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Game Recaps

Pacers Drop Game 3 But Validate Playoff Berth

by Jared Wade on April 21, 2011 at 11:09 pm · 13 comments

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.

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Pacers Again Compete Well in Game 2, But Again Come Up Short

by Jared Wade on April 19, 2011 at 3:41 am · 10 comments

The sub-.500 Pacers once threw everything they had at the Bulls. And the outcome was once again a game in which the underdog outplayed the favorite for more minutes than they didn’t, only to come away empty-handed. There aren’t supposed to be moral victories in professional sports. If you didn’t win, you lost. But that’s not actually true for a team traveling down the path to relevancy, on which the gray areas in between the numbers in the win/loss column ultimately mean more than the team’s record.

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.

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Pacers Make a Statement But Still Give Away Game 1

by Jared Wade on April 16, 2011 at 11:28 pm · 3 comments

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.

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Game #81 Recap: Pacers Get Melo’d

by Jared Wade on April 11, 2011 at 1:38 am · 0 comments

This was an excellent outing for the Pacers — until the fourth quarter. The Pacers entered the final frame with a 9-point edge after Mike Dunleavy, Jr. made a heads-up steal and, instead of just heaving up a half-court prayer, had the piece of mind create a good three-point look for AJ Price to knock down a trey at the buzzer. This came just seconds after a nice bucket by Roy Hibbert. By using some relatively easy math that I only had to double-check thrice, that means the Pacers scored 5 points in the final 3 seconds of the third quarter.

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.