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.

No related posts.

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.

No related posts.

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.

Related posts:

1. Pacers Make a Statement But Still Give Away Game 1
2. Game #11 Recap: Blown Out by the Bobcats
3. Pacers vs Bulls: Game 2 Preview

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.

Related posts:

1. Pacers vs Bulls: Game 2 Preview
2. Pacers Beat Sixers in Philly, Win First Road Game Since November 30, 2010
3. Pacers vs. Bulls Playoff Preview, Part 5: Learning from Indy’s March 18 Win vs. the Bulls

When it came down to needing a bucket, Derrick Rose did what he does best and got to the rack. Just before that, the Pacers went to what they do best when they need a score: nothing.

That was the story of crunch time in a game they lost 88-84.

The Pacers have no reliable offense. In Game 1, the pick-and-pop with Tyler Hansbrough abusing Carlos Boozer’s lack of defensive acumen worked. But that’s not sustainable nor has it been a bread-and-butter play for Indiana to go to when they need a score. It has been effective at times, as we saw earlier in the regular season when he was recording back-to-back career highs against the Knicks, but it’s not a reliable option. At least not when the defense is keyed in it isn’t, something this franchise has seen somewhat over the first 82 games in recent years, but never to this degree, in a playoff setting, in five seasons.

Danny Granger is an excellent scorer throughout a game. And we saw tonight that when he can get separation — on occasion, something he can manufacture by himself — he is a big time shooter. He was stellar throughout the fourth quarter and did enough to keep his team in a position to win. In the regular season, much like he did tonight, he hits the shots that he should make. But he never has been, nor will he ever be, a guy you can give the ball to and say “score.” He is gritty, confident and willing. He is a cocky guy who will never doubt his ability to be a top-line scorer in this league. Making something happen when there is nothing there, however, is simply not his forte as a basketball player. He does many very-good things on offense, but that is just not one of them. And that’s OK.

But for this team, one that has no reliable post game and no reliable penetrators and no reliable offensive sets when points are their most difficult to find, Granger is going to take the rap for not getting a better shot on that final Pacers set. I’m sure he’s fine with this. It’s his team and he, therefore, should and will take a lot of the blame for not being something he isn’t.

But this team played high-level defense in a lose throughout most of the 48 minutes played tonight. They again hung with a better team. They just simply, again, fell victim to their own fatal flaws — as well as a series of back-breaking buckets from Bulls MVP (tonight) Luol Deng and Kyle Korver.

Deng, who scored 21 while playing nearly the whole game, hit several huge shots in all quarters, one of which that was particularly deflating as the shot clock was waning while the Pacers played good D for 23 seconds. And Korver was, again, the X-factor. He hit 5 of the 6 shots he took. His threes exhilarated the Bulls offense, sure, but most evident of how good a game this historically great shooter just had was the possession during which AJ Price closed out well to challenge a shot he had behind the line, and he simply faked the three, dribbled in and hit a banker from 10 feet. That’s poise. That’s control. That’s winning basketball.

The story of Game 3 is going to come down to Rose’s Hall of Fame-level drive on the Bulls’ last significant offensive possession. And I guess that’s fine. He stared down Dahntay Jones, who played very good basketball tonight, and didn’t settle for anything the Pacers wanted him to do, instead getting all the way to the hoop for a lay-up. It was his 4th field goal of the evening, and two of this others were tough threes that the Pacers were happy to let him shoot. Good on him for making those two tough looks and way-uber-good on him for doing what he does best in winning time.

But it wasn’t Derrick Rose that beat Indiana tonight.

What beat them was their own inability to create good offense when it matters. What beat them was a superior team that through the gutsy, unwavering will of its superior player — and I don’t just mean on the court in this game, I mean perhaps superior to any other player in the NBA right now — made a play just seconds after the Pacers proved unable to do so.

Going back to earlier in the game rather than focusing on the final minute, however, Indiana competed very well. They even played well at times while doing this.

They did a lot of what they needed to do defensively in the first half, for example. Deng and Rose hit some big threes that buoyed the Bulls shooting percentage and point total, but they trapped Derrick effectively in the pick-and-roll and, most importantly, kept Chicago off of the offensive glass — finally. They only gave up 4 offensive boards on 19 missed shots. Chicago still managed to get a 9-0 edge on second chance points, which means they did convert their opportunities, but they did have fewer chances than they had been averaging by a large margin. Indiana also forced 12 turnovers, which was huge and helped them get a 10-3 advantage in transition points, including 6-0 in the second quarter.

They were also aggressive on both ends, forcing the refs to make calls, many of which went in their favor. All four of the Bulls starters who deserve to be NBA starters (you know who you are, Keith Bogans) finished the half with 2 fouls. This only translated to 7 Indy free throw attempts in the opening half, as both the calls against Rose and multiple others were offensive fouls on Chicago, but it set a tone in which the Pacers stayed physical. And Deng picked up his third early in the third while trying to prevent George from putting down a highlight dunk on the break.

