Reports Ira Winderman:

So much for Dwyane Wade downplaying left foot. He sat out Wednesday’s shootaround leaving his status in doubt for Pacers.

Continued …

The door remains somewhat open. “I just have to be smart, come in, get more treatment today and see how I feel later,” Wade said.

Continued …

Dwyane Wade, on his decision whether to play Wednesday night against the Pacers, “Obviously, as an athlete, you learn how to play through pain. But certain things, when it’s really affecting your game, you have to take a look at it.”

Continued …

Spoelstra on Wade’s status, “With so many games in so many days, we want to be smart about it and make sure we can treat it and move on.”

Playing against LeBron and Chris Bosh is a challenge in and of itself — and I hope no one would wish injury upon anyone — but Pacers fans should be hoping Dwyane decides to take the night off. This Heat team is probably the best squad in the league but they become infinitely more beatable if the guy who keeps hitting game winners is in a suit on the bench.

No related posts.

He also plans to coordinate some team workouts along with Jeff Foster well before the season starts in hopes that, even though training camp and preseason are likely already lost, the squad can have some time together to gel before the actual season, hopefully, begins.

It’s short so go read the whole thing. But here are a few of  his comments that I found the most interesting.

“I’m working out with no end in sight right now. Usually I’m ramping up to go full speed. With no set date on training camp starting, everybody is doing their own thing.”

“There’s not going to be a preseason, probably won’t be much of a training camp, either.”

“Nobody knows how much [David Stern] makes, though. That’s the craziest thing I’ve heard.”

“Everybody hates what happened in Miami, but it brought a lot of attention to the league.”

“There are some good power forwards out there. I think we need to be deeper at that position”

Not a lot of good news.

Nice shots thrown at the Heat though.

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2. Danny Granger Is Glad Indiana Is Playing Chicago
3. What This Season Means To … Danny Granger

“Boston’s a different monster,” he said. “They don’t have the best record in the East, but they won championships; they know how to do it. They have four, five guys you have to worry about.

“Chicago, they go as Derrick Rose goes. If you make a concerted effort to stop Derrick Rose, you have a better chance to beat them.”

It’s highly unlikely that the Pacers could ever really scare either of the Bulls or Celtics. Against the Heat, given the way they have played Miami this year, sure, they might have a puncher’s chance. But I really don’t foresee any situation in which they could even make a first round series against either the Bulls or Celtics go 7 games — let alone win.

But Danny may have a point here.

With Chicago, this is the first time a newly constructed team will be playing together in the postseason, and Rose will have pressure to perform as he has been all season when the lights shine brightest and the whole world is watching. Those factors could lead to a few missteps. Maybe a few instances of poor end-of-game execution. Maybe a full game in which they play flat. But with Boston, that probably doesn’t happen.

So, sure, Danny … out of the two teams the Pacers have almost no chance of beating, Chicago may be the better of the two. But this is essentially him saying, “I’d prefer to fight the heavy weight boxer instead of the Navy Seal.” Best of luck in both cases, guy who isn’t trained to injure people professionally.

Remember: stick and move, stick and move; float like a butterfly, sting like a bee: and stay calm and protect ya neck.

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For example, he had one rather poor stretch that directly followed his trip to the line for three free throws after Eddie House fouled him while taking a three midway through the third.

The next trip down, he was guarding Dwyane Wade, who it should be noted was fairly unguardable for most of the night on his way to 41 points on 29 shots. Dwyane utterly abused him off the dribble with a vicious crossover that he was able to set up so well because of George’s highly aggressive pressure on the ball. Again, getting smoked off the dribble by Wade isn’t the worst offense in the world, but it was how amateurish Flash made PG look.

On the other end of the court, Paul then committed one of the worst — yet least-often condemned — sins an NBA player can make: he passed up a really good shot. Rather than taking the open 10-footer he could have had, he stalled and passed off. The Pacers did not score on the play.

Then, making the prior play seem even worse, Paul pushed the ball in transition soon after and made a poor decision to try to finish the play himself. He went to the rim while being challenging by two defenders. And he didn’t go strong, instead up-faking and trying some double-clutch, dippity-do nonsense that was punched into the stands.

