8p9s Roundtable: What to Expect from the Pacers in Game 7
By Ben Gibson
After Game 5’s collapse, did you think the Pacers were going to win Game 6?
Medworth: I did. Mostly because you cannot trust the Raptors. It’s felt to me like the Pacers have largely been in control this series, just a couple of quarters where the Raptors outplayed them. I had no faith in the Raptors to close a series on the road. And they didn’t.
Furr: I did. Paul George and George Hill, at the very least, have been here and rallied before. If they can do it during the dumpster fire that was the end of the 2013-2014 playoffs, they can do it undermanned against a Toronto team notorious for playoff failures.
Barth: Yeah, because that’s what this team does: one minute you’ve got them pegged and they immediately go the other way in the next game.
Eggers: As I’ve said all postseason, I didn’t know what to think. You might as well flip a coin in this series because usual factors like momentum and home-court mean nothing to the Pacers or Raptors. My gut told me yes, as long as the starters played like they did in Game 5 and as long as the bench did literally anything. Which they did.
Washburn: No, I really didn’t. That was, as Mark Boyle confirmed on twitter, one of the worst Pacers losses imaginable. I was hopeful that the role players would play better at home, and I was pleasantly surprised when a great Pacers crowd showed up. Vogel should get far more credit than he will for his calm demeanor which definitely seemed to reveal itself in his players en route to a convincing Game 5 win.
Next: Is the Bench Back?