IST Quarterfinal: Celtics vs Pacers

Tonight we get the NBA's version of Christmas in July: the playoffs in December.

With eight teams remaining in the In-Season Tournament, we've left Group Play behind. From now on, it's survive and advance. No small task for the Pacers, whose reward for winning Group A is a matchup against arguably the best team in the league, the Boston Celtics.

How did we get here?

For the Pacers, a spot in the Quarterfinals was clinched via perfection. The team is 4-0 in Tournament games, undefeated on acid-flashback colored courts.

For the Celtics, a spot in the Quarterfinals was clinched via shithousery, as they say in the King's English. After dropping a game to the Magic in group play, the Celtics needed to win the point differential tie-breaker in order to advance. To accomplish that feat, they resorted to a tactic that one could hardly describe as "in the spirit of the game."

Does karma exist? Is she a female dog? I sincerely hope so.

The Matchup

The matchup tonight pits the league's best offense against the second best defense. If defense wins out, the Pacers will stand no chance. If the game turns into a track meet, the Pacers may just have the firepower to pull off the upset.

Stylistically, both teams want to shoot as many threes as possible. The Celtics will be without Kristaps Porzingis, which should hamper their spread attack, but the Pacers will have to continue to be effective at one of the only defensive things they've consistently done well this year: running opponents off of the arc.

If you look at Boston's last five games, their only loss came in the Orlando matchup, where they were prevented from launching a three point barrage like they normally do.

Of course, the caveat is that the Pacers do not have the embarrassment of defensive length that the Magic possess, which makes adopting their strategy a bit precarious.

It goes without saying that despite the Pacers' excellence in limiting three point attempts, they've been atrocious defensively overall. One of the reasons that teams are taking so few threes against Indiana is because they can usually get an easy shot at the rim on any given possession.

We've seen the Pacers send more help on post-ups over the past week than they were doing at the beginning of the season. Between Butler, Jerami Grant, Pascal Siakam, hell even Jaime Jaquez, opponents have been taking advantage of the Pacers' lack of size by targeting them in the mid-post and working it down low. Tonight will be no easier on that front, as Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown are extremely capable scoring forwards. Tatum in particular is one of the league's very best from midrange. His pristine footwork and silky shooting touch make him practically unguardable when he's locked in.

As a result, the Pacers will have to find the right balance of limiting threes and sending help against mismatches to keep Boston guessing. In reality however, I'm expecting Boston to score pretty much at will. This game will come down to whether the Pacers make their own shots... as all Pacers games do.

Injuries

We have a few fairly significant questionable designations for the Pacers tonight. Obviously if Haliburton doesn't play, the prospects of the Pacers advancing to the Semifinals drop precipitously. However, Obi Toppin is an extremely important cog in his own right. He's one of the few Pacers with the size to guard forwards. In Saturday's win against Miami, his defense on Butler was invaluable. Not to mention he's been stroking it from three lately, making around 44% on over five attempts per game.

I'm optimistic both players fight through the discomfort for the chance to play in an elimination game.

IST Trophies

The NBA released images of the trophies for various IST related awards. Tyrese Haliburton is on the short list for a few of the individual awards, somewhere he'll remain if we win tonight.

How to Watch

Tonight's game is on TNT making it the Pacers' first game of the year covered by a national broadcast team. If you can't live without Quinn Bucker – and I know some of you can't – you can always tune into Bally Sports, who will be covering the game simultaneously.

Tipoff is at 7:30 PM ET.

TV: TNT, Bally Sports Indiana

Radio: 93.5/107.5 The Fan

See ya in the comments!