Post-Game Grades: Pacers survive rough start to walk away with win over Nuggets.

Victor Oladipo sets a career-high with 47 points while the Indiana Pacers rallied to a win over the Denver Nuggets.

Victor Oladipo set a career-high in points with 47, but this ended up being a team-effort led by the most surprising story of the NBA season.

But that’s not how the game started.

The Denver Nuggets opened the game going 6 for 6 as the Pacers appeared to be looking ahead on the schedule to Wednesday’s date with the Oklahoma City Thunder. Or maybe they were blinded by the afterglow of their win over the Cleveland Cavaliers. They looked lost without Darren Collison, who was injured. Either way, they didn’t look like a team ready to win.

But slowly the fought back into the game. It took until late in the third quarter for Indiana to take their first lead — on a Joe Young lay-up — but that eventually gave way to an 8-point Nuggets lead in the fourth quarter.

A Myles Turner free throw started what became an 11-3 run — the next 8 points coming from Oladipo — capped off by a Thaddeus Young basket with 5 seconds left, forcing overtime. In the extra period, Indiana all but shut out the Nuggets, outscoring them 12-2, for the Pacers’ fourth straight win.

The Good: The 35-22 score after the first quarter hid the fact Indiana absolutely dominated the Nuggets the rest of the way. After the first quarter, the Pacers had a 135 offensive rating, and a 102 defensive rating. That means they outscored them by 33 points per 100 possessions the rest of the way.

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In non-nerdy terms, they outscored them 104-81 after the first quarter.

The comeback took a while, but the Pacers outplayed the Nuggets in most of the game despite needing overtime.

The Bad: That first quarter was rough. You don’t need advanced numbers to know a 13-point deficit is a bad thing.

The Nuggets were 12 of 23 (52.2%) from the field and 6 of 9 (66.7%) from deep in the opening period while Indiana was an ugly 8 of 20 and losing the rebounding battle 14 to 8.

MVP: Victor Oladipo got MVP chants from the crowd. The crowd made this choice.

LVP: Cory Joseph was the starting point guard in place of Collison, but he couldn’t fill the void. The team played better without him, prompting coach Nate McMillan to let Oladipo play point guard while Lance Stephenson remained in the game as the shooting guard.

X-Factor: Thaddeus Young’s 18 points and 7 rebounds aren’t bad, but the biggest thing was he made it to the right place at the right time to put the ball back up after Oladipo’s miss in the closing seconds of regulation. The game doesn’t go to overtime without him.

Next: Lance makes Ntilikina dance

Paul George and the Oklahoma City Thunder come to town on Wednesday.