The Indiana Pacers laid their weekly egg with another bad loss. This time against the rebuilding Portland Trail Blazers as they lost 114-110.
Losses like this happen throughout a long NBA season, you don’t want to overreact to one of 82 but this is the third loss early in the year already for the Pacers to teams that look destined to be near the top of the lottery standings (Hornets and Bulls, the others). With these types of inexcusable defeats piling up, it gets harder to take this team seriously as anything more than flawed first-round fodder.
“We didn’t give it to them,” Rick Carlisle said after the loss. “They earned it, but we gotta start learning some lessons here. It’s just too costly.”
In this particular loss, it was the offense that failed them most. The Pacers made just 8 of 33 three-point attempts and turned the ball over 20 times.
“I don’t buy belly-aching about missed shots,” Carlisle said. “Indiana fans can tell when a team is playing as hard as they can possibly play. We didn’t do that tonight.”
All the major flaws in the Pacers outlook in both the short and long term were laid bare as they missed open jump shots, struggled to take care of the ball, and suffered from poor effort through much of the game.
1) The need for a second star. Outside of Tyrese Haliburton’s 33 points, no one else on the Pacers could seem to get anything going offensively as their next highest scoring players had just 11 points (Bruce Brown, Myles Turner, Bennedict Mathurin).
2) The lack of forwards that have enough height and can both shoot and defend. Jerami Grant was the latest 6’8” wing to completely dismantle the Pacers defense as he scored 17 points in the fourth quarter and made 12 of his 18 shots on the night for 34 points. Aaron Nesmith did all he could to contest Grant’s post-up fadeaways in the final quarter but there’s only so much any 6’5” defender can do. Obi Toppin’s a fun player but he can’t guard and his shot is inconsistent. Jarace Walker may have the potential to be this missing piece for the Pacers and was drafted for his defense, but he hasn’t played any meaningful rotation minutes yet. His tendency to gamble for steals and a still in-progress shot has put him behind just about everyone on the roster in the long line for minutes.
3) An inability to come out with energy on a nightly basis. Perhaps one of the more concerning trends this season for the Pacers is how often they just come out flat with low energy. Whether it’s against a bad team like the Blazers or an emerging one in the Magic, the Pacers seem to come out as flat as the Coke sitting on my dining room table that I forgot about about once a week. It’s bizarre for a team built on pace and up-tempo play to feel like they’re just treading water as often as they are.
4) The defense just isn’t good enough. While the defense wasn’t as bad as it usually is, its better-than-complete-trash form is not good enough to overcome a poor shooting night. There are going to be games where shots don’t fall, even for a team with a historically great offense. Teams with good, consistent defenses can overcome more of these kinds of nights than the Pacers, who may have a quarter where they hold a team to 18 points like tonight but then give up nearly that amount to one player in the very next quarter.
The Pacers are now 5-7 in games that are not part of the NBA’s In-Season Tournament and 4-0 in the IST games. Perhaps Carlisle and the coaching staff need to pitch the regular season as a giant Group Play stage where the winners advance in the In-Season Tournament to the Knockout Round called the Playoffs.
“If we are, that’s bullshit, honestly,” Haliburton said when asked if the team was getting up more for the IST games than the other regular season matchups. “I’m sorry for my language. We aren’t good enough to be doing something like that.”
To the grades:
Tyrese Haliburton: B+
Haliburton had 33 points and made 11 of his 17 shot attempts. Even with his teammates struggling to hit anything from outside, he still had 9 assists. No one the Blazers threw up against him had
While he played well, the team was still outscored in his minutes by 3 and even he seemed to lack a sense of urgency through much of the game. With how much everyone else seemed to be off, this probably needed to be a game where Haliburton took more than 17 shots.
T.J. McConnell: B+
The Pacers broke their emergency case of energy and McConnell completely changed the game in the third quarter. Watching Scoot Henderson be shocked by the amount of effort McConnell would put into defending an in-bounds pass or getting back on defense to poke the ball out from behind was one of few highlights to the game. McConnell woke up a dormant crowd and did everything he could to get his team to play with more force and energy, grabbing offensive rebounds and never giving up on a play.