What I’m trying to get at here is that Indiana did not play the type of timid, jump-shooting game that we have seen so often throughout the past six months. Anyone who saw the fouls handed out by, and general presence of, veterans Jeff Foster and Dahntay Jones can attest to this. Even the somewhat-hobbled Darren Collison was not backing down by any means. Tyler and Danny never relented. Josh McRoberts had an excellent first half. Paul George appeared to relish the challenge of guarding Derrick Rose and applied pressure all night.

It’s just that none of this was enough on a night when several Bulls players kept making the plays necessary to stay in control of the game. That’s unfortunate, but not unexpected.

Ultimately, once again, in the midst of what is, and always was, probably an un-winnable series in terms of talent, Game 3 showed shades of what Pacers fans should be excited about in the years to come. The Bulls as a cohesive team are so far beyond where the Pacers are right now that talking about the clutch stuff, the times when good teams loaded with talent truly separate themselves from those middling squads with some guts, isn’t all that relevant here.

Derrick did what no one on the Pacer is able to do. Granger isn’t capable of that stuff. And everyone else on this roster is so incapable of it that mentioning them by name isn’t even necessary.

But for the third straight game, the Pacers had a chance to win late. This despite everything mentioned (and all the best efforts Roy Hibbert made during his his 24 minutes to prevent this from happening, it must be documented).

And that’s something almost no one on this planet, including the guy typing this sentence, thought was possible. That seems like something Indiana — and its fans — can hold their heads high about.

Related posts:

1. Pacers Drop a Winnable Game to the Knicks
2. Game #78 Recap: Despite Blowout Loss, Pacers Inch Closer to Playoff Spot
3. Pacers vs. Bulls Playoff Preview, Part 5: Learning from Indy’s March 18 Win vs. the Bulls

In that sense, Indiana has done more to galvanize their supporters in 96 minutes of postseason hoops in 2011 than they had in the previous five years. Let’s be clear: tonight the Bulls again played badly. For them, very badly. Indy didn’t come out and wow the basketball world with stellar play

But the Pacers were able to stick with the Bulls on a night that they faced some serious rotation adversity in losing their starting point guard (Darren Collison badly sprained his ankle late in the second quarter and missed the whole second half) not to mention the fact they didn’t even shoot well themselves.

In Game 2, the Pacers positives started with Paul George.

At 6’8″ he used his length and quickness to provide near-constant pressure on the smaller, quicker Rose. The soon-to-be MVP scored 35 points and it only took him 25 shots to do so, but you would be hard pressed to find another night in the Bulls current streak of 25 wins in their past 27 games during which he was better defended. George used a bend-don’t-break positional attack to keep Rose in front of him and goaded the point guard into several long jumpers early. Not only did George give him the daylight to entice him into attempting the distant shots that the Pacers wanted him to take, but the rookie also contested very well.

It would be difficult to convince people who only see the box score that Rose was stifled at times, but he was legitimately bothered as George routinely back-pedaled while forcing Derrick to use counter-moves to his counter-moves in order to advance into the paint. Rose has that ability. He’s just that good. The kid has one of the deepest arsenals in the league. But between Paul doing admirable work one-on-one and the Pacers adopting a trap-the-dribbler strategy in the third, they forced multiple turnovers from an all-world player who did not always make all-world decisions.

In the fourth, when the Bulls really started to impress their basketball superiority on the game, Chicago started running a lot of high pick-and-rolls that freed up their floor general to be guarded by a wing player without two first names. When Granger, who switched over on most of these possessions, squared up, the difference was night and day. Derrick must have felt like he was in an empty gym by comparison, even though Danny really didn’t do anything fundamentally egregious. Granger just simply doesn’t have the foot-speed, the experience defending guys with such quickness and, probably, the ability to remain focused enough on such a meticulous defensive assignment to impede Rose. The extra 12 inches of space this gave Rose on his pull-back jumper and the extra split-second it gave him to make decisions as he penetrated transformed him into guy who couldn’t be stopped. Free from the pressure of George, he certainly looked much more comfortable and confident.

That’s how the game was finished. Again, in the waning minutes, the individual brilliance of Derrick Rose was simply too much for the Pacers. It was Game 1 all over again. But the opportunity for the Pacers to lose in exactly the same manner for the second straight game was set up by the hole they put themselves in through their inability to keep Chicago off of the offensive glass.

In Game 1, the Bulls grabbed 50% of the available boards on their offensive end of the floor. Tonight, it was no better as they out-muscled Indiana to get 45.5% of those available. Over 8 quarters of professional basketball, that’s simply embarrassing. And it’s something that would be very difficult to overcome for any team — let alone one facing a talent gap of this magnitude.

In Indiana’s defense, some of this is collateral damage of their strategy. Being out of place to finish the possession with a rebound is a byproduct of the wild rotations every member of the team — and particularly the bigs — were making to try to, as a unit, keep Derrick Rose from getting to the rim. When he beat his man off the dribble, the front court players had to step up. And even if their presence forces him, or the guy to who he passes, to miss his initial shot, the other Bulls are now in a better position to grab the board.

Still, this can’t be an excuse. At some point, you need to be able to rotate, bother the shot and then retreat to mind the glass. And you can tell by the chaotic recovery seen throughout the first two games that Indy’s bigs just aren’t able to get that job done. Every missed shot shouldn’t feel like such an emergency, and Hibbert, Hansbrough and McRoberts shouldn’t be barely getting back into position, only to get half a hand on the ball and bat it around until a more-composed Bulls players can grab it and put a shot back up at the rim.