On back-to-back plays, he didn’t take a shot he should have and then took a shot he shouldn’t have.

With better decisions on these two offensive possessions — or simply a better move in transition on the second one — the Pacers may have gotten four points at a time when the game was feeling highly up for grabs. I’m not trying to overstate what happened on a few possessions, but when we’re talking about a team with an offense that has been as shaky as Indiana’s, every missed opportunity is significant. And after the second straight poor decision, I was thinking “Dunleavy please.” (Frank Vogel stuck with the kid, which was something that I thought might hurt the Pacers win this game but might help George long-term. It’s a tough balancing act to manage. And I think it’s safe to say that the previous coach would have made a move at this point.)

Let’s just keep our expectations realistic for the kid is all I’m saying. He’s far from perfect even as he improves everyday. He’s a rookie. Stuff like this is par for the course. There will be ups and down. Peaks and valley. Phillip Seymour Hoffmans and Nic Cages. It’s just what rookies not named Blake Griffin go through — both within the context of a season and the context of virtually every game.

On the other hand, we sure do enjoy noting Paul George’s fantastic accomplishments along with his growing pains. And this tweet from Tom Haberstroh shows just how encouraging the young’n's game has been at times. Scoring 14 points on 7 shots while slowing down one of the three best players (and perhaps the best penetrator) in the NBA on a night said player was out of his damn mind?

Yeah. That’ll work.

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Don’t call it a comeback.

For those of you who may have just tuned in for the closing stages of the fourth quarter, the Miami Heat started the game on a 95-92 run, a lead that the Pacers (shockingly) couldn’t surmount in the final five minutes.

In a game that would decide the season series between the Heat and the Pacers (huge for a potential tiebreaker in April, you know), Miami opened up a 41-17 first quarter lead primarily off the strength of Dwyane Wade’s 22 points in the first period. Through the second quarter, however, the bench began to play a key role. At halftime, only four Heat players had scored points. Despite their early woes, the Pacers trailed by just four.

Miami emerged from the locker room, knocking down two quick early buckets that seemed to reassert its dominance. The Pacers still hung tough, however, and when Danny Granger knocked down a three with 8:33 remaining in the third quarter, it was a new game.

Over the next 17 minutes of game time, the lead was never more than a possession either way until Danny Granger missed an open, potentially game-tying three followed by LeBron putting back a miss by former Pacer great (along the same lines as Scott Haskins and Damon Bailey) Erick Dampier to stretch the Heat lead by five with just over three minutes to go.

Giving Miami a two-possession cushion with less than three minutes to go is about as advisable as going to a gentleman’s club with Stephen Jackson. The rest of the game was a formality.

Still, wasn’t what transpired in the first quarter when Miami opened up a 24-point lead in a hurry kind of what we anticipated? Didn’t a lot of basketball fans foresee Miami dominating like the Heat did in the first quarter every single night ever since “taking my talents to South Beach” entered our lexicon in July?

Of course, some of the things that Miami did in this game were beyond even the most outlandish expectations (like Jeff Van Gundy’s 74-win projection). Some of these occurrences included the following: Wade’s ninety-foot pass to LeBron with Manning-like precision, his roof-scraping arc of a shot over Paul George and Chris Bosh’s coast-to-coast drive that included a behind-the-back dribble move that made him look more like Penny Hardaway circa 1995 and less like one of the league’s most overhyped players.

Clearly, there is absolutely no combination of players that Indiana has at its disposal to counter LeBron James and Dwyane Wade. Basketball, however, is never played on paper. In reality, the answer (equally shocking) was Tyler Hansbrough, Dahntay Jones, AJ Price, Paul George and Jeff Foster. In fact, the Pacers were +9 in the 17 minutes that Price played but -16 in the 31 minutes played by Darren’s Collison, who didn’t hit his first field goal until the final minute when game was over.

In such a crazy and erratic game, it’s hard to learn anything for certain, but the following is a list of things we do know…

• Tyler Hansbrough just plays hard.
• Miami’s exploitable weakness is its depth. When you have Juwan Howard (who is so old that he used to give Frank Vogel swirlies in high school) on your bench AND one of your starting guards plays 26 minutes and scores two points, that’s probably not good.
• Chris Bosh’s game is about as versatile as a folding chair, and he plays defense about as well as one too.

