With Myles Turner out of the lineup, the Portland Trail Blazers exposed the weaknesses of the Indiana Pacers.
The Indiana Pacers went hunting for a win but came back to their wagon with nothing to show for their efforts. The Pacers ended up dying from exhaustion as the Portland Trail Blazers were simply better equipt to both run and gun and stop the Indiana from doing the same.
It was a doomed journey as trying to pick up a win against the Trail Blazers without Myles Turner was as likely as fording a 20-foot deep river successfully.
A Turner-less Indiana Pacers team isn’t a very good team, it turns out. The face of the franchise is recovering from a concussion while the rest of the Pacers were exposed as the poor defenders we expected them to be. Myles can’t fix all of Indiana’s problems, but he’s one of the NBA’s better rim defenders. Having someone like him stopping up drives and blocking shots can make his teammates’ defensive mistakes less damaging.
Indiana hits the trail to Miami now for Saturday’s game against the Heat.
The Good: T.J. Leaf can shoot! We knew that already, but dropping 17 points on 7 of 11 shooting in an actual NBA game means something, right?
More from 8 Points, 9 Seconds
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- Handing out early-season grades for Pacers’ Bruce Brown, Obi Toppin
- 3 positives, 2 negatives in Pacers In-Season Tournament win vs. Cavaliers
- 2 positives, 3 negatives from first week of Indiana Pacers basketball
- Should Isaiah Jackson’s days with Indiana Pacers be numbered?
The Bad: The defense… the defense was an abomination. The spirit of Frank Vogel is not haunting this team as they allowed the Trail Blazers to shoot 48.9% from the floor and 47.4% from deep.
Much of this was expected, but when you mix the bad defense in with Indiana shooting 44.9% from the floor and an abysmal 4 of 18 from deep, the Pacers simply can’t survive.
MVP: Herb Simon let Pacers fans know the team isn’t going anywhere on his watch.
LVP: Victor Oladipo wasn’t expected to carry Indiana to victory by himself, but shooting 29.4% on Friday night made sure there was a zero percent chance of success.
X-Factor: An angry C.J. McCollum came out of his one-game suspension to score 28 points and grab 7 rebounds.