has a lot of growing up to do as a starter in the NBA. As a glaring example, he shot — and missed — a three-pointer with the shot clock turned off at the end of the third quarter when the Pacers could have held for the last shot with a 10-point lead. That absent-mindedness led to a Toronto basket on the other end. Still, he could really be something — and that could happen relatively soon.

Last year, George became a lockdown defender whose offensive presence was mainly a liability except in transition. Now, his perimeter shooting has become a legitimate threat (he hit 4 treys tonight), which will only help spread the floor and open up the interior for Roy Hibbert, David West and Tyler Hansbrough.

Though George may have been the flashiest, Darren Collison was quietly magnificent. As the team still adjusts to a revamped system with new pieces, Collison has kept the offense serviceable despite poor shooting. George Hill will certainly play better and become more comfortable, but for now, the battle for the starting point guard spot isn’t even close. Case and point: The Pacers were +16 with Collison in the game, -8 with Hill.

Early excitement for this season centers around the Pacers extreme depth, in which any of seven players (supposedly) could lead the team in scoring on any given night. But in the second game of this shortened season, it became patently obvious that Danny Granger still runs the show.

With the once-comfortable lead dwindling down to five, Granger nailed a deep three to push the lead back to arm’s reach with just over two minutes left in the contest. A minute later, now up just two, he hit another triple to help ice the game. before West did so for good with a jumper of his own.

Danny Granger: Still the leader; still the man; at least for now.

Other Thoughts

In a game played north of the border, nothing is more entertaining than yelling “He shot that from (insert obscure Canadian location here)!” Based on Paul George’s showing from long range, I got to use Ottawa, Prince Edward Island, Calgary, Vancouver and Prince Albert (yes, it’s a real city there).

A.J. Price is the Dominic Rhodes of the Pacers. He spends all game on the bench getting hype out of his mind and bounces around to congratulate his teammates during timeouts. At some point this season, Collison will get in foul trouble, and Lance Stephenson will be serving a suspension for setting off firecrackers in Vogel’s office (or whatever teenage delinquents do these days). Then, we’ll actually get to see Price play. Sources say he wasn’t half-bad in the Pacers playoff series last season.

Officiating has been awful thus far. Great examples in this game included obvious basket interference, an airball free throw that didn’t stop play and a foul called on Lou Amundson when a Raptors player leaned right into him.

Some people like Amundson’s potential, but if you ask me, Jeff Foster cannot get healthy fast enough.

Related Topics: Game Recaps, Toronto Raptors

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Pacers Embarrass the Pistons in Season Opener

by Jared Wade on December 26, 2011 at 10:31 pm · 4 comments

You can’t hope for anything better than a wire-to-wire rout in the season opener. And that is exactly what the near-capacity crowd at ~~Conseco~~ Bankers Life Fieldhouse witnessed tonight as a dominating front-court effort led the Pacers to a 91-79 trouncing of the Pistons.

All of the team’s primary big men got double-doubles; Roy Hibbert scored 16 with 14 boards, Tyler Hansbrough finished with 16 and 13 off the bench, and offseason pickup David West tallied 11 and 12 in his first game as a Pacer. These guys were just relentless on the glass, and that’s exactly how you out-class your opponent so drastically on a night when you only shoot 36.8% from the floor yourselves.

Nobody personified both ends of this spectrum as much as West.

He struggled to connect from the interior in the first half, missing 6 of the 8 shots he took and blowing several good possessions with his inability to finish. But he didn’t lose focus. He didn’t concede to the fact that it just wasn’t his night. He made it his night. Or, more accurately, he made it his team’s night. Exhibit A: West ended the half with 6 offensive boards (and 9 total).

This stat alone marks a major qualitative difference from the offensive futility we have seen out of this offense in recent years. Too often, Pacer players make a mistake and adopt a “woe is me” attitude. West messed up plenty but instead refused to let a miss be the final outcome of the possession. He went and got the board. He went back up strong. (And he is STRONG.) He re-gathered and kicked it to a teammate in a better position to score. He tried his hardest to atone for his errors. In doing so, David West showed Pacers fans that he is a perfect cocktail of strength, finesse and maturity. He is the mint julep of power forwards.

This (sorry for this word) stick-to-it-iveness represents a non-acceptance of failure that this team has sorely lacked for years. We will see over time if this attitude can permeate the rest of the team, but it was certainly already present from the Pacers new power forward in the first half of the first game he ever played for the franchise.

