Pacers Notebook: Who should they hope to see in first round?
By CHRIS GOFF
ISL Correspondent
What’s interesting for the Pacers is that their two potential Round 1 opponents are the two clubs they probably want to see the most in the postseason: Atlanta and Chicago. Those teams are less apt to pull an upset than, say, Boston.
Presuming they survive, which won’t be easy given the Pacers’ struggles of late, Indiana-New York has been pretty much set in Round 2 for a long time now.
But which team should David West and friends hope to see at Bankers Life Fieldhouse next weekend?
Atlanta is much more beatable without Lou Williams and Zaza Pachulia, two crucial reserves lost for the season.
Conventional wisdom is that a Pacers-Bulls pairing would result in a low-scoring, physical, knock-down, drag-out series, but Chicago has enough injury issues that it might not last more than five games. And that draw shouldn’t concern blue and gold rooters in the first place based on what happened in the regular season.
Indiana won three of the four head-to-head meetings, and the only one they lost came when Paul George missed two game-tying 3-pointers in the final seconds. Conversely, the Pacers went 2-2 against the Hawks.
Roy Hibbert would succeed against Atlanta because Al Horford and Josh Smith are too short to bother him. Hibbert’s increasingly steady play offensively over the second half of the season is something Indiana wants to keep going. The Bulls match up better in terms of size, but only if All-Star Joakim Noah is healthy. That’s anyone’s guess. If he plays at all, Noah might be severely limited.
Minus Derrick Rose, the Bulls aren’t even close to full strength. After Rose tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee in the playoffs last season, they fell to No. 8 seed Philadelphia, so we already have evidence of how Chicago fares in the postseason without him. Not well.
On the surface, a lot of similarities exist between the Pacers’ possible challengers. Since the beginning of March, the Hawks are 11-13. During that same stretch, Chicago is 10-12. Neither team is blazing toward the finish line. Both sport defenses ranked in the top 10 in points per possession. In their past 19 games on the road, the Bulls are 6-13. Atlanta’s record over its last 28 away dates: 11-17.
Entering Monday night’s slate, the Hawks (44-36) are a full game ahead of Chicago (43-37) for the fifth seed in the East. Indiana faces whichever team finishes sixth. The Bulls do own the tiebreaker. They play at Orlando tonight and Wednesday at home against Washington. Meanwhile, Atlanta ends on a back-to-back by hosting Toronto Tuesday and visiting New York on Wednesday.
Undoubtedly a battle with the Bulls would be mentally taxing. Indiana coach Frank Vogel views them as a rival. A lot of Windy City fans would drive three hours south on the Interstate to fill Bankers Life Fieldhouse, as they did in 2011 when these teams met in the first round. Game 3 of that series was especially packed with Bulls partisans. No one knows the Pacers better than Tom Thibodeau, who has faced them 16 times as a head coach, winning 10 of those meetings.
Atlanta presents a greater threat to actually win the series. Might the Hawks roll over? Sure. Smith is a pending free agent. So are Devin Harris, Kyle Korver, Jeff Teague, Johan Petro, Ivan Johnson and Dahntay Jones. Even coach Larry Drew is without a contract for next season. Commitment to the cause might be lacking. But if the Hawks come together, Smith and Horford have a track record of making noise early in the postseason. In three of the past four seasons Atlanta has won a series.
In the final verdict, so long as big men Noah and Taj Gibson are still banged-up and nowhere approaching 100 percent, the Pacers should prefer to face Chicago. That’d be as close to a guaranteed triumph as the NBA playoffs deliver. Atlanta offers a tempting reward in the potential for a shorter, less physical series but also carries more risk. The Bulls come with no reward but minimal risk, and while the series might be draining, the only goal is to survive and advance.