These 20 offensive boards are why the Bulls could still feel so in control of the game throughout the second half despite only shooting 38.6% for the game and while turning the ball over 21 times. In the third quarter alone, Chicago out-rebounded the Pacers 16-7, getting as many offensive rebounds in those 12 minutes (7) as Pacers did total rebounds.

Because other than that, the Bulls didn’t play very well in the third, let alone the first half. They won the quarter 23-20, sure, but Chicago had a miserable 7-for-21 shooting and 7-turnover performance in the period. Essentially, the Bulls were bad but the Pacers were simply worse, allowing all those rebounds and turning the ball over enough that Chicago’s bad performance didn’t even matter. With the help of a miracle 70-footer from TJ Ford at the buzzer, the Pacers were somehow only out-scored by 3. For the Bulls, this would be something to worry about. I’m not sure how many other teams in the conference would lose this quarter. A Finals team should be running Indiana out of the building there, but instead Derrick Rose continually turned the ball over himself and Chicago left itself vulnerable to an upset.

But that earlier game stuff — let’s also throw in Hansbrough’s atrocious 2-for-12 shooting and Hibbert’s virutal no-show — will always be marginalized compared to what happens in the closing minutes. Rose can have a terrible third quarter and make up for it later. Especially since, in crunch time, the Pacers weren’t good at all either. They didn’t get stops and they couldn’t manufacture good offense. Like in Game 1, they had nothing to turn to that would work when the Bulls were defensively set in the half court.

That’s what this league is about. Scoring when you have to score and getting stops when you need stops in the fourth quarter — something the Pacers have been increasingly unable to do as these games have gone on. In the post-game press conference, the team captain adeptly summed up the cause of their woes, particularly against this Bulls team. “Even when we won in Indy [in March in the regular season] we gave up all the points in the fourth quarter,” said Granger. “Our defensive execution really breaks down when the game’s on the line.”

Perhaps these are the things that teams and players learn in the post-season.

And while the inability to stop the Bulls in crunch time is troublesome, the offensive possessions late in these two games have often felt even more futile. There is seemingly a sense of impending doom in these final possessions during which the young Pacers team realize the jig is up and that the jump-shots and in-the-flow-of-the-game buckets that materialized in the second quarter will no longer appear. They realize the have to create scoring opportunities and they can’t. And perhaps worse still, they know they can’t, leading to scattered decision-making and erratic execution.

Presumably, late-game situations will become more comfortable when they head back to Conseco Fieldhouse. They still won’t be equipped with any lessons learned from past success, but the trial-and-error approach each player appears to be engaged in won’t also be wrapped in the added pressures of playing in hostile confines.

I suppose we will see on Thursday.

But regardless of whether the Bulls can execute their offense better in Game 3, the Pacers have already competed well enough in the first two games to take away a lot from these losses. The gray area in between the black-and-white world of victory and defeat has shown us a lot about how these guys might be able to play in the future. And it has shown the fans at home that this team might actually have a future worth paying attention to after all.

Some other Game 2 stuff:

• Coach Vogel had some encouraging thoughts on both his rookie’s defense and the team: “Paul George set a record for our team with 18 deflections. [He also had] 4 blocks, 3 steals. He’s a rookie. He’s a gifted defender. Very, very proud of his effort tonight. We’re standing toe-to-toe with this team. I’m proud of our guys. We’ll take it back to Indy, see what happens.”

• You can’t really say enough about the “expiring contract” veterans of this team. TJ Ford has played a total of 22 minutes since January and was still able to come in and provide, even if only a few, productive minutes — not to mention the highlight of the night with a 70-foot buzzer-beater to end the third quarter. Mike Dunleavy hit a few huge shots. He probably shouldn’t have taken that long three out of a timeout with the Pacers down 4 and 17 seconds remaining. He probably should have gone to option two after catching the ball so far out (something that may well have been the result of McRoberts flashing too far out on the perimeter before getting the ball back to MDJ). But if was one of only two shots he missed. And Jeff Foster also did all the Jeff Foster things we have come to expect. He also should have gotten a key loose ball foul call in his favor when Boozer shoved him to the floor that would have given the Pacers the ball back for a key possession in the final minute.

• Hansbrough was a big letdown. It would have been near-impossible for Tyler to top his Game 1 outburst, but not only did he shoot 2-for-12, he didn’t even look good doing it. He didn’t impact the game on the glass either, grabbing just 6 in 40 minutes. By contrast, McRoberts had 6 of his own in less than 17 minutes off the bench.

• When it comes to letdowns, it was hard not to list Hibbert first. The most memorable moment of the night for him was the highly questionable offensive foul call with one minute remaining … but he walked prior to that iffy call anyway so it’s not like the refs wiped out a play on which no infraction occurred. The no-call moments later on the Foster/Boozer rebound is the one Pacers fans should be more upset about. More troubling when it comes to Roy’s performance this post-season, consider these numbers: Hibbert had 8 points and 5 rebounds in the 1st quarter of Saturday’s game. He has had 11 points and 7 rebounds in the seven quarters since then. And tonight he was -16 tonight in only 21 minutes. That is, to put it kindly, not helpful.