After the bigs, the best signs of better things to come came from Paul George. Like West, he made his share of mistakes, losing the ball on the first play of the game and making several head-scratching passes, for instance. And like West, he didn’t let these errors get to him. It didn’t seem to be maturity or professionalism that guided his actions, however.

No, Paul George seemed to be spurred by a commitment to aggressiveness. Early on, this new-found mindset was apparent.

Last season, George’s default offensive setting was passivity. He was rarely involved in plays and spent most of his time standing around. When things broke down or — more often — in transition, Pacers fans saw flashes of his instincts and athleticism, but the on-court evidence that he could become a high-level scorer was sparse.

Tonight, on the contrary, George pressed. Less than four minutes in, he found himself in an unfamiliar situation: being the ball-handler in a pick-and-roll at the top of the key. He used the screen and slow-dribbled to his left. Without hesitation, when he saw his man sag, he pulled up from three. He stuck it.

About a minute later, George found himself in the mid-post with the ball. He tried to turn and face but was thwarted and instead spun baseline and took a fadeaway jumper. It wasn’t a great shot and it’s one that the efficiency-is-everything crowd often criticizes guys like Kobe for taking. But George goaded his defender into over-challenging and used his length to be un-phased by the defense. The defender was too aggressive and fouled. Again, this isn’t a great shot, but it represents the new mentality of George. Not only is he now more willing to be aggressive in situations that demand it; he is also willing to try to make something out of nothing.

In the second quarter, he didn’t hesitate on a catch-and-shoot three. By half time, Paul George had scored 10 points to the lead the team. And he did in on just two field goals attempts (hitting the two three-pointers while going a perfect 4-for-4 from the line). The tangible passivity we saw when he had that ball as a rookie seemed gone. The second half, even as the game turned into a laugher, featured George being aggressive enough to be called for a (dubious) offensive foul while attacking the rim and a high-light reel play that perfectly illustrated his potential to emerge as a two-way beast in this league.

He closed out on a jump-shooter taking a long two and used his Stretch Armstrong length to swat the ball out the air like a Scud missile. George wasn’t done though. He caught the carom and took off down court to lead a fast break. The Pacers had numbers and he could have passed it off, likely for an uncontested layup or at least an easy jumper for a teammate. But … nah. He took it right to the cup himself and laid it in.

Hibbert, Tyler, Danny Granger (at times) and even the guards all did a lot tonight that deserves more discussion. But the two main things that will help the Pacers emerge as one of the better teams in the East is David West bringing some offensive punch and Paul George becoming a true threat. Tonight, we saw both of those things.

And that, more than blowing out a team that might be among the worst in the league, is what Pacers fans should be excited about.

Other thoughts

In addition to all the intangibles bandied about above, there were two reasons Indy was able to win going away despite their 36.8% shooting: they recovered a ton of those missed shots (grabbing 18 offensive boards to Detroit’s 31 defensive boards), and they made their threes (hitting 7 of 15, including 6 of 10 from their starting perimeter players Granger, George and Collison).

Danny started off shaky but got going a little bit a after a getting fouled while gathering a defensive board. Indy was in the bonus so Danny got to walk down to the other end and hit two free-throws. He hit a pull-back jumper the next trip down the court. He had his ups and downs after that, but looked positively reincarnated on one pick-and-roll. It was the second straight encouraging PnR run by Indy so I’ll start by telling the backstory. On the first play, George dribbled to the left wing off a Hibbert screen and found a rolling Roy with a nice pass at the free-throw line. Two defenders jumped in front of the big fella and he kicked out a perfect pass to Collison in the corner for a three. On this second one, Danny drove hard right towards the rim with Hibbert again being the screen. Granger entered a congested middle but rather than force a tough, contested shot, he dumped the ball to a sneakily rolling Roy, who dunked the ball without dribbling as he was fouled. The one major downside to Granger’s game (other than a few sloppy brainfarts on offense) was that he remains over-interested in deflections, steals and blocks while playing defense. He has retained that swipe-at-anything mentality that fills up the stat sheet but too often comes at the expense of getting good position and forcing his man to simply take a tough shot.

The Pacers recorded assists on 20 of their 32 field goals. That’s sharing the ball.

While fighting for a loose ball, Tyler Hansbrough nearly ripped Will Bynum’s arm out of its socket like a GI Joe doll. Bynum was whistled for a foul. This is exactly the guy Indy needs off the bench. Mr. Bro Hands also made a slick little running hook shot at one point and stuck a nice baseline jumper on a kick-over from a driving David West. If Hansbrough and West can both be knock-down shooters from the mid-range, the spacing of this offense has the chance to give Roy Hibbert a ton of one-on-one chances in the post.