Recently, there has been talk that perhaps the Pacers are a bad match-up for Miami and that perhaps the Heat would rather have a different opponent in the first round. Clearly, the Heat have the better team and would be a prohibitive favorite in a seven-game series. In a couple of victories this season, however, Miami needed two Herculean efforts (Wade’s 41 and 12 tonight and LeBron’s 14-13-8 a week ago) to turn the Pacers back.

As Lloyd Christmas said in Dumb & Dumber … so you’re telling me there’s a chance!?!?

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Wade walked first though.

(More on the actual game shortly.)

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To enter, just submit your name and email in the comments below along with your prediction for the final score of tonight’s game. (The tickets are electronic so I will email them to the winners around 4:00 pm EST today.)

What do you think? Can the Pacers knock of LeBron and the Heat?

UPDATE: The contest has concluded. Thanks to everyone who entered, and congrats to Derek Deckman and Tom Hales.

Hopefully, we’ll have more tickets to give away for some games after the All-Star break, so be sure to check back on days when the Pacers are playing in Conseco.

LeBron isn’t sure who will win tonight either.

* StubHub is not affiliated with the NBA.

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The fourth quarter is when the Heat – one of the two or three best defensive teams in the league – choked off the Pacers’ attack.  It’s when LeBron James scored seven points in the final 2:06.

It’s when Dahntay Jones locking in on Danny Granger unfortunately coincided with Bennett Salvatore reenacting King Arthur’s count for the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.

This is what Mark Boyle had to say about the fourth quarter:

In a game lost by five points, the Pacers were outscored by 12 points in the fourth.  The story of this game is clearly the fourth quarter.

Except, it’s not.

Finish the Damn Quarter

The Pacers didn’t lose this game in the fourth.  The fourth is merely when their last breath passed their lips.  The true fatal blows occurred earlier in the game.  There were three of them:

• Leading 27-25 with 1:07 left in the first, the Pacers allow two wide-open threes to James Jones and a layup to LeBron James as Miami finishes the quarter on an 8-2 run.

• A relatively improbable series of events over a 40-second span – including an 8-second call on Miami and a four-point play from Dahntay Jones – puts the Pacers up 14 and rolling with 2:14 left in the first half.  A couple of bad turnovers and a couple of missed shots later, and the Heat rattle off an 11-0 sprint to end the half.

• Up 12 points with 1:31 left in the third, the Pacers fail to corral a defensive rebound, allow a LeBron James putback which was the beginning of a 7-2 Miami finish to the third.

After 36 minutes of play, the scoreboard said that the Pacers were up 97-90.  However, what really had happened is that Indy had outscored the Heat 93-64 over most of the game to that point, only to give back 22 points in the combined final 4 1/2 minutes of the first three quarters.

And that’s really the story of this team.  Mark Boyle shouldn’t be surprised that the fourth quarter issues still exist despite the coaching change.  The problems with the rotations were clearly O’Brien’s fault.  It looking more and more apparent that O’Brien and his style had a bigger negative impact – particularly on Roy Hibbert – than I had thought.  However, the fourth quarter problems – at least against good teams like the Heat – are structural.

Right now, the Pacers don’t have a finisher, or really a clear direction to go in a tight game against good defenses.  The game slows down in the fourth quarter, and everything gets tighter.  Last season, the league-wide average pace was 92.7 possessions per 48 minutes.  The fourth quarter pace dropped to 89.9 possessions per 48 minutes.  It is just harder to score,  and even harder if you don’t have a player or a way to “move” the defense.

The Pacers don’t have that right now.  Danny Granger is too one-dimensional.  Hibbert is too erratic – and it’s always harder with post players who have to have someone get them the ball in position.  The most likely candidates down the road are probably Darren Collison and possibly Paul George – but both are too young for that at this point.

The Pacers need to win games over the first 36 to 44 minutes of the game, because they’re generally going to be at a disadvantage in the final four.  They might become a grind-it-out team sometime down the road, but they aren’t right now and probably won’t be this season.