• Darren Collison was good-not-great until he went down after spraining his ankle on a camera person’s foot late in the first half. I still have idea why the NBA doesn’t move those people back just a few feet. AJ Price had a bi-polar performance in which he turned the ball over a lot (5 times) but also hit a few big shots (his 13 points made him the only guy other than Granger in double-figures). As Mike Wells pointed out, “the Pacers have turned the ball 7 of their last 13 possessions since Collison went out.” That’s not good. On the other hand, he could have done even better scoring-wise since was also fouled routinely on his three-point attempts by Derrick Rose. There were three such instances, but the refs only whistled the final one with 23 seconds to play. AJ stepped up big and knocked down all three shots. Good on him.

• Granger was the best Pacer tonight after Paul George, scoring 19 on 14 shots. He got to the line 6 times, which was nice. He also disappeared for long stretches, botched a lot of his ball-handling attempts and generally muffed up a lot of possessions with dribbling that got him nowhere and/or poor shot selection. Typical Granger stuff. Good and the bad.

• Brandon Rush allegedly played nearly 14 minutes. I did see him make a three. Nothing else occurred. (OK … he played Rose well on a few possession.)

• For Chicago, Boozer was a problem and definitely put a lot of pressure on Indiana early. Aside from him and Rose, who had 35 points, the rest of the Bulls starters shot 6-for-28. That’s 21.4%. Korver hit another back-breaking three, which just made this game eerily deja vu-laden that it already did based upon Rose being unreal and the offensive rebounding woes. As Granger said after the game, “I feel like it’s like the sequel to the Derrick Rose show. It really just happened all over again.” It sure did. And for different reasons, that is both a good and a bad thing. Bad cause … well, you know. And good because it means that these Pacers can at least hang with these Bulls on a night they don’t shoot extraordinarily well.

Related posts:

1. Pacers vs Bulls: Game 2 Preview
2. Pacers Make a Statement But Still Give Away Game 1
3. Game #82 Recap: Magic Down Pacers In An Exhibition

Game 1 was the perfect illustration of why it is much more valuable for a middling NBA team to make the playoffs than end the season on a losing note to move down a few spots in the lottery. The reality is that the #8 pick is nearly as likely to turn into a good rotation player as a #13 pick — something Tyler Hansbrough proved this afternoon. But playoff experience, finding out what it’s like when every player aside from Vince Carter is exerting maximum effort on every play, is invaluable.

Especially when the two teams kick off the NBA postseason with a display as fun as this.

The outcome wasn’t what the Pacers wanted. But no one outside of Frank Vogel actually expects this team to win the series so the process is more important than the final result. In terms of the young nucleus of this team building some confidence and a mental blueprint for success, it would be helpful for them to take a game or two from the Bulls. Ultimately, however, what matters more is whether or not the team comes away from its first trip to the playoffs in six years with some feeling that it can compete. In the press, the guys of course say that they think they can do just that right now, but they know who is on the roster in Boston and Los Angeles and who is on the roster in Indiana.

If you want to read the subtext of a Roy Hibbert quote after this afternoon’s 104-99 loss the way I do, the big fella essentially said as much: “There’s no way they’re going to sweep us.” He isn’t necessarily implying that the Pacers can’t win the series, but it reads to me as him insinuating that they plan to win a game or two.

Regardless, even in defeat, they took another step in the right direction today. The first step was making the playoffs. But this was something more. This was them showing the masses, on national TV, what a few of us saw a couple of times earlier this year when they beat the Heat and the Lakers in convincing fashion. Today, they landed some big punches on a heavyweight champ, leaving legs wobbly and eyes swollen. They lost the fight, but they made a statement to the world — and more importantly, themselves.

Moving past the platitudes and mixed metaphors of this whole intro, the Pacers simply played high-level offense today for most of the game. Even with two early airballs and a couple of other ugly jumpers from Danny Granger, the team put up 55 points in the first half, sparked by a 128.6 offensive efficiency in the opening quarter. Darren Collison led the way with 10 first-quarter points on 7 shots and went into halftime with a big 16 in his box score. That’s a big-time performance for a point guard in his first playoff game who only had 9 games this season with more than 20 points.

Unfortunately, he only finished the game with 17 points, due in part to him sitting for a curiously long, 7-and-a-half-minute stretch from 1:15 left in the third quarter until 5:40 remaining in the game. Maybe the offense still melts down if he gets back in earlier (they were outscored 16-1 in the final 3:38 … we’ll get to that), but maybe it doesn’t. Still, it stands to reason that the team should want its best point guard out there as much as his stamina allows as they try to shovel dirt on the best team in basketball’s Game 1 grave. And since he’s 24 years old, he probably wasn’t gassed.

That elephant-in-the-room, end-game futility we’ll be getting to also mars some great second-half performances by Tyler Hansbrough and Danny Granger. This was just an amazing game for the former Tar Heel star that even a lot of smart people who follow the NBA considered an association also-ran just three months ago. (That group may or may not include Jim O’Brien. And it may or may not include him for multiple reasons, according to some Pacers fans I know.)

