In the final game of the preseason, the Indiana Pacers got the job done against Maccabi Haifa, winning 108-89.
This one wasn’t always pretty. The Pacers headed to Bankers Life to wrap up the preseason Tuesday night, defeating Maccabi Haifa of the Israeli league 109-89.
Essentially, it was what you would expect from an NBA team facing off against a non-NBA team. Except for a briefly scary period where the lead fell to only four points, the Pacers were in control from start to finish, and it wasn’t exactly because of their stellar play.
The projected opening night starting lineup kicked things off, as Nate McMillan used his final opportunity to roughly simulate a regular season rotation. Bojan Bogdanovic, however, was the only Pacer to play more than 30 minutes tonight.
The Good: The Pacers won another meaningless game, this one even more meaningless because of the absence of an NBA opponent. Honestly, there wasn’t much else worth mentioning. As you can imagine, things got pretty sloppy at times, and the squad didn’t exactly look like they were rounding into regular season form. That being said, I wouldn’t have tried that hard if I were them either.
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The Bad: Too many fouls, too many turnovers and too much playing down to the competition. There’s little reason to believe that this was anything other than guys being a little checked out in a game that doesn’t matter, so hopefully this isn’t a problem that extends into the regular season. If the Pacers have any delusions about being competitive, they need to win games against clearly worse teams, and it won’t be this easy against real NBA rosters.
MVP: Victor Oladipo takes the award with 18 points and an almost perfect mark from downtown. The pride of IU shot 4-for-5 from 3-point range and made it to the free throw line a decent amount as well.
LVP: Bojan Bogdanovic had kind of the reverse type of game, taking six attempts from long range and making only one of them. If he’s not making it rain from downtown, he’s really not doing anything for his team other than spacing the floor a bit. Let’s hope it was just an off night.
X-Factor: Domantas Sabonis continued to develop into a fan favorite, putting up a double-double and notching two assists as well.