Tonight, they played the role of Gorgeous George to Miami’s Mickey.  Instead of standing over the prone Heat and telling them that they wanted to stay down, they should have been looking to kick them into unconsciousness while they were down.  Because Miami’s right is every bit as potent as Mickey’s, and the Pacers carried Miami for one too many rounds and found out first hand.

Game Notes

• I clearly did not expect the Pacers to win this game.  In fact, I thought they were going to get spanked.  I’m still not entirely sure what to make of this team, but they are playing some very good basketball right now.  It is to the players’ credit, and it is to Frank Vogel’s credit.  But…no good deed goes unpunished.  Expectations are going up.

• There were some things that concerned me, and we’ll see how they evolve.  It seemed that Granger was back to settling for jumpers in the fourth quarter, and Roy’s last two shots were a weak, half-hearted hook and a soft layup miss that could have easily been an And-1.  This is part of what I was talking about above, so consider it a starting point.  There’s a difference between missing a shot and wasting a possession, and these two need to get on the right side of that line.  (Update: Danny Granger, Roy Hibbert, and Darren Collison combined for 5 points on 1-for-9 shooting in the fourth quarter.)

• If you follow me on Twitter, you saw that I had some harsh words about Dahntay Jones’ presence on the floor at the end of the game.  The tweets were probably unfair to a degree.  Without Dahntay playing the way he played for most of the game, the Pacers may not have been in a position to win the game.  However, I still believe that it was a mistake to have him out there in that situation.  I think the team would have been better served to go with their starters to finish – meaning Mike Dunleavy instead of Jones.  The team just plays better with that unit together.  In some situations, Paul George will belong on the floor at the end, but Jones  is just too problematic offensively (and not good enough defensively) to play down the stretch in a tight game.

She’s terrible partial to the periwinkle blue, boys.

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3. Game #12 Recap – All Things Considered & Game #13 Notes – Don’t Leave This on the Table

Best part? You don’t even have to read. Here’s what Raul had to say about the Indiana squad he broke down in the below video.

What the Indiana Pacers did to the Heat, they repeated in Los Angeles Sunday night by beating the Lakers in convincing fashion. Both wins were not an anomaly but proof that excellent ball movement, execution and team synergy can consistently contend with any team in the league. The Pacers are impressive and most inspiring by the assorted tools they have acquired for their roster and their efficiency in using them.

The unspectacularly beautiful play at the 3:16 mark in my favorite.

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If the Pacers are really going to build on last night’s win in Miami, it will start tonight in Conseco.

The Win

To get a sense of what happened last night, it’s necessary to consider a lot of factors.

Consider this:  Arguably, Roy Hibbert was outplayed by Zydrunas Ilgauskas.  Hibbert managed only 9 points and 5 boards in 21 foul plagued minutes.  Big Z scored 12 points, grabbed 8 boards and blocked 4 shots.  OK…it’s not really arguable.  Z won this matchup.   Yet the Pacers still won, because Solomon Jones came off the bench to get more rebounds (10) than he’d had in the first 11 games combined (9).

Consider this:  Danny Granger, Darren Collison, and Roy Hibbert combined to go 12-for-40 from the floor, and each of them had negative +/- ratings (-3, -10, and -8, respectively).  Yet the Pacers still won because T.J Ford, Mike Dunleavy and the rest of the Pacer bench outscored Miami’s reserves by an astounding 40-4 margin shooting 50% (16-for-32) against Miami’s  13% (1-for-8).

Consider this:  Indiana shot only .411 from the floor, including .348 from three, for an eFG% of .456.  Yet the Pacers still won because they held Miami to an eFG% of .419 and forced 22 Turnovers (while committing only 13).

Consider this:  Miami shot 38 free throws, while the Pacers took only 13.  At one point in the third quarter, Dwyane Wade was T-ed up for actually arguing a no-call when his team had a 28-4 advantage in FTA’s.  Yet Indiana won because Miami missed a third of those freebies, and because the Pacers pounded the Heat on the glass – grabbing 48 of the 54 chances off of the defensive board.

