Things weren’t looking so hot a few days ago, when the Pacers had dropped their third straight game to start the 2015-2016 season 0-3.
That’s just how it goes in the NBA. Less than a week later, the Pacers have won three straight and are right back where they started. But if you told me they’d beat previously unbeaten Detroit — in Detroit — then upstart Boston and then highly-touted Miami to get to 3-3, I’d say you were crazy.
And yet that’s exactly what they’ve done. It hasn’t looked pretty, and instead of creating the smooth offense we’ve been expecting from this small ball roster, we’re actually seeing a gravitation towards the old fashioned “grind ’em out” Pacers of old.
Today they held of Miami 90-87 thanks to the Hickory uniforms and 36 points from Paul George, the most he has scored since game 5 of the 2014 Eastern Conference Finals against Miami. If you’re talking about the regular season, PG13 has not scored 36 since January 24, 2014 in a win at Sacramento.
So after starting out the season unable to find his shot in the first four games, PG has averaged 31 points and 11 boards in the last two while shooting 22-45, nearly 50% from the field. He’s looked better every game and hopefully this is a sign of things to come.
Other notes and observations from the game:
– Monta was again off tonight, finishing with a season low 4 points on 2-8 shooting. It’s a small sample, but in 6 games as a Pacer, Ellis has averaged just 10.3 points (lowest since rookie year) and shooting a career-low 32.9% from the field. As much as people like to trash his volume shooting, Ellis has never shot below 40% for his career. It would be wrong to say he’s not helping at all, but this is a much rougher start than anyone anticipated.
– CJ Miles was out again with a sore right ankle, and Rodney Stuckey will join him after spraining his own ankle badly during the Heat game. It looked awful, but he was able to put some weight on it as he walked back to the locker room. The Pacers can’t miss him for too long, but if he’s going to be out for some games we might as well give the minutes to Joe Young.
– Glenn Robinson III is quickly proving that he definitely belongs in the NBA. He just had 7 points in 16 minutes on 3-5 shooting tonight, but they were all strong, timely finishes. He was a +2 on the plus-minus chart, a stark contrast to Chase Budinger’s -26 with zero points on two shots. Bud is supposed to be a spark plug for the Pacers but thus far he has just been terrible. I say give Robinson more minutes until Bud finds his touch.
– The Pacers big men will struggle until Myles Turner becomes the beast he is meant to be. To get there he needs experience, but apparently he has knee soreness and the Pacers are trying to avoid running him into the ground so early in the season. I think they know he’ll be valuable after the All-Star break.
– For now, the Pacers have to rely on the shit sandwich committee of Ian Mahinmi, Lavoy Allen and Jordan Hill. Of the three, Mahinmi provides rim protection, Allen provides rebounding and hustle, and Hill provides offense. However, Mahinmi can’t stay out of foul trouble, Allen can’t make an open shot from point blank range, and Hill can’t really defend. Something’s gotta give!
The Pacers will get their second chance this season to go above 0.500 when they head to Cleveland to play the Cavs on Sunday in a matinee. The Cavs are still without Kyrie, but LeBron’s and KLove are going to be hard enough to get by.
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