Post-Game Grades: Pacers Blow Another Lead But Hold on to Outlast Celtics in OT
By Jared Wade
The Good: The end. As in, when it was over. Man was this a slog. I’ve watched almost every Indiana Pacers game this season, and most of them are slogs. But this? This right here? This was ugg-lee. The Pacers won and made some nice plays down the stretch in overtime so you have to give them some credit for that.
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The Bad: The fact that this took overtime. The Boston Celtics are trash and that’s even relative to the highly mediocre Pacers. I’ve gotten clearance deals at stores that were closing their doors forever on December 31, and they weren’t even having the type of sales that Boston has been putting out there. The Pacers should be able to handle them quite easily. And for the bulk of the game, even though Indiana itself wasn’t even playing particularly well, that is exactly what happened. But then the Celtics started making everything late and the Pacers could not respond appropriately. And after some of their now-characteristics late-game mistakes, Boston was able to get five more minutes to steal a win — like the Lakers did on Monday.
MVP: Roy Hibbert. He scored 11 points in the first quarter while playing nearly every second of the opening period despite leaving a game on Wednesday with a sprained ankle. He did light up the score sheet after that, but he made a potentially game-saving block late that ensured Indiana could at least atone for it’s crunch-time sins with an overtime opportunity.
LVP: Solomon Hill was 2-for-7 and didn’t seem to impact the game much until one late (albeit large) bucket.
X-Factor: Donald Sloan. Is he even eligible for X-Factor status anymore? He just seems to come through every game now. But he hit two big 3-pointers early in the fourth that helped ensure the Pacers had a large enough cushion to absorb the can’t-miss onslaught Boston unveiled late.
 | David West, PF 30 MIN | 3-11 FG | 5-6 FT | 6 REB | 3 AST | 1 STL | 1 BLK | 4 TO | 11 PTS | -1 |
Missed a wide-open layup late that was a borderline unforgiveable offense. And his line wan’t good overall. But he did make his free throws late and muscled in the paint up to get to the line on arguably the biggest possession of the game.
Solomon Hill, SF 25 MIN | 2-7 FG | 0-0 FT | 5 REB | 1 AST | 1 STL | 2 BLK | 0 TO | 4 PTS | -19Not good.
Roy Hibbert, C 36 MIN | 7-19 FG | 5-6 FT | 11 REB | 4 AST | 0 STL | 5 BLK | 2 TO | 19 PTS | +2Excellent and doubly impressive since it came two days after he was knocked out of a West Coast game with a sprained ankle.
Rodney Stuckey, PG 29 MIN | 3-7 FG | 0-0 FT | 4 REB | 4 AST | 1 STL | 0 BLK | 2 TO | 6 PTS | +2Did some good things, some bad as you would expect.
C.J. Watson, PG 32 MIN | 4-8 FG | 5-6 FT | 8 REB | 0 AST | 1 STL | 0 BLK | 3 TO | 15 PTS | +10Nice work. Tracked down 4 ORBs early on. Even if they were some strange bounces, he was in the right place.
Lavoy Allen, PF 17 MIN | 1-3 FG | 4-4 FT | 4 REB | 1 AST | 0 STL | 0 BLK | 1 TO | 6 PTS | -1Patented tip in and some other stuff.
Luis Scola, PF 24 MIN | 5-12 FG | 4-4 FT | 5 REB | 1 AST | 0 STL | 1 BLK | 0 TO | 14 PTS | +8Continues to do good work. The Celtics announcers were raving about his play.
Chris Copeland, SF 15 MIN | 1-5 FG | 2-2 FT | 6 REB | 3 AST | 1 STL | 0 BLK | 2 TO | 5 PTS | +6Didn’t make shots and usually that means he was a net negative, but added things in other areas, particularly by giving the reserves a post presence.
Donald Sloan, PG 21 MIN | 4-9 FG | 0-0 FT | 3 REB | 4 AST | 0 STL | 0 BLK | 1 TO | 10 PTS | -6Steady as they come.
C.J. Miles, SG 37 MIN | 4-11 FG | 5-6 FT | 4 REB | 0 AST | 0 STL | 0 BLK | 1 TO | 17 PTS | +19Scoring efficiently and playing a lot of minutes. Can’t ask for much more out of a sixth man.