Tyler was a mid-range assassin, brutalizing the Bulls in the pick-and-pop game and perhaps helping the rest of the league scout a chink in the armor of the league’s best defense. His 22 points on 19 shots and 4 rebounds were nice, but even they don’t really reflect his impact. Shooting and confidence can be contagious and it was his dead-on jumper, which he released time and time again without hesitation, that kept pushing the lead back up each time the Bulls scored on the other end. This was fitting since a lot of the Pacers late-season offensive success has been built on Tyler’s ability to do bury these shots. ‘Twas a microcosm, a person with a better vocabulary than I might try to say.

There was a very scary moment in the waning seconds of the third, however, when Hansbrough took a hard elbow to the temple from Kurt Thomas. Our lovable Buckaroo Banzai hit the deck, lying there motionless for way longer than you ever want to see someone lay motionless. He looked woozy when he did eventually sit up. Worse still, when he was walking back to the locker room, he couldn’t even make it the whole way, as his legs turned to noodles and he had to take a seat so as not to lose his balance.

Fortunately, he would soon return to the bench and, later, the game. So it would seem that there was no significant damage done, but you still have to cross your fingers considering that Hansbrough sat out most of his rookie season with vertigo-like symptoms that stemmed from what was originally diagnosed as an inner ear infection.

Furthermore on this “fortunately” vibe, he didn’t just come back, but he came back and just kept sticking jumpers. Matt Moore of Hardwood Paroxysm explains.

When he got whacked in the head and went down, it was a legitimately scary moment (which didn’t stop the Bulls fans from booing like crazy). He went to the back, came back out, and KILLED Boozer. Killed him dead. Carlos Boozer is normally bad at defense. The “Bro made him look even worse.

Shame they didn’t win. I had a “WELCOME TO CHICABROUGH” headline all picked out and everything.

Granger was similarly accurate in the third, scoring the Pacers’ first 7 points out of half time to extend what was a 4-point advantage to a 7-point edge and getting his cocky, bobblehead-imitating persona going to help fire up himself and his teammates. (He finished with a team-high 24 points on 10-for-20 shooting … a 50% rate that looked highly improbable for him to reach after his woeful start to the game.) It was a crucial way to open the second act, since this was around the point where everyone in the world expected the Bulls to surge back and take the game over. It didn’t happen. Not for a some time anyway. (We’re getting to the bad part eventually … I promise.)

Every time the Bulls hit a big shot that would normally feel like a “here we go again … cue the collapse” moment to Pacers fans, Indy kept their composure and just answered with a bucket of their own or a few defensive stops. There was never a point where it seemed as though they were overwhelmed by the moment. They didn’t turn the ball over, finishing with only 10 on the night — a good number for any team but an excellent one for a team that is both this inexperienced in the postseason and averaged 14.8 turnovers a night in the regular season (good for fourth-worst in the league). They shot the lights out, hitting 10 of their 18 attempts from behind the arc.

Really, they seemed to be the only ones who were not shocked by what was going on.

In fact, if it wasn’t for a maddening inability to keep Chicago off of the offensive glass (they finished with a .500 offensive rebounding percentage, meaning they got half of those available … league average is .264), the Pacers may have been up by even more than 10 when Hansbrough stripped Carlos Boozer in the open court and raced the other way for a breakaway power dunk, plus the harm, with 3:38 to play

Now … OK … we’re here … the bad part: this and-one FT by Tyler was the second to last point the team would score. And the only reason they even got that final point was because Joakim Noah badly bailed out a terrible Pacers possession by fouling Hibbert as the shot clock was expiring. Kelly Dwyer of Yahoo’s Ball Don’t Lie said it best: “Indiana outplayed Chicago for about 44 minutes of a 48-minute game.”

Up until that Hansbrough dunk, the Pacers had shot 51.3% for the game. Then they missed their final 8 shots in an ending that was eerily similar to the collapse they suffered in their loss to the Knicks in their penultimate regular season game. (In that one, they didn’t score a single point in the final 3:30, setting the stage for a back-breaking Carmelo Anthony game-winner.) Even worse than missing 8 straight shots was that they just couldn’t create any good looks. It was as if what everyone expected to happen at the start of the third quarter was simply delayed by 20 minutes. (Insert your own joke here about this happening in a building sponsored by United Airlines.)

Credit the Bulls for their defense, sure. They did heighten their intensity. And Rose soon started pouring it on on the other end, adding greater pressure for the Pacers to execute. But when you’re up 10 with less than four minutes to play, you need to win that game. I don’t really care what the other team does.

Here’s Granger’s take.

“We put forth a good effort, but who cares?” Granger said. “It’s 0-1.”

Instead, Indiana will have to look back at this one as the game that got away and hope they can put forth a similar effort against a no-longer-going-to-be-caught-off-guard Bulls team in Game 2. Before the series even started, Jeff Foster knew this moment was coming.

“We’re going to get punched in the mouth at some point. It’s a matter of how we respond to that,” Foster said. “That’s going to be key for us.”

The late-game heroics of Derrick Rose were indeed a punch. A stomach punch, Bill Simmons might even say. We’ll see how they can bounce back Monday. That might be the difference in whether they can, as Vogel believes, pull off a series upset or, as perhaps Hibbert and many Pacers fans simply hope, avoid getting swept by what we all know is simply a much superior team.

