Pacers looked the part in Game 1
By CHRIS GOFF (@PacersScribe)
ISL Columnist
(Photo by NBAE/Getty Images)
Teams are fond of saying “nobody believed in us,” but in the Pacers’ case it’s really true.
Before the season not one NBA expert had them making the playoffs, much less ending LeBron James’ 21-game first-round winning streak.
In only their second national television appearance this season, Indiana delivered a clear and resolute message to America with a 98-80 pounding of defending Eastern Conference champion Cleveland on Sunday afternoon at Quicken Loans Arena.
Can’t we all just admit the Pacers are for real?
It took only one postseason outing for that view to come to the fore, and Game 2 isn’t until Wednesday in Cleveland, but don’t ask Indiana’s leading man what people are now saying around office water coolers from Alaska to Florida and Maine to Hawaii and all points in between.
“I have no idea,” Victor Oladipo said, “and I really don’t care.”
What stood out in Game 1 was not just what the Pacers did but how they did it.
Oladipo & Co. simply overwhelmed the home side with their usual combination of intensity at both ends of the floor, precision execution on offense and ball-hawking defense, racing out to a stunning 19-point lead at the end of the first quarter and never suffering a serious threat thereafter.
Much like James suggested Saturday when he insisted this series represents “a very good matchup,” there was nothing about Sunday’s opener that felt like an upset.
The big surprise, however, was how thoroughly Indiana dominated the Cavaliers on the defensive end of the floor. The Pacers got here as a balanced team, ranking No. 12 in the league on offense and tied for 12th on defense, but Cleveland’s fifth-ranked offense figured to make this a high-scoring affair.
Instead, Indiana ruled the day with ironclad defense. James’ dominance (24 points, 12 assists and 10 rebounds) couldn’t prevent the Cavs from shooting 39 percent as a team, including making only eight of their 34 3-point attempts.
National media and NBA- do you respect the #Pacers yet?
— Tyler Smith (@TylerSmith_ISL) April 15, 2018
When they weren’t missing long shots, the Cavs were committing 17 turnovers, 12 of the live-ball variety. Those are both recipes for easy Pacer baskets, and Indiana wound up with 18 fast-break points.
More importantly, Indiana’s D — its pressure, physicality and active hands — clearly messed up the Cavs’ spacing and generated what James described as a somewhat panicky response from their rotation players (Jordan Clarkson, Larry Nance Jr. and Rodney Hood) who entered with little to no playoff experience.
“Defensively, we were special,” Oladipo said.
“We’ve been doing this all year, now everybody sees it so it’s kind of shocking to everybody… We’ve been playing our butts off on both ends of the floor all year.” – @VicOladipo#Together pic.twitter.com/tnr5oWmWAr
— Indiana Pacers (@Pacers) April 15, 2018
Cleveland scored fewer than 25 points in every quarter but the third, and James’ biggest-name running mate (Kevin Love) was held to nine points, half his average.
“They were knocking us off our cuts,” Nance said. “They were just more aggressive than us, and we were having a hard time getting shots to fall.”
James wasn’t getting nearly enough help, thanks mainly to injuries to George Hill and Kyle Korver plus Jeff Green’s complete and total no-show. By the second half, Indiana was leaving Green, a career double-figure scorer, wide open for jumpers, and he clanked all of them.
Green somehow went scoreless, missing all seven of his shots, and Korver still has a sore foot. Playing only four minutes left Korver, a notorious Pacer-killer and all-time great 3-point marksman, with his own goose egg in the scoring column. Meanwhile, Hill scored just seven points, clearly slowed by the bang his body took from Trevor Booker’s hard screen in the second quarter.
“(Korver) will play more next game,” Cleveland coach Tyronn Lue said. “G-Hill got cracked in the back, as y’all saw, and at halftime he was pretty stiff. In the third quarter, he was favoring it, and we had to get him out.”
That is where luck played a small part in the Pacers’ romp. However, staying big with their alignments may provide a more lasting takeaway from this contest. Indy coach Nate McMillan kept a true center on the floor the entire game and even went 16 minutes with two traditional big men, pairing either Booker or Domantas Sabonis with Myles Turner.
While the Pacers protected the restricted area with size and strength, Lue paid a price for a small starting lineup with Love out of position at center and Nance backing him up.
Tristan Thompson, who destroyed Indiana on the glass in last year’s first-round sweep of the Pacers, is apparently out of the rotation altogether. Although Love did chase down 17 rebounds Sunday, neither he nor Nance has the ability to anchor a defense like Thompson or Turner.
In fact, Turner’s 16 points and eight rebounds overshadowed how huge he was defensively. Cleveland got its 23-point deficit down to 12 with 4:40 left, and there was still hope on the next trip when Nance got free in the lane. Yet that’s when Turner snuck up from behind and blocked Nance’s shot, making the Pacers’ final huge defensive play.
Oladipo, of course, was the key on both ends. He did so much (32 points, six rebounds and four steals) that one might say Oladipo owned Game 1 from the opening tip. He was impossible for the Cavs to contain in four regular-season meetings, three of which Indiana won, and their efforts were just as fruitless Sunday.
“I thought he played with a lot of confidence,” McMillan said. “I thought he made good decisions. We talked about some of the things Cleveland would do (to defend Oladipo). I thought he recognized those and did a good job of attacking. He’s been a guy who has created a lot of things for us on both ends of the floor.”
Oladipo did it the Pacers’ way, with the characteristic energy and teamwork that earned them a 48-34 regular-season record.
“We’ve been playing like this all year,” he said. “Been playing hard on both ends all year. Now everybody sees us, so it’s kind of shocking to everybody, but we’ve been playing our butts off on both ends of the floor all year.”
With three more performances like this, the Pacers will get to play for a lot longer than anybody outside the state of Indiana expected.
