2013 Playoffs: Pacers-Hawks Game 5 viewer’s guide
By CHRIS GOFF
ISL Correspondent
The Pacers will try to reestablish control on Wednesday night when they take on the Atlanta Hawks in Game 5 of this Eastern Conference first-round series. Tip-off is set for 8 p.m. at Bankers Life Fieldhouse.
Here are the trends to monitor in what shapes up as a terrific 48-minute battle:
Coaching adjustments: Atlanta’s Larry Drew has been praised for his decision to add size to the starting lineup, but almost nothing has been made of his equally successful switch to an eight-man rotation. After Game 2, the third-year coach settled on Kyle Korver, Ivan Johnson and Anthony Tolliver as his lone reserves. All are forwards by nature, but Korver has helped out at shooting guard and Johnson has received minutes at center. The gutsiest call was to dust off Tolliver, who hardly played in the first two games in Indianapolis and averaged just 4.1 points per game in the regular season. But Drew’s intuition paid off. Tolliver, who was last relevant in the NBA three years ago, responded to his promotion with seven points in Game 3 and nine in Game 4. Meanwhile, on the Indiana bench, Frank Vogel’s only change in response to a 90-69 defeat on Saturday was to bench Jeff Pendergraph for Ian Mahinmi. Otherwise, Vogel’s impact was hard to discern, as the Pacers came out the same way and offered a convincing replica of Saturday night’s debacle 24 hours later. It’s Vogel’s turn to come up with a counter to Josh Smith at small forward.
New series: Speaking of Smith, his defense on Paul George, and Al Horford’s on David West, is why Atlanta’s big lineup works and has flipped the series on its head. Of George’s 21 points in Game 4, only five came against the defense of Smith, and three of those were on a long ball when Smith was screened. Drew is ecstatic at how well Smith has guarded George. He should be. Horford is an elite defender, too, and he is bothering Indiana’s No. 2 scorer. A puzzled West said he must figure out a way to make an impact, to finally put his fingerprints on this series. Not surprisingly, most of Indiana’s modest Game 4 success came in the third quarter, when Smith (who played the entire period) was most commonly joined by Tolliver and Johnson in the frontcourt, forcing Smith to play power forward. Horford sat out most of the third after picking up his fourth foul. Indiana’s success attacking the basket during that time was backwards proof of how Smith and Horford’s position switch keyed the series shift.
Start with D: The Pacers’ defense has been utterly ineffective early in games. In the first halves in this series, the Hawks are averaging 52.8 points on 52.8 percent shooting. Overall, Atlanta is hitting 47 percent from the field in the series. The Pacers tried to employ a shadow defender on post-ups by Smith and Horford in Game 4. The blue and gold looked uncomfortable and untrained in a help technique they rarely used in the regular season. Indiana must come up with a better solution. Drew said his team’s offensive concept is to keep West and Hibbert moving around. That’s not their specialty. Perhaps Indiana can use its offensive possessions to help slow what has been a moderately paced series to a crawl and thus better protect its big men. It’s worth a shot.
Mentality: Entering the final stretch, no two quotes better represent the varying outlooks than these. Vogel, after Game 3: We’re the better team. After Game 4, Smith: We have nothing to lose. Left unsaid, of course, was that the Pacers, on the other hand, have quite a bit to lose. Trouble is, they have let the Hawks believe they can win the series. And coming off back-to-back drubbings, they’ve been given legitimate cause for disbelief themselves. Make no mistake: The trip to Atlanta was a colossal failure for a team that talks as if it is a championship contender. Meanwhile, the once-mentally-unstable Hawks seem to have settled down. Drew said he was very pleased that Atlanta did not panic when the Pacers erased nearly the entire 19-point gap Monday night. But a looming question is whether the Hawks can carry over confidence on the road. Atlanta hasn’t beaten a winning team on the road since March 17 in Brooklyn (0-6 since). Smith said contesting every shot is what it will take for the Hawks to do well at Bankers Life Fieldhouse. Indiana rarely loses at home. A friendly crowd might help the Pacers return to being the aggressor.