The state of Indiana loves them some George Hill.

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Pacers Get Blown Out in Game 5, Go Fishing

by Jared Wade on April 27, 2011 at 2:38 am · 8 comments

The Pacers season comes to a close as fishing season begins. (via TNT’s Inside the NBA)

Game 5 was an unfortunate and anticlimactic end to what was otherwise a fun, competitive series. But it proved what we all knew: one of these teams is for real and the other is the Indiana Pacers.

Danny Granger, as he did throughout the postseason, kept the Indiana attack afloat early, forcing his way to the hoop for 11 of his team’s 25 first-quarter points. (He finished the game with 20 points on 16 shots, 6 boards, 3 assists and 3 turnovers.) Despite the best efforts of their captain, who shot 43-for-90 (47.8%) in his five-game playoff run, the early hole was one the Pacers would never climb out of. The Bulls never trailed in this one after a hot start and it really was never even a game.

As in a few of the other games against Chicago, they could never get their offense going.

Roy Hibbert was again little more than patio furniture, oscillating between ineffectiveness and foul trouble early. To his credit, he did help spark the only thing we can even really consider a run, scoring 6 points coming out of half time as the Pacers cut the Bulls lead to 4 at one point. But he and his teammates couldn’t establish him down low and he turned the ball over twice in 9 third quarter minutes, which together only allowed him to get three looks from the paint in period.

Tyler Hansbrough was aggressive in the paint (8-for-9 from the line), but maybe more than in any game I can recall off hand, his limitations were on full display. Perhaps it was the fact that loud-softy Carlos Boozer spent so little time on the floor or perhaps it was just one of those nights, but regardless, Tyler was unable to create any clean looks. Every way he tried to hurl the ball at the rim was stymied. He was a wind-up car running into a wall. Nothing he tried worked. But he had nothing else to try so he just tried the same thing again. That type of motor is a good thing, but sometimes it looks like he’s having a series of mini-strokes out there rather than making a basketball play. After his surreal Game 1, he finished the series shooting 10-for-41 (24.4%) in the last four. Not so helpful.

Darren Collison continued doing his “not not solid but not not unmemorable” thing and added in one stretch of ugly futility during the third quarter, of which he played all 12 minutes. Didn’t sit — but didn’t really score, didn’t really fuel the offense and definitely didn’t really guard anyone. This felt similar to about 50% of the games we saw out of him this season. Some aging and some offseason work can hopefully lower that rate.

Paul George’s continued woeful inefficiency on offense will likely again be excused by his primary assignment of guarding Derrick Rose. But since he didn’t even do that particularly well on this night, it’s worth highlighting that his 2-for-8 shooting night dropped his five-game total to 10-for-33 (30.3%). Combine that with Tyler’s terrible production in series and we’re looking at two of the Pacers starters making 19 FGs from Game 2 through Game 5. That’s less than 5 makes combined per game from 40% of your starting lineup. That’s asking the other three guys to do a lot — and lest we forget one of those other three guys has the last name Hibbert. (Tyler and Roy combined to cough up 8 of the team’s are-you-serious 20 turnovers.)

Off the bench, Dahntay Jones added a semblance of a spark. So did AJ Price. But Jeff Foster wasn’t himself, Josh McRoberts’ best play was getting himself thrown out of the game for back-hand flailing at Joakim Noah (who Granger called “cowardly”) and Mike Dunleavy spent the last 19 minutes he ever will play in a Pacers jersey doing exactly nothing of interest. Brandon Rush made a few shots but was otherwise himself.

So … OK … The Indiana Pacers couldn’t execute or score. This isn’t altogether shocking. They’ve failed to be able to score against much worse defenses than Chicago’s all year long.

The real issue was the other end.

They have played poorly on offense in a few of these games and still been right there. The difference was that their defense fell apart in comparison to the other nights. In fairness, let’s first remember that Keith Bogans hit 5 of the 7 threes he took. Can’t blame anyone for that. If you asked most opposing coaches before the game whether or not they would want Keith I-Presume-His-Middle-Name-Is-Front-Iron Bogans to take 7 threes — even in an open gym — they would just smile and nod uncontrollably, unable to even speak due to gleeful euphoria like that of a puppy hearing a can opener. Additionally, the Pacers turned Boozer into a complete no-show — almost literally considering his 1-for-5 shooting in 16 minutes. (He was in foul trouble all night.)

