Pacers rough season continues
By TYLER SMITH
ISL Editor
INDIANAPOLIS — Another small crowd, another no-call, and another close loss. That’s been the unfortunate formula for this Indiana Pacers team to start the season. They’ll continue trying to turn things around, but Wednesday night looked like the same movie on a different day.
We knew it would be a challenging beginning to the season. My prediction of a 10-13 start was a game off. But it didn’t have to be this bad. The Pacers have now lost EIGHT games by four or less points, and we’ve only reached the beginning of December. Combine that with the “still no timetable” TJ Warren news, and things are looking pretty bleak.
For a team dead-last in attendance in the NBA, this wasn’t a great look:
Yes, this picture was taken 10 minutes before tip-off, and yes, the lower section filled in a little bit once the game started. But it was still a very poor crowd, especially with Trae Young in the building. Though I received a lot of “This team stinks” type of replies, I still believe the main issue is fans not being able to watch the Pacers on TV. If you can’t watch them throughout the season, you’re way less likely to spend money going to a game. Both the MLB and NBA have major issues when it comes to streaming, blackouts, and local viewing, and they both need to figure it out, or they’ll continue losing fans.
As for the game itself, the Pacers lost another heart-breaker to the Atlanta Hawks. Chris Duarte was clearly fouled (video below), but the rookie received no whistle, for the second straight Wednesday I might add.
Pacers Head Coach Rick Carlisle was extremely careful with his words after the game, saying: “I’m just so disappointed. I’m so disappointed for our fans. The last play was unfortunate. He grabbed his jersey and pulled it down. It’s clearly a foul. Not sure why it wasn’t called. Very disappointed. It will come out in the last 2 Min. report.”
Malcolm Brogdon took a different route instead of blaming the officiating. “It’s easy to blame the refs in these situations, but we shouldn’t be in that situation,” Brogdon said. “That’s not on the refs. That’s on us.”
So where does this team go from here? I still believe January will be the time to fully evaluate the Pacers, and I still believe Caris LeVert will turn things around. They do have a lot of home games coming up, if anybody cares to attend. But in an improved Eastern Conference, and with so many winnable games already dropped, the Pacers are already in danger of falling too far behind the pack. This team is fully capable of going on a nice stretch, but they’re probably not good enough for a major hot streak- which is something they’ll need at some point to make any real noise this season.