Some other stuff:

• Derrick Rose aint right. For real. He was brilliant and dropped 39 despite missing all 9 of his three-point attempts (3 of which, as Dwyer noted, came at the end of the first three quarters). He got to the line 21 times, making 19. (This isn’t a fluke. He’ll keep getting there and making em. He started off the regular season shooting in the high-70% range from the line but has hit 383 of his last 433, i.e., 88.5% since December 18. Scary.) Ultimately, the Pacers — nay, even the Navy SEALS — have no answer for this guy. But we already knew this. Frankly, it doesn’t even matter if he averages 45 per game. The Pacers held Boozer and Noah to a combined 9-for-23 shooting and that is half the reason they were in a position to win. Pacers fans can marvel at the wonder and awe of Rose. Everybody should. But when it comes to beating Chicago, just hope that Indy gets Derrick to mix in some contested jumpers along with his unstoppable forays into the paint while holding the rest of the team in check. And don’t leave Kyle Korver alone in the fourth quarter. That would be helpful. It’s not like doubling Rose is going to slow him down anyway.

• A few people have questioned why rookie Paul George was trusted with the Rose assignment so long late in the game. Why not give Brandon Rush or Dahntay Jones, who never entered the game, a shot? I don’t know the answer to that but I find it hard to believe anyone else would have done much better. It’s worth re-visiting in Game 2, however. I generally feel that the more different looks you can throw at a superstar scoring, the better. You can’t stop them, but perhaps you can force them to have to continually adjust their approach a little and maybe that will disrupt their groove. Anyway, George did a pretty decent job in forcing Rose to take some jumpers so I’m not sure it would have mattered in this one.

• Indiana lost the FT battle badly. Their FT/FGA was .131 for  vs. 317 for Bulls. League average, mind you, is .229. This is of course due in large part to the fact that Rose cannot be stopped by mortals. He also probably got a few calls. And, oh yeah, the Bulls had that one extra-free free throw courtesy of Joey Crawford T’ing up Vogel with just a few seconds left in the first half. They need to make this FT disparity narrower if they hope to continue being competitive. It would also help if they made more than 64.7% of their free throws.

• Paul George, Mike Dunleavy, Jr. and Brandon Rush combined for 9 points in 57 minutes. That’s not even remotely getting it done. The Bulls only real weakness is their SG rotation. The Pacers need to exploit that and George in particularly needs to start putting some numbers on the board. He can start by staying out of foul trouble, something he gets into like clockwork of late.

• From ESPN: “The Bulls outscored the Pacers by 13 points in the 4th quarter, continuing an ongoing trend from the regular season when they had easily the best 4th quarter scoring margin in the NBA. Fittingly the Pacers were -126 in the 4th quarter this season which ranked 28th in the NBA. Only the Raptors and Timberwolves were worse.”

• I’m not going to say Roy Hibbert was offensively worthless but he wasn’t worthwhile. This wasn’t a huge deal on a night when the Pacers were hitting so many jumpers, but they will need a little more out of him to succeed in future games, I reckon.

• AJ Price was OK off the bench, hitting a few key jumpers on his way to 8 points in 14 minutes. I thought he looked ready for the playoffs. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him have a game in this series where he drops somewhere between 15 and 20 points.

• Jeff Foster dished out a hard foul on Derrick Rose early in the game. It was the Official Playoffs Have Started, Guys moment of the NBA’s postseason. More than anything, it’s just nice that the Pacers could be involved in something like that. I wasn’t born yet, but I believe Jeff Foster started off the very first NBA playoffs the same way when he undercut Georg Mikan.

Related posts:

1. 8p9s Contest: You Give Roy Hibbert a Nickname, We Give You Free T-Shirts
2. Pacers Give Back
3. Game #23 Preview: Pacers Head to Second City

In the next 720 seconds, Indiana would scored 13 total points. And what with New York dropping 23 in the final quarter, those of you following along with this math problem at home should realize that the Knicks won.

In addition to the mind-blowing offensive futility down the stretch — the Pacers didn’t score a single point in the final 3:30 of the game — the most glaring reason for the loss was Carmelo Anthony’s game-winning shot. The Knicks had the ball down one with 13 ticks to play. They isolated Melo on the wing. Despite some good positional defense by Danny Granger, Billups got the ball to Anthony. He wasted little time, took one quick dribble, rose up and stuck a dagger in Danny’s eye.

The Pacers had a chance to win, but Granger couldn’t get off clean look and his eerily-similar-to-his-last-game-winner-vs-New-York try was blocked by the aforementioned Melo. A few Pacers looked like they might be able to get a tip in but it didn’t work.

Ballgame.

All of this was very dramatic, but as mentioned, it was the inability of the Pacers to convert on any of their 9 previous possessions that was the downfall. Worse than not just converting, Indiana turned the ball over on 5 of these chances. Even worse still was the Pacers penultimate possession of the game. Up 1 and coming out of a timeout with 39 seconds left, Darren Collison basically just dribbled around above the three-point line for the entire shotclock. They tried to run a useless pick-and-roll momentarily, but it eventually just turned into a Collison top-of-the-key iso on Billups. Darren herked and jerked a little bit, but Billups stuck right with him and DC put up one of the worst shots anyone attempted all day in the NBA.

