Optimism. Jubilation. Frustration. Despair. I dare you to name an emotion Pacers fans have yet to feel during this young season. Four games in, it's hard to say just how competitive this team can be. Each contest taken on its own seems like a poor benchmark for predicting future performance. The first and last games – both historic displays, though for very different reasons – feel like outliers. The second game against the Cavs has an asterisk because Cleveland was missing three starters. The third game against the Bulls, hopefully, was an uncharacteristically poor shooting performance. Frankly, it's easy to hand waive any result this time of year as unimportant in the grand scheme of the season.

Perhaps that's the point of the NBA's newest science experiment: the In-Season Tournament. The tourney officially kicks off tonight when the Pacers host the Cavs at Gainbridge Fieldhouse. While this matchup may not give us a definitive glimpse of what the season holds for the Pacers, it will hold more importance than one eighty-second towards our final win total.

Tournament Format

Beginning today and continuing through Tuesday, Nov. 28, each team will play four designated Group Play games on “Tournament Nights” (every Tuesday and Friday with the exception of election day). Teams will play one game against each opponent in their group, with two games at home and two on the road.

The Pacers play in East Group A, which consists of four other teams: the Cavs, Sixers, Hawks, and Pistons. If they finish with the best record in the group (or if they have the best record in the conference among second-place finishers) they will move on to the single-elimination Knockout Round.

For each round they progress, the players' individual bonuses will increase as follows:

  • Losing in the Quarterfinals: $50,000
  • Losing in the Semifinals: $100,000
  • Losing in the Championship: $200,000
  • Winning the Championship: $500,000

The four Group Play games, as well as the Quarterfinals and Semifinals, will count towards the 82 "regular season" games that each team plays. The teams that do not make it to the Semifinals will play additional regular season games to make up the difference. The two teams that make it to the end will simply play one more game than every other team, though the Championship game will not count towards their records.

After the Championship game, the league will name an MVP of the competition and an All-Tournament Team. Selection will be based on the players’ performance in both Group Play and the Knockout Rounds.

The Game

The Cavs are a familiar opponent at this point, having played them twice in as many weeks. As of Wednesday, Jarrett Allen and Darius Garland were still out, though star-man Donovan Mitchell is back in action. The Cavs are coming off of an impressive win against the New York Knicks, where they held the Manhattanites to a paltry 89 points.

What I wrote in the preview for Saturday's game still holds true. Both teams want to shoot a lot of threes, run in transition, and run opponents off of the three point line defensively. In the last matchup, the Pacers got the better of the exchange, taking 37% of their attempts from three compared to just 28% for the Cavs (10% lower than their season average). The Pacers also won the transition battle:

However the Pacers' shooting percentages have plummeted since Saturday, making frequency of threes taken an imperfect metric (to say the least) for predicting success. As we saw against Chicago and, especially Boston, it's a make or miss league.

As of the time of writing, there have been no injury updates for Haliburton and Jalen Smith. I'll update the post as the news comes out.

Injury Updates

How To Watch

I feel like this section has turned into a cruel joke given Bally's inability to provide the service people pay them for but here it is for posterity:

Tipoff is at 7:00 PM ET.

TV: Bally Sports Indiana, NBA League Pass

Radio: 93.5/107.5 The Fan

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