A new stage of the season begins tonight. Thus far, the Pacers have faced numerous tests and, on the whole, delivered passing grades. The team has played its best basketball against the best teams in the league, even making it to the finals of the IST. It showed resiliency after a skid brought the record to .500, bouncing back with a six-game win streak.

Now the Pacers face the same test that torpedoed a bright start to the season last year: can they win without Tyrese Haliburton?

Even optimists like myself have to admit the outlook isn't great. Tyrese has missed three games this year, which resulted in a 51 point loss in Boston, an 18 point loss in Minnesota, and a 15 point win in Miami, respectively.

The flip side to that coin is that the team's confidence is arguably at an all time high. Bennedict Mathurin has been playing like he deserves the role of Robin to Haliburton's Batman, something Pacers fans desperately hope he becomes. Over the past 10 days he's been averaging about 21 points per game off the bench on excellent efficiency. Moreover, in his last game against Boston he poured in 26 as the focal point of the offense after Haliburton went down, even hitting the game winning free throws for good measure.

In someways Washington is the perfect team to face for the first game in the post-Tyrese stretch. They are the worst defense in the league and, to put it bluntly, not a good team. Over the past two weeks they are 1-6 with a worse point differential than the Pistons according to Cleaning the Glass's numbers.

Having said that, Washington cannot be overlooked. In fact the last time we faced off, they defeated the Pacers handily by a score of 137-123. Usually I'm fairly confident in the Pacers' ability to win a shootout but we may have to adjust the game plan until Tyrese is back. The key to beating Washington will be to get stops and prevent them from getting easy buckets in transition.

The truth is, we don't need to run like the wind to score against the Wizards' porous half-court defense. This could be a game where Andrew Nembhard's methodical pick-and-roll offense and stout point of attack defense really shines.

Injuries

As of the time of writing I haven't see the official injury report but I'm expecting the Pacers to have a clean bill of health other than that superstar sized hole at point guard. Isiah Jackson, Bruce Brown, and Andrew Nembhard are all dealing with nagging injuries so keep an eye on their availability.

How to Watch

Tipoff is at 7:00 PM ET.

TV: Bally Sports Indiana, NBA League Pass

Radio: 93.5/107.5 The Fan

See ya in the comments!

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