Ultimately, this game doesn’t matter in the standings. The Pacers are in the playoffs and will be playing the Bulls. After the game, however, you could see just how disappointed the team was that they left this one slip away. The team had been on a good, confidence-building run prior to this loss. They still have a chance to enter the postseason on a positive note if they can knock off Orlando on Tuesday, but beating the Knicks for a third straight time down the stretch of the schedule likely would have done wonders for their collective mentality heading into the Bulls series.

Just another lost opportunity in a season full of em, I suppose.

Related posts:

1. Game #9 Recap: The One Where The Pacers Forget There Are Two Halves to an NBA Game
2. Game #56 Recap: Hellish Hansbrough Helps Pacers Escape Meltdown
3. Game Recap #37: Pacers Beat the Best National Basketball Association Team in Canada

On this site, we have generally — and rightfully so in my eyes, obviously — been critical of the way the Pacers have played down the stretch. They went on a six-game losing streak early in March. They pulled out of this tailspin with back-to-back wins over the Knicks and that was encouraging, but they looked very poor, both execution- and effort-wise, while being blown out by both the Celtics and the Grizzlies soon after. They looked just as bad, and perhaps worse, during much of a win over the Nets. Still, they had a huge win over the Bulls and smoked the Bobcats, their main competition for the final playoff spot in the East, so it was hard to overreact. Then they lost back-to-back games to the lowly Kings and Pistons.

At that point, this team was a such mess of inconsistency that looked to be still reeling from internal issues and general apathy — not to mention mediocre talent — that to expect anything more than this team limping into the playoffs like a sickly gazelle whose life would soon end at the hand of the lion that is Derrick Rose seemed foolish.

But now? This team is starting to resemble the theoretical incarnation of the Pacers that would have a “special end of the year,” according to Frank Vogel back in February after they got off to a good start under his watch. Let’s not go overboard: there has been nothing special about the past few months. The Pacers are 13-13 since the All-Star break. But after spanking the Hawks last night 114-102, they are now 5-1 in their past six games, which include an impressive win over the Celtics. Throw in the wins over New Jersey and Charlotte and they are 7-3 over their past 10.

Granted, the wins over Boston and Atlanta (which were without Josh Smith) are the only Ws I would consider impressive, but victories are victories and this is the way you want to look heading into the playoffs. If they can just split their final two vs. New York and in Orlando, that would go a long way to actually making the Bulls consider the Pacers a team they don’t really want to see in the playoffs.

Maybe I’m over-reacting to a little recent success. (I mean, they did get flattened by the Chris Paul express the other day and, at home, barely held off a Bucks team that shot 42.5%). But I now fully expect this team to get a win in a series against the Bulls and wouldn’t be shocked to see them take two.

Much of this is due to the re-emergence of Good Danny Granger.

He put up 28 points last night and is now shooting 49.1% in four April games. Perhaps more important than him shooting well, however, is where he is shooting from. Only 3 of his 18 shot attempts against the Hawks came from behind the three-point line. This is a nice trend and, in fact, he has only attempted more than 5 threes in a game once since March 21. By contrast, he took 6 or more 12 times during the 2010-11 Pacers doldrum days in December and January. (He perhaps not-so-coincidentally shot 37.7% and 43.5% from the floor in those months, respectively.) Additionally, this is all part of a season-long trend of cutting down on his favorite shot; Danny is shooting 2 fewer threes per night this year compared to last (5.1 three-point attempts per game instead of 7.1) and will finish the year with fewer taken per game than he has since 2007.

Mike Wells wrote about this increasing focus Danny Granger has had on scoring in the paint.

The scouting report on Indiana Pacers forward Danny Granger has been pretty simple.

He has a tendency, scouts say, to become enamored with the jump shot, especially 3-pointers.

Granger is doing his best to shake that label now that the playoffs are a week away and the defensive intensity will go up to a different level.

On Friday, he mixed in drives to the basket, post-ups and an occasional jumper to score 28 points in the Pacers’ 114-102 victory over the Atlanta Hawks at Conseco Fieldhouse.

“I’m trying to be assertive because I do realize the playoffs are a different game,” Granger said. “Teams know your plays and everything. Sets don’t work as much. It comes down to who has the better players.”

Further adding to this is the fact that Granger is getting to the line more of late. He went 11 times last night, making 8. This comes on the heels of a 9 FTA game against Washington and gives Danny an 8.0 FTA average so far through 4 April games — which means he has increased his FTA per game average in each month of the NBA season (November: 4.7, December: 5.5, January: 5.8, February: 6.4, March: 6.8, April: 8.0).

That stat right there goes a long way to helping ease the fears that many, including myself, have had that Granger may never again re-discover the efficient scoring he displayed during his breakout 2008-09 season. Since then, he has undeniably developed some bad habits when it comes to shot-selection and consistently maintaining the discipline to penetrate into the lane. But the increasing willingness he has shown this year to get to the line as the hopes for the season have improved offer some encouragement that he may be able to get back to form within a better offense someday.