All things considered, this was a damn good win for the Indiana Pacers.  Understandably, the national attention will be all about Miami and what’s wrong with them.  Some weight must be given that, and I will in a little bit, but let’s not give the Pacers short shrift.

This wasn’t a replay of the Denver game, where the Pacers buried a team under a galactically improbable third quarter avalanche.  No, this game was much closer to Saturday night’s loss to Orlando.  A game where despite foul trouble for Roy Hibbert and offensive struggles for Danny Granger, the Pacers hung tough.  Truth be told, the Pacers were really far more dominant in this game than the final score indicates.  The Pacers missed a lot of good open shots, and Miami was – to put it kindly – getting a favorable whistle.  This was the first time that the Pacers have beaten a (likely) playoff team on the road since defeating Houston in November of 2008.

Miami didn’t give this one away, the Pacers took it.

A Few Words on Brandon Rush

After Brandon Rush scored 14 points and blocked a ridiculous five shots in last Thursday’s win over the Clippers, I felt compelled to undercut his performance.  What I said – in part – was this:

Brandon Rush is a perplexing player.  Besides his five blocks, he also chipped in 14 points and was +18 on the night.  However, it wasn’t a particularly impressive game to see.  This wasn’t one of those quiet games where you just don’t notice his contributions.  This was one of those nights where you (or, at least, I) noticed Rush mostly for crappy play.  He spent the first half of the first quarter being gutted like a fish by Eric Gordon.  He had four turnovers, all of them – if memory serves – the result of his now-trademark dithering.

There will be none of that today.  In a game that featured LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh for the opposition, and Danny Granger, Roy Hibbert, and Darren Collison for his own team, Brandon Rush was irrefutably the best player in the building last night.  It wasn’t close.  He scored 20 points on 9-for-15 shooting, and, just for good measure, added 7 rebounds and 4 assists.

I’ve yet to confirm reports that Pat Riley was forced to give Brandon three cartons of Lucky’s and a month of yard privileges after the game to get Dwayne Wade (1-for-13, 3 points, 5 TO’s) back from Rush.

Great job, Mr. Rush.  Now keep it up.

A Few Words about the Heat

First, I refuse to use all caps to type Heat. It’s silly and pretentious and reminds me of this clip from Steve Martin’s L.A. Story.

Moving on, I realize that in the post-Decision world of 24-Hour news, Interwebzzz, forums, and the Heat Index, everything associated with this team gets examined and skewed and tortured until it looks like something Picasso might have done after having a lost weekend with Jim Morrison.  I realize that it takes time to build a team, and that it’s only been 14 games.  However, I also realize it takes almost no time at all to warp something, and when it happens when the foundation is being laid, the effects are profound and permanent.

And 14 games into this supposedly historical experiment, things are starting to look pretty warped.

Listen, it would be one thing if I was watching a Heat team that was “missing” plays – that was slightly out of sync while the players were trying to figure things out.  That’s not what I’m seeing.  This is just Five Guys – without the bag of french fries.

They appear to be disjointed, both offensively and defensively.  James, Bosh, and Wade don’t play off of each other.  Effectively, they stand in line behind each other, each taking their turn at being the focal point of some gawdawful Iso/PnR concoction.  It became incredibly apparent that Pacers simply looked at Miami and said,  “To Hell with you.  Hit jump shots.”  And the Heat proceeded to oblige them, flinging brick after brick in the general direction of the basket – intermittently broken up by either LeBron or Wade hurling themselves at the basket in the hopes of getting to the line.

While that’s ugly, they probably have enough talent to be pretty damn successful in spite of that.  In fact, I’m sure that the Heat will take at least one occasion this season to beat the Pacers to a bloody pulp.

The more profound problem I saw last night was that they slow-played their coach.  Well, at least that’s how it appeared to me.  It looked very much like a team that was just waiting for somebody – specifically Spoelstra – to go away.  God knows I’ve seen that before on many teams – but not 14 games into their existence.

After last night’s game, LeBron was asked what was wrong with the Heat.  This was his response:

“What we’re lacking are two things: That is fun and a little bit of swagger right now.”

That’s not going to get it done.  I had said in a post earlier this season that the most important thing for the Pacers to accomplish this season was to grow together.  The same is true for the Heat.

