Love/Hate Series: Victor Oladipo

What we hate about Victor Oladipo’s game

Victor Oladipo didn’t have a bad postseason overall, but the Cleveland Cavaliers exposed his vulnerabilities.

One of the most obvious examples was how the Cavaliers attacked him with double teams. In a mixture of his own mistakes and perhaps not enough adjusting by Nate McMillan, Oladipo was neutralized offensively.

Oladipo either picked up the ball or sent passes to teammates that were often out of reach or closer to the Cavaliers.

He turned the ball over 15 times in the first three games of the series, and even though he got back to only turning it over nine times in the final four games, the damage was obvious.

It wasn’t until later in the series that the Pacers did a better job of punishing the Cavaliers for the double teams, but they struggled to handle the pressure until the final two games of the series.

While the clips below illustrate some of the bad passes Oladipo made trying to escape the trap, there were plenty of times the Cavaliers ate up time and efficiency from the Pacers.

Cleveland took Oladipo out of his normal rhythm. A bevy of 3-pointers boosted his Game 1 shooting stats, but even then, he only shot 36.8 percent from the floor and 32.5 percent from deep in the first five games of the series. 20.2 points a game is solid, but it wasn’t enough as the Pacers lost three of those games.

As already noted, the turnovers went down and the scoring went up in the final two games as Oladipo not only averaged 29 points a game on 52 percent shooting but also averaged 12.5 rebounds, 8 assists, and 3.5 steals in Game 6 and Game 7.

So he seemingly fixed the issue, but when the playoffs roll around again, the other coaching staff is going to have another plan to slow down Oladipo.

The question next time will be if Oladipo and the Pacers are ready for it.