ChettheJet wrote:Just plain hard to believe. It's as though the Pacers played down to the Bulls' level, Haliburton decided the defense wouldn't let him shoot, for whatever reason didn't use their size advantage, they ignored Caruso as a shooter. But whatever happened those are the games they have to take when they fall into their hands because they need to balance out losing to DET and so bad to DAL at home.
Well, the NBA is all about match-ups (and 3Ps
) , and sometimes the lesser players/teams take advantage of someone better. I don't think anybody would take Sabonis over Davis, but he's 11-0 against AD, and last night was especially ugly (particularly rebounding).
We've got 2 excellent on-ball defenders in Caruso and Ayo... Pacers are a bad defensive team... they lost their 6th man Mathurin... don't have a Demar stopper. Hali went cold from 3P.
Indy won the columns they were supposed to (bench scoring, Turner vs. Vuc), but they didn't have an answer for DeJordan... and maybe the one flaw of Haliburton came up: his vulnerable lateral movement when defending quicker guards. Caruso and Ayo combined for 43 points, and Coby chipped in 15. Indy has probably the worst defenders at 1-3 in the league. If we got 58 points out of our tiny-3 every night, we'd be a top-4 team. But you can't count on Caruso and Ayo to get double digits every game.