For the Pacers, this growth is crucial in establishing a sound foundation for the future – the core of a team will someday compete for the conference title.  For Miami, this growth is crucial in vying for a championship now and for the next few years.

If James, Wade, and Bosh banded together in South Beach because they thought it would give them their best shot at winning titles, then they will be proven right if they put in the work.  If, on the other hand, they did it because they thought it would make it easy for them to win titles, they’re in serious trouble.

Bring that attitude into the playoffs, and Boston or Orlando or the Lakers will rough them up and dump their body on the side of the road for the buzzards.  If they take too long to get their act together and start playing as a team, or if they think they can tank on their coach without consequences, then it may never come.

The Trap Game

It’s probably a bit presumptuous to call this game a “Trap Game.”  Though the Pacers beat Cleveland relatively easily a couple weeks ago, the Cavs were without Mo Williams and Anderson Varejao.   Also, the Pacers are only one game ahead of Cleveland who sits at 5-7.   Still, this is a home game against a losing team, and it’s one the Pacers should win if they’re serious playoff contenders.

It becomes a trap game because the Pacers are going to be less than 24 hours removed from arguably their best win in years.

Looking at tonight’s KPI’s, you can see the Pacers have a clear statistical advantage in pretty much all of them.  Of course, that’s indicative of nothing, as the same was the true for the Heat over the Pacers last night.   As these are products of the Four Factors, I’ll break those out below, but I’ll do it differently than I did yesterday.

Yesterday’s Game Notes put each team’s Offensive Four Factors along side each other, then each team’s Defensive Four Factors along side each other.  Today, and going forward, it will show the counterparts.  In other words, the Pacers Offense vs. the Opponent’s Defense, and the  Pacers Defense vs. the Opponent’s Offense.

The Pacers have been far from an offensive juggernaut this season, but Cleveland doesn’t offer much in the way of resistance.  If the Pacers can avoid careless turnovers, then it will be unlikely that the Cavs will force many.  As with most teams how efficient the Pacers offense is will be dependent on hitting shots.  Cleveland will likely surrender good looks, but the Pacers have been far from consistent in knocking those down.

Looking at the Defensive Four Factors for the Pacers gives a lot of encouragement for those hoping to see the Pacers become a top 10 defensive team.  They are seventh in eFG% and third in DRB%.  Looking over the last thirty years, the correlation of rank in DRB% to the rank DefRtg has been 0.51, which isn’t quite strong, but is a pretty positive indicator.   The correlation between the ranks in Def eFG% to DefRtg has been an extremely strong 0.84 (with 1.0 being a perfect correlation).  Tonight’s counterpart is in the bottom third of the league in both of these categories offensively, and the Pacers will need to capitalize on this matchup of their strength vs. the Cavs’ weakness.

Some things to watch:

• The starters in the backcourt are up in the air.  Collison and Rush started last night, but Collison tweaked his ankle, and Rush ostensibly was starting for matchup purposes.  The e-mail preview sent to subscribers to Pacers.com showed Collison and Dunleavy as starters.  However, that may not be entirely reliable.   Assuming availability, I would expect to see the same starters as last night, but last night, it was literally a game time decision.

• Through the first ten games, Roy Hibbert averaged 31 minutes a night while committing only 3.5 fouls per 36 minutes.  In the last two games, he’s averaged only 25 minutes a night while fouling at a rookie-season pace of 7.1 fouls per 36 minutes.  Two games does not a trend make, but if there’s a repeat tonight, there’s something to worry about.

• Danny Granger’s defense was fantastic again last night, and the BBR.Com Advance Box Score gave him an individual DefRtg of 75.  It’s far from a perfect metric, but a number that good certainly tells a fair story.  Unlike previous games against Joe Smith, Vince Carter, Eric Gordon, or LeBron James, there’s no clear assignment for Granger.  It will be interesting to see if he can keep up the intensity

• Cleveland’s Anderson Varejao could cause some problems for the Pacers, as he has in the past.  In his career vs. Indy, he’s shot over 70% from the floor.  More importantly, he’ll be a quick, high quality defender that could disrupt the post and cut action for the Pacer offense.

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