I can’t quite give him an A because he also suffered from some poor turnovers and missed two free throw attempts but he was a big reason why the Pacers held the Blazers to only 18 points in the third quarter. He finished with 4 rebounds, 4 assists, 3 turnovers, a steal, and a block in 10 minutes. His +4 was tied for the highest +/- on the night for Indiana.
Bennedict Mathurin: D+
Mathurin finished with 11 points (4 of 10) and had some tough finishes inside. He also fell asleep on defense in a situation where Carlisle was yelling at him on the sideline to double Grant and he didn’t move to do so until Grant was putting the ball in the basket. Carlisle quickly called timeout, yelled at him again, visibly frustrated and Mathurin never came back in the game.
Lots of fans seem concerned with how Carlisle treats Mathurin. A couple of things to remember here: Mathurin asked to be coached hard. He wants to be held accountable when he’s not doing the right thing. While the Pacers have many players that aren’t very good on defense and make mistakes on that end, most of them are at least following the rules of their system and trying to execute what the coaches ask while being in the correct spots. Mathurin, more than any other Pacer, has a tendency to fall asleep, lose his man off ball for multiple seconds, get beat backdoor, be unaware when he’s supposed to be helping off ball or doubling and that’s why he tends to catch the ire of the coaching staff in very noticeable ways much more than others.
Myles Turner: D+
One play stood out more than any other for Turner in this game. Instead of taking an open 3-pointer late in the fourth, he drove into a crowded lane and Grant forced a jump ball on his layup attempt. He then lost the jump ball. Turner was 0 for 3 from deep for the game. While you can commend him for trying to get a better look inside on a night when the team couldn’t make anything from 3, the wide open jumper was the one he needed to take with confidence. Instead he ended up losing the possession by driving into traffic.
Turner suffered from foul trouble again in this game at times which limited him to only 27 minutes. The Blazers muddled the Pacers offense by guarding Turner with Malcolm Brogdon, who had enough strength to not be moved at all by his former teammate on one post-up. Turner did get an and-1 basket on him later in the game. He scored 11 points (5 of 11) and added 8 rebounds, 2 steals, and 2 blocks.
Quick hits:
- Aaron Nesmith: D+. Nesmith challenged some of the Grant attempts about as well as he could but just doesn’t have the height to adequately cover some of these forwards he’s tasked with defending. He had a costly turnover at the end of the third quarter that allowed the Blazers a chance to score, which they did. He seemed a bit rusty in his return from injury.
- Obi Toppin: D+. Just 19 minutes for Toppin in this game. He had a nice tip dunk off of a Haliburton miss but made just 3 of his 9 shots and finished with 9 points, 4 rebounds, 2 assists, and a block.
- Buddy Hield: D+. This was another game where Hield’s lack of value can show up when his shot isn’t falling. He scored 9 points on 10 shots. He made only 1 of 6 from deep.
- Andrew Nembhard: C-. Nembhard was one of few Pacers to shoot better than 50% (4 of 6). He finished with 8 points, 3 assists, and 3 rebounds.
- Jalen Smith: C-. Smith had a scary injury that the Pacers are calling a left heel contusion. If that’s all it is, the team got lucky as it looked like he hyper extended his knee while trying to get back. Losing the backup center that is shooting above 70% on both 2-pointers and 3-pointers on the season would be a major loss for the bench unit. He finished with 9 points and 5 rebounds in 12 minutes.
- Isaiah Jackson: C-. Jackson continues to look like he is worthy of minutes but he’s stuck in the Goga Zone as the third center. The Pacers tried to play him and Stix together again in the first half but Jackson quickly picked up 2 fouls. He finished with 2 points, 5 rebounds, and a block in 10 minutes.
- Bruce Brown: C-. Meh. 11 points (5 of 10). He went 1 for 5 from deep. He seemed to do okay against Malcolm Brogdon who went 9 for 20 from the floor but scored the game-clinching bucket in a key final possession that put Portland up 4.
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