His teammates were clearly excited about his play and happy to celebrate. (via @JohnCTownsend)

The only other caveat we need to put on the Pacers weak defensive showing is that the turnovers didn’t help. They gave up 34 points on possessions where they gave the ball away. That’s a ton and some of that helped the Bulls score 17 points off of transition and finish the game with a blistering 123.4 points-per-100-possession scoring rate. Oddly, the Pacers did manage to keep them off the offensive glass again, however, only surrendering 8 all night.

Other than that, Chicago did whatever it wanted.

In Frank Vogel speak, there was plenty of mouth out there but no smash.

Joakim Noah, in particular, was just on another plane from an energy and aggressiveness perspective. Likely high on adrenaline and emotion from having his grandfather in the stands watching him play professional basketball for the first time ever, he was a ball of napalm. He was acting like a fool, sure, but dead-ball situations aside, he was just more active than the whole Pacers front line — something that was more immeasurably helpful than anything else but still translated to 9 FTAs and 4 blocks on the stat sheet. (By contrast, he averaged 3.9 FTAs and 1.5 blocks per game on year.) Joakim is one of the best defensive players in the NBA, and everyone in the building, including the coolest man in attendance, became well aware as to why if they didn’t know already.

Derrick Rose was brilliant. So much for having a gimpy ankle. He hit 8 of his 17 shots, getting into the lane for 4 buckets in the paint to go along with 4 long jumpers (including 3 threes). He was all over the court on the defensive end as well, forcing a few steals and, most memorably, making the 7’2″ Hibbert look like he was 2’7″ when Rose blocked Roy’s shot at the rim. Splendid “how DARE you question me?” bounce-back game for him after two stinkers.

Luol Deng continued to play like perhaps the most overlooked player in the league. 24 points (on 14 shots and 8 trips to the line), 6 boards, 7 assists, 3 steals and 1 block. And don’t forget the high-level defense and even-keeled, play-within-the-offense decision-making. For all the things in the series you could point to that have made the Bulls look vulnerable as a contender, Deng’s play serves as a huge counter-argument. He was — tonight and throughout the playoffs — superb.

You may have noticed that, in recapping this loss, I’ve focused more on the individual contributions than the team nuances. Really, this is what the game and this series was about. One team had 4 of the 5 best players in the series and the other had Danny Granger, some interesting role players who poured their hearts into virtually every play and an “Aww Shucks … Why Not Us?” plucky young coach who got a band of underachievers to believe that they could hang.

It would be disingenuous to call this one a “gentleman’s sweep” considering that every game aside from the final one was in the balance in the final minute. But the simple fact is that one team had the players that could make plays and the other did not. The way we got to a 4-1 Bulls series win was unexpected, but the result was not.

Fun series though. And it should be a fun offseason.

Let’s not let one discouraging game change the whole narrative of the last week and a half.

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Pacers Beat the Bulls in Game 4 Despite Their Best Efforts to Do The Exact Opposite

by Jared Wade on April 23, 2011 at 11:47 pm · 3 comments

For the first 44 minutes, Indiana flat out-played Chicago. This is a truth fact of science best evidenced by them holding future 2010-11 NBA MVP Derrick Rose, who was hobbled by a sprained ankle suffered in the first quarter, to 6-for-22 shooting. (He started off the game well, but went 3-for-16 following the injury.) They also played well enough in the first 44 minutes to hold the whole Bulls team to a sub-Cleveland Cavaliers-level offensive rating of 95.5 points per 100 possessions. That’s just dreadful production from the #1 seed.

But after that? Not so much.

If you didn’t see the attempted meltdown, it’s going to be hard to do it justice without expletives, gestures and eye-rolling. And since I probably can’t set the scene of their epic near-collapse in the waning minutes any better than he did, here’s how Mark Montieth summed up the victory.

They finished the regular season with a losing record, they finish games as if they’re wearing blindfolds and they nearly finished their season with an embarrassing collapse on Saturday.

The Pacers turned the ball over 6 times and shot an embarrassing 4-for-13 (30.7%) in the fourth quarter. The whole final 12 minutes — and entire second half, really — was statistically ugly for Indy’s offense. But they again out-did themselves in crunch time.

They led by 16 (82-66) with 3:45 to go, but would only hit one more field goal and score just 7 more points. Chicago, by contrast, added 18 more and came within an inch — care of a missed Carlos Boozer three-pointer — of forcing overtime.

It’s really, really hard to blow a 16-point lead that quickly in this sport.

