Man, it feels like déjà vu, doesn’t it?

The Pacers, coming off two days of rest, faced the Orlando Magic, who had played the day prior, without Paolo Banchero last night. Surely, this resulted in a win for Indiana, which put their record above .500 for the first time since opening night and made them only the third team in the East to obtain a winning record, right?

Unfortunately, if that’s what you assumed, then you have not watched a lick of Pacers basketball in a while, as the Pacers have done nothing but continue their trend that started last season of losing to inferior teams. Despite coming off one of the biggest wins over the season in a late-game thriller against the rival Knicks and thoroughly outmatching the Magic, who credit to them have now won four straight without Banchero while starting rookie Tristan da Silva in his place, Indiana put up another strong candidate for their worst game of the season, losing 90-94 after only scoring six points in the first eight minutes of the fourth quarter.

You heard that right: the Pacers entered the fourth quarter with a 72-68 lead over Orlando, and by the time there was only 3:42 left in the game, Orlando was suddenly up 12 points with a 90-78 lead and looked to put the game away, which they did despite a late surge from the Pacers, more specifically Bennedict Mathurin.

Despite holding the Magic to 94 points in their best defensive performance of the season, Indiana somehow complimented that with one of their worst offensive showing of the season while scoring only 90 points. It’s the second time they’ve been at 90 or fewer in the last week after scoring only 83 points against the Hornets. Last year, they scored below 100 just once with 99 points against the Chicago Bulls. Indiana made it their mission to shoot themselves out of the gym on Wednesday night, shooting only 38% from the field, which is a season-low, and 33% from deep. While the Magic only shot 40% from the field and 34% from deep, the Pacers offense let them down in this one as they were repeatedly flummoxed by the Magic’s length. Even in the fourth quarter, which Orlando used to pull away from Indiana, the Magic only scored 26 points on 42% from the field, a number that the Pacers would have been comfortable allowing in a quarter at any time last year. On a team that routinely has up to seven players scoring in double-figures on any given night, the Pacers only registered three double-figure scorers on Wednesday, with only two players shooting 50% or higher from the field, one of them being rookie Johnny Furphy, who scored his first NBA points and was a small silver lining.

Speaking after the game, coach Rick Carlisle stated, “The level of physicality in the game increased even more in the fourth quarter, and the first three or four minutes hurt us. I don’t have a play-by-play description of exactly what happened, but we needed to do a much better job of rebounding the ball and then avoiding crowds offensively. Probably needed to pass it more (and) find other ways to get it in the paint other than trying to do everything off the dribble, and we did it from a lot of different positions, and we made it tough on ourselves.”

Anyone who watched the Indiana Pacers last season can tell you this problem is nothing new, and they saw this coming from a mile away. Outside of their overall defense, Indiana’s most significant issue in the 2023-24 season was the multiple games dropped to inferior or injured teams, which did their record no favors. Despite clinching the sixth seed in the 2024 season, the Pacers sported a less-than-stellar 20-14 record against below-.500 teams, which was easily the worst of its kind among fellow playoff teams. This season, they are working backward, if anything, as they currently have a 3-4 record against the below-.500 teams, but it gets worse.

So far this season, the Indiana Pacers have played the Detroit Pistons, the Philadelphia 76ers without Joel Embiid and Paul George, the New Orleans Pelicans missing Herb Jones, Trey Murphy, CJ McCollum, and Dejounte Murray, the Charlotte Hornets without Miles Bridges, and the Magic without Paolo twice. These are what I like to call the free spots on a bingo card. Even if the Pacers are a little banged up, these games should be chances for them to beat up on a worse team and gain some momentum going into the next game. Unfortunately, the Pacers went 2-4 against these lottery-bound or short-handed teams with no excuse to lose other than wanting to throw the game away. In fact, there’s a solid argument to be made that Indiana could be 9-2 to start the season and rival the Celtics and Cavaliers at the top of the East instead of their current record of 5-6, which barely gives them the 5th seed in the noticeably terrible East so far.

It’s not only which games the Pacers are losing but how they are losing them. Instead of treating these games as a chance to string together some wins and lift up their spirits, the Indiana Pacers make it their night’s goal to either shoot themselves out of these contests or ignore the concept of defense altogether. If you’ve seen one Pacers loss to an inferior team, you’ve seen them all. They are almost all the same, with Indiana starting off strong only to trail off in the second quarter, completely collapse sometime in the second half, and, despite a half-hearted attempt at a comeback in the fourth quarter, lose the game by a few possessions. They play as if they are entitled to a win just because the other team is not the best and do not account for any positive contributions from the players they are still playing against.

Essentially, the Pacers play like the high school mean girl in a mediocre teen rom com or Disney channel original who acts entitled all throughout the film, only for it to backfire and lead to her losing the Prom Queen title in the climax to the character she bullied the most. At that point, you can’t really feel bad for them because they do it to themselves. Until the Pacers want to apply some precautions, they deserve every “Disney channel movie game” they get, where an injured or inferior team uses sheer force of will to overpower a lackadaisical effort from the other team to pull out a gutsy win, which, ironically, is what the Pacers did against the Celtics exactly two weeks ago.

If anything, the Pacers do not know whether they want to be the plucky underdogs who scrape out wins against great teams and make Cinderella runs in the playoffs or angry bullies who get their comeuppance against inferior teams when they let their guard down. This leads me to give them the title of the NBA’s Charity Organization. If your organization is in need of a win when times are tough, you better hope the Indiana Pacers are next on the slate! Unfortunately, the NBA is not a charity organization; teams are not owed any sympathy when they are injured or inferior, nor are superior teams owed a win when they face inferior teams. Every game should be treated the same, and unfortunately, the Pacers take some games more seriously than others, which has been an issue for quite a while.

Eleven games into the season, I don’t know what to make of the Pacers team. For every night they play like the fast-paced, high-octane Pacers team of last year, getting to the rim and scoring at will, they follow it up with a slow, uncharacteristically methodical style of play, which either leads to a rushed contested jumper or a drive into traffic leading to a blocked layup, which they dealt with quite a bit against Orlando, as they shot 4/17 in the paint and only 12/23 in the restricted area with Orlando registering 10 blocks.

Carlisle added, “Our recognition was poor. A lot of the night, we drove into crowds and drove into shot blockers, and (they recorded) 10 blocked shots. They don’t even count as turnovers. Really, the turnover numbers were probably a little skewed, but that was an area where we need to do a lot better.”

The second-annual NBA Cup has started, and the Pacers will defend their perfect 4-0 record in group play last season on Friday against the Miami Heat. With the Heat currently sporting a 4-6 record, Jimmy Butler already has been ruled out and Bam Adebayo has struggled in his first ten games, the Pacers need to get over their habit of being the NBA’s resident charity organization and squeeze out some wins against inferior competition. The East is bad now, but it will not stay that way. Once teams like the Knicks, 76ers, and Bucks start heating up, Indiana has the potential to be left in the dust, and their recent Conference Finals run will be left as a reminder of what could have been.