Moving on …

After last night’s game, I also got to say something I expected to be saying much more routinely this year: Danny Granger and Darren Collison both had excellent games. Part of the reason this hasn’t been the case more often is that DC just didn’t have a lot of great games in the first few months of the year. As we have discussed, he seemed shackled within Jim O’Brien’s offense in a way we no longer see. It wasn’t all the former coach’s fault though; he just was making poor decisions at times.

Regardless, Collison had his fourth double-digit assist game of the year last night. And it was the night after his third of the year. This also makes the 9th time in his last 16 games that he has recorded at least 7 assists. That might not be cause for celebration for many floor generals around the league, but it kinda is for a starting point guard in this league who is only averaging 5.1 dimes per night for the year.

Even better has been his scoring. He has double-figure points in each of his past six games, during which he is shooting a video-game-esque 70.7%. And it’s not like he is doing this on 3 shots a game; he is 41-for-58 during these last six games — five of which, remember, have been Pacers wins.

Lastly, recently we were talking about just how many wire-to-wire losses Indiana has this year. They had four in March, for example. A wire-to-wire loss is so disheartening because, in essence, the team basically never had a chance and, by definition, the team never had a lead.

Well, last night, the Pacers had a wire-to-wire win.

Sure, the Hawks don’t scare anyone anymore and Josh Smith wasn’t even playing. But that’s not the point. The Pacers are looking good late … that’s the point. And that was something few expected to see just a few short weeks ago.

Is that progress?

I think, by definition, it is.

Related posts:

1. Game #54 Recap: Pacers Lose in an OT They Didn’t Even Deserve to Play In in the First Place
2. Game #30 Recap: Pacers Play the Heel
3. Game #74 Recap: Al Horford REALLY Likes Playing the Pacers

(Footage of the Pacers valiant, fourth quarter “comeback.” via Graydon Gordian)

The Pacers lost in New Orleans badly (108-96) in a contest where the final score was not very indicative of the whole game. The end result was pretty apparent toward the beginning of the third quarter as the Hornets padded a lead north of 20 points. Both teams had their starters out by the start of the fourth, and there was even an alleged James Posey sighting. A flurry of outside shots got the Pacers much closer in the waning minutes, but the game was never in doubt.

We could go over the stats, but it’s not really necessary. Chris Paul was excellent and New Orleans’ starters shot 32-for-55 (58.2%) while nothing really stood out for Indy aside from decent play by AJ Price and Paul George’s 1-for-5 shooting, 3-point performance. This was his the 12th time in his 15 starts that he failed to score in double-digits and the 9th time in this stretch he has failed to even put up 7 points. Meanwhile, Mike Dunleavy dropped 15 points on 7 shots, in fewer minutes than George played, largely because he got to the line 6 times in just his 3rd game back from sitting out for five weeks with a busted thumb. Paul George has only attempted 6 free throws once in a game since February 12.

Pointless numbers aside, the outcome should not have been too surprising.

The Hornets, with a current record of 44-33, will ultimately wind up as either the 6th, 7th or 8th playoff seed in the vastly superior Western Conference; the Pacers, with a 35-43 record, are destined for the 8th seed in the East (which comes with a I-65 playoff date and a two games in a half-red Conseco Fieldhouse in a series against the Bulls).

Yes, I wrote it.

The Pacers are headed to the playoffs. Tim Donahue may not have been ready to call it after the team’s nail-biter against Milwaukee last Friday, but I’m ready to dive across Charlotte’s limp carcass like a UFC referee just 48 hours later.

Perhaps the assertion that Charlotte has no interest in making the playoffs and receiving a first-round smackdown is true. The Bobcats, just two games back in the standings, lost 97-91 at home to lowly Washington in what was just the Wizards’ third road win in 38 tries. Charlotte’s leading scorer, the infamous Stephen Jackson, did not play due to a sore hamstring, and the team seems to be in no hurry to bring him back. This does not seem like a club very intent on winning.

It may seem out of place to be so upbeat about the season after the Pacers were on the receiving end of such a solid beating. Sure, there were some really disconcerting things to see, especially confirmation of an earlier assertion that the starting line-up just doesn’t play very well together.

But if the team’s preseason goal was to make the playoffs, it looks good now.

Milwaukee is too far back, and Charlotte is seemingly holding up its white flag. Before play started Sunday, Hollinger listed Indiana’s chances at appearing in the playoffs as 94.2% (with Charlotte at 5.7% and Milwaukee at a thread-like 0.1%). Essentially, there is no one left to challenge the Pacers for the final playoff spot; it’s just a matter of cleaning up with a couple of wins in the final four contests against teams already locked into playoff positioning.

The champagne is on ice.

Stay tuned.

Other deep thoughts:

• Looking for a time-killer at work this week? Play ESPN’s playoff predictor and try to get the Pacers into the Finals. Odds are between 0.2% and 0.3%. Good luck!

• I would pay any price for a Charlotte Hornets Starter jacket.

Related posts:

1. Game #67 Recap – A Win and a Loss
2. Game #72 Recap – Win in Charlotte Should Signal End of Playoff Drought
3. Game #76 Recap: Pacers Handle Pistons