It takes unfathomable decisions like allowing Josh McRoberts to bring the ball up the floor (a possession during which Rose straight picked his pocket). You need to brainlessly commit clear path fouls that give the opposition free points and the ball back (like McRoberts did about two seconds later). You must try to thread needles with weak bounce passes (like Darren Collison did in a pick-and-roll with Roy Hibbert). You need to barely pay attention enough to allow the other team’s best player to just take the ball from you (like Collison did before, in his defense, hustling down the floor and swatting Rose’s fast-break layup attempt). And you must — this is vital, so pay attention, young’ns — let the 24-second shot clock expire on back-to-back possessions to ensure that no one on the team even accidentally scores points by making a shot when they were, as it seemed, just trying to break the rim with jumpers.

It took a fustercluck orchestra of symphonic incompetence that better resembled an ostrich learning to roller skate than five professional grown men attempting to play basketball.

And if not for Danny Granger’s ability to make 4 out of 4 free throws in the final 15 seconds — one of which came after McRoberts was inexplicably trusted, not far removed from the play we discussed two paragraphs ago mind you, to inbound the basketball — the Pacers players would now be planning their summer fishing trips, having likely erased almost all the positive vibes and goodwill they earned from their fans and the NBA community at large by so intrepidly battling the Bulls over the past four games.

Instead, they only did that a little bit. And they now have at least one more game this season.

Plus, there is other good news.

As mentioned above, the Pacers smacked the Bulls in the mouth the rest of the game. They poured it on early, using some inspired defense from rookie two-guard Paul George (who scored 9 points on 4-for-7 shooting to go with his 5 rebounds and 2 steals) to create some easy buckets and grab a 7-point lead. After Rose went down with a sprained ankle, the reserves maintained the lead through much of the second quarter before the Bulls pushed back with a 6-0 run that closed their deficit to two points.

No matter.

Granger (24 points, 10 boards, 4 assists), Collison (shot 2-for-11), Roy Hibbert (16 points, 50% shooing, 10 boards) and Tyler Hasbrough (played gross) re-entered the game and countered that with a 15-1 run of their own. Staunch defense ruled the half, during which Chicago only managed 33 points on 12 made field goals (33.3% shooting on 12-for-36).

Things got a little rockier in the third when the Bulls made 10 field goals and forced 3 turnovers, but Granger (who scored scored 7 points on 3-for-4 shooting in the period to go along with 2 assists and 4 boards) and Hibbert (6 points on 3-for-4) did enough to have the Pacers up 11 going into the final 12 minutes.

Then what I already told you happened happened.

It’s a shame because with a normal conclusion to this one, Indiana’s postseason narrative of plucky underdog playing its best basketball of the season in the playoffs would have reached new heights. I don’t think anyone would be talking about the first team to ever win a series after trailing 0-3 or anything, but there would be those silly back-of-the-mind thoughts of “maybe Rose’s ankle prevents him from playing Game 5. Then Pacers are back home for Game 6. Then …”

Instead the story is that Indiana did its best to lose and couldn’t even do that right. (Rim shot.)

No matter. A team that has played well enough in this series to win at least a game or two now has a victory. That just seems just.

And now it’s off to Chicago, a place that Rose will be happy to play.

While he obviously would like to be going home with a victory, nonetheless Derrick Rose must be relieved to be heading back to Chicago.

After averaging over 37.5 points per game over the first two games of the series, Rose scored just 19 per game in Indiana, while shooting only 25 percent from the field.

He has shot under 30 percent from the field in consecutive games for only the second time in his career, regular season or postseason. The only other time it happened was back in December of 2008 during his rookie year.

No matter the location of the game Rose has really struggled with his three-point shot, seen as the biggest improvement in his game during the regular season.

Rose made only one of his nine three-point field goal attempts this game, and is just 5-for-29 from three-point range throughout the series. In fact he is shooting just 26.8 percent on field goal attempts outside of five feet (15-for-56)

His reliance on the three has to be what’s most alarming as he has taken over seven three-point field goals per game so far this postseason. He averaged fewer than five attempts per game throughout the regular season.

Some pretty crazy numbers that suggest that the Pacers — and by watching them, perhaps the rest of the league — have found a way to slow down what looked like an unstoppable force on par with gravity and entropy for the first two games of this series.

And it’s not like playing in Chicago should be a big change. From what I hear, at least two-thirds of the fans in Conseco Fieldhouse on Saturday were cheering for the Bulls anyway.

The crowd shocked Pacers center Jeff Foster, who has played for the Pacers for his entire 12-year NBA career.

“I have seen every professional game in this arena, and I have never seen anything like that,” he said.

Perhaps Hoosiers can make a better showing in Game 6, provided the Pacers players, ya know, cooperate and again out-play the Bulls on Tuesday. A week ago, that statement would be absurd.

But now? Not so much.

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