Monday, December 9, 2013

Road trip ends with a thud in loss to Thunder

The Pacers lost the final game of their five-game road trip with a 118-94 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder Sunday night. The Thunder improved to 15-4 on the season.
The Big Picture
Oklahoma City jumped out to an early lead and really from the second quarter on, the Pacers could never make it close. The Thunder built the lead to 19 points by halftime and the Pacers didn't have their usual big third quarter here and trailed by 21 heading into the fourth. The Pacers did nibble the lead down to 15 points and had the ball, but they missed the next shot and the Thunder went on another run and eventually built the margin to 29, erasing any small seeds of doubt about the outcome of this one. The Pacers finished the difficult road trip with a 3-2 mark.
The Ups
Roy Hibbert had 12 points and nine
rebounds for the Pacers, but didn't
block a shot for the first time this season
1) There were not a lot of good things in this game, but one of them was watching Paul George play. He finished with 32 points on 9 of 17 shooting. George had a sub-par first half, scoring only six points, but followed that up by scoring 18 in the third quarter, with a highlight reel reverse dunk off a nice pass from center Roy Hibbert. One of the moves I liked in this game was Pacers coach Frank Vogel leaving George in after the outcome was pretty much decided. Why? One, because your star player doesn't like to be completely out-shined by the other team's star player, in this case Kevin Durant. And two, not that George needs any confidence these days, but those minutes allowed him to create and mostly make many of his own shots, which is something that will definitely matter during playoff time, even though it wasn't going to matter in the outcome of this game. Still, while George did play 36 minutes, overall, he did come out for good midway through the fourth.
2) OK, so, I'm searching for one more "up" here, and that would be that Vogel called a timeout when the Pacers had the ball to end the first half. Sure, they were already down by 19, but who knows, maybe they hit a 3-pointer and go into the locker room feeling at least a little good about themselves. Even though the timeout didn't result in any points, I liked that Vogel showed his team that he wasn't about to give up on the game even though they had a poor first half.
3) Finally, too, when the game was out of hand, and the reserves were in, at least this time they played with some respectability, unlike what happened in San Antonio, when the Spurs flirted with a miraculous rally with a 15-0 run. The Pacers reserve didn't have any thing like that in them, but at least they competed this time out.
The Downs
1) It's not often the defense will appear in this category for this team, but it certainly belonged here Sunday night. The Thunder had little resistance for most of the night in scoring the most points of any team against the Pacers this season. Sure, everyone knows that Kevin Durant, who finished with 36 points, 10 rebounds and five assists, and Russell Westbrook, who finished with 26 points, 13 assists and seven rebounds, are two of the top players in the league. But for much of the night it was simply too easy for them. The Thunder shot 61 percent for the game and while they are capable of that from time to time, the Pacers know they shouldn't allow any team to be capable of that against their defense.
2) In a related matter, since the Thunder shot so well, there not a lot of rebounds to grab. The Thunder won the board battle 46-29. And while Oklahoma City only had 10 offensive rebounds, it seems as if they came at key times. Every time the Pacers seemed to be making an effort to get back into it, the Thunder would miss a shot, get the offensive rebound and make the shot off of it. So even those rare times that the Thunder did miss on Sunday night, it seemed like they followed that with an offensive rebound and basket.
3) One of the other keys in this game was not allowing one of the Thunder's other guys to have a big game. It's pretty much a given that Durant and Westbrook are going to get their points. The Thunder's offense is not complicated. It's basically get the ball into one of those two guys' hands and let them do their thing. But the player who really hurt the Pacers in the second quarter was Reggie Jackson, who finished with 15 points for the game. It was not an off-the-charts game for him, but with Durant and Westbrook going strong, it was imperative to not let one of the Thunder's reserves make an impact, but that's exactly what happened here.
Afterthoughts
For the most part this season, the Pacers have learned their lessons in the midst of wins. This lesson was a hard one in that just because they were on the end of the trip, the Thunder weren't going to play down to a tired team's level. While the Pacers were winning at San Antonio Saturday night, the Thunder had the night off. And it's now the point in the season where that is going to start showing up and it was evident in this game as the Thunder Sunday night, looked much like the Pacers on Saturday night. It's something that every team has to go through during the 82-game NBA season, so no whining here. It's just a reality of the NBA schedule and the Pacers will need to learn to battle through those second nights of back-to-backs. At any rate, if the basketball gods had asked anyone involved with the Pacers if they would take an 18-3 record and good health after 21 games, it would have been hard to say no. So, yes, there's still a lot to believe in here.
Next Up
You know the Pacers have come a long way in the respect category because it's kind of difficult to tell who is more fired for Tuesday night's matchup on NBA TV when the defending champion Miami Heat visit the Pacers. The Heat have their usual guys in LeBron James, who's averging 26 points a game on an impressive 59 percent shooting, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade. But they, too, have added Michael Beasley, a former No. 1 pick, who is averaging 11.4 points. The Heat come in with a 16-5 mark and won at Detroit Sunday night. With these two teams being the obvious top two teams in the Eastern Conference right now, expect it to be a good early season battle.

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