The Pacers are back after a day off for turkey, family, and thankfulness. In the last outing, the team dropped a heartbreaker to Toronto in a game that came right down to the buzzer. Once again, Tyrese Haliburton played like one of the best hoopers on the planet, finishing with 33 points and 16 assists (to only three turnovers). His offensive efficiency is off-the-charts right now. Against the Raptors, he went 5-10 from three and put up a 68% true shooting percentage overall. As of today, he's the most efficient pull-up jump shooter in the league.
Despite his – and the team's – offensive brilliance, the Pacers simply cannot get stops. As a result, they are bang average on net efficiency. This confirms what my eyes have been telling me. For every thrilling win, it seems like the Pacers drop a game they should have won. By my count, 8 of the team's 14 games have gone down to the wire. I'm still too filled with turkey to do a deep dive on how abnormal that is in today's NBA, but it's safe to say that at least part of the reason the Pacers struggle to pull away (despite historic offensive numbers) is that they let opponents score at will. Essentially, the Pacers are trying to win games in the margins, hoping that their offensive efficiency will be slightly higher than the opponent's in a shootout.
Tonight will be a good test for my theory, as the Pistons are quite terrible in general, but on offense specifically.
They thrive neither in the half-court, nor in transition.
If the Pacers can't get stops and instead let the Pistons hang around, it will be a bitter indictment of a team that spent a lot of energy trying to improve on defense over the summer. The Pistons are riding a painful 12 game losing streak and the Pacers have an incentive to not only play for the win, but for margin of victory as well.
I'll defer to ESPN's Tim Bontemps for a breakdown of what's at stake for Tournament seeding:
The Indiana Pacers have clinched the group after beating the Atlanta Hawks Tuesday. If Indiana wins against the Detroit Pistons ... the Pacers would improve to 4-0 in group play, and put themselves in strong position to host a quarterfinal game on Dec. 4 or 5.
Indiana, the Boston Celtics and either the Milwaukee Bucks or Miami Heat could all finish 4-0 in group play. If that happens, the three teams would be ranked in order of their point differential, which is the next tiebreaker after head-to-head records. Indiana has a point differential of plus-17 through three games. Boston is plus-17 through two games, Milwaukee is plus-36 through two games and Miami is plus-13 through two games.
In other words, anything short of a blowout will be a little disappointing.
Injuries
How to Watch
Tipoff is at 8:00 PM ET.
TV: Bally Sports Indiana, NBA League Pass
Radio: 93.5/107.5 The Fan
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