The Pacers Only Scored 1 Point While Paul George Sat in Game 5

The Indiana Pacers Game 5 collapse was a perfect storm of Frank Vogel’s bad decision making and bad luck.

Earlier today, we took a deep look at Frank Vogel’s, at times, baffling trust in his bench unit.

The big takeaway is that Vogel used the same lineup in the fourth quarter that blew a huge second quarter lead. And they blew the lead again, paving the way for the team to lose despite being up by 13 with 12 minutes to play and fall down 3-2 in a series that seemed poised to conclude with a massive upset.

Now, the team may soon see its season end while Vogel has a lot of questions to answer for. These questions — even those including his possible dismissal — will be fair. He made the decisions that led to the collapse and he will have to lie in a bed he made.

But, man, did he also catch some bad luck.

The Pacers’ bench has been weak at times all season long, so seeing it get outscored by a potent Raptors reserve unit, plus Kyle Lowry, was not surprising.

But the absolute futility of Vogel’s bench was just shocking. The numbers are appalling: The Indiana Pacers did not make a single basket, shooting 0-for-10, and only scored 1 point in the 6 minutes and 55 seconds that George spent on the bench. They were outscored 19-1 by the Raptors during this time.

Here are all those missed shots.

This isn’t some great offensive display. But, man, how did none of these shots go in? Rodney Stuckey missed several attempts within a few feet of the hoop and C.J. Miles also missed a layup plus a few decent 3-point attempts.

This isn’t to say Vogel was only screwed by bad luck.

The non-Paul George lineups also committed turnovers that were egregious while both Ty Lawson and Rodney Stuckey looked lost to start the fourth quarter.

But, jeez, the shooting really couldn’t have been worse. They even went 1-for-4 from the free-throw line while PG was off the court — and that doesn’t even include the 2 free throws Stuckey missed seconds after George re-entered the game with 8:36 to play.

Ultimately, Vogel will have to answer for his decisions if his team cannot win the final two games of this series to advance to the second round. Nobody will care that, process-wise, the offense in the second quarter under this non-Paul George unit was mediocre and not horrible. Nobody will want to hear about how they definitely should have made at least 2 or 3 of those 10 attempts — not 0.

People will only remember the outcome, not the process, no matter how much of an aberration it was. And in this case, Vogel’s decisions with the fourth-quarter rotation were bad on their own and made even worse by some bad luck.