The Pacers season is over after a loss in Game 7 to the Cleveland Cavaliers. Let’s grade every player’s performance one last time.
After winning 48 games and taking their first-round series to seven games, the Indiana Pacers season is over.
Indiana can be happy with the way they played in their final game of the season. they fought back from a 14 point deficit to take a lead in the third quarter. Victor Oladipo and Darren Collison had it working. Lance made two threes. It wasn’t enough to win, but it was an excellent encapsulation of the season as a whole.
The Cavs just had one leg up on this team: LeBron James. We’ve known how dominant he can be for years now, but he showed the Pacers just one last time. 45 points, nine rebounds, and seven assists while stretching his impact over nearly 44 minutes is just a small sample of how good we can see LeBron be. The Pacers might be the better team, but LeBron was the best player in the series.
The Good: The Pacers fought like hell to get back into this game. When they were down 14 in the second quarter, nobody counted them out. They had come back from huge deficits before. But for some reason, in a Game 7, this one felt a little different.
It didn’t matter how it felt. Oladipo and company roared back from the margin to take a lead in the third quarter, which put them in a position to fight for their lives and try to steal the game in the fourth frame.
The Bad: Rebounding. The Cavs gameplan to take the series was to give Tristan Thompson his first start of the series, and that decision paid off big time. He pulled down five offensive rebounds alone, and the Cavs pulled down 15 as a team. Combine that with 11 turnovers for the Pacers, and the Cavs number of possessions adds up fast. It hurt the team, and it hurt bad
MVP: Victor Oladipo. Again. For, like, the 50th time. Oladipo was sensational, dumping in 30 points to go with 12 rebounds and six assists. He also, as always, played great defense and had three steals. Indianapolis is his City, and he proved it one last time with a dominant showing in the Pacers final game.
LVP: A real stinker of a final game for Bojan Bogdanovic. We can only be so mad since he basically single-handedly won Game 3, but he was 1/9 in this one and his defense was not as good as it was earlier in the series. It was fairly emblematic of his roller-coaster season, but it was a bummer to see Bojan struggle in the final game of the season.
X-Factor: Thristan Thompson. He had 15 points and 10 rebounds and was a +2 in his first significant action of the series. Ty Lue mixed it up by going with Thimpson to start the game, and the Pacers weren’t ready. He changed the game, and ipso facto, the series.
Next: Thad Young talks to 8p9s
The Pacers next game is… in the Los Vegas summer league. Get ready for the offseason folks. The Pacers season is over, but we never stop here at 8 Points, 9 Seconds.