Huge win over the Orlando Magic tonight. The Pacers have now won a season-high 6-straight games and are 29-34 for the season. More importantly, they now have a half-game lead over the Charlotte Hornets for the 7th seed in the East, and a full-game lead over 9th place Miami.
With Milwaukee struggling, perhaps it’s time to dream big and aim for that 6th seed. Though the Pacers are still 4 games behind right now, they can trim that gap to 3 with a win against the Bucks on Thursday in Indy.
Yep, it’s pretty good to be a Pacers fan right now, arguably even better than when the Pacers had the best record in the East last season but were stumbling around into the playoffs.
Final score: 118-84. The Pacers’ highest point total of the season off a season-high 37 team assists. They hit 53% from the floor and 50% of their 34 three-point attempts, and had just a single miss from 12 free throws. T
I knew he was capable of performances like this, but Rodney Stuckey is really turning out to be something else for the Pacers this season. With 34 points tonight off the bench, his third 30+ performance of the season, Stuckey is making the Pacers look really smart for letting Lance Stephenson go.
Damian Rudez is looking pretty good too, putting up 17 points on just 8 shot attempts in 27 minutes as a starter with CJ Miles out day-to-day. Stuckey, Miles, Rudez, and even Shayne Whittington are all starting to look like solid pick ups for the Pacers, even if it didn’t appear that way earlier in the season.
And of course, the question lingering in the back of everyone’s mind is: when will Paul George come back? We’re approaching mid-March pretty soon, and his return could be just what the Pacers need as they enter a decisive stretch of games starting from the 16th — Toronto, @Chicago, @Cleveland, Brooklyn, @Washington, @Milwaukee, Dallas, @Brooklyn — to the end the month.
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