Indiana Pacers win streak ends at the hands of… the Cleveland Cavaliers?

lol The Indiana Pacers didn’t bother to put in enough effort and lost to the Cleveland Cavaliers. The loss snaps their winning streak at seven.

If you need musical accompaniment for this inexcusable Indiana Pacers loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers, follow the link back there. It’s probably better to have it playing because the words here won’t offer you any comfort, so perhaps a sad song will.

The Cavaliers didn’t even play well, the Pacers just played worse. Cleveland shot 41.3 percent from the floor and 19.4 percent from deep. Indiana beat those marks with a 39.8 field goal percentage and (blink) 18.2 from beyond the arc.

Pathetic effort offensively for Indiana. They were lifeless and rarely showed off the ball movement and proficiency that powered the seven-game streak the Kevin Love-less Cavaliers just snapped.

If the goal was to save energy for tonight’s game against the Toronto Raptors, then they should have plenty.

What was the Indiana Pacers problem?

As coach Nate McMillan might say, they f’d with the game. Indiana didn’t take the Cavaliers seriously, so a few missed free throws let the Cleveland stay within striking distance.

Did Larry Nance push Victor Oladipo out of the way? Yes. But Victor missed his chances to put two or three points of distance between the two teams. Oladipo admitted he must do better in situations like this so that a missed call doesn’t bite them.

It wasn’t just Oladipo that struggled at the foul line. The Pacers combined for a 13 of 21 (61.9 percent) performance on free throws.

In a game where Indiana saw six of their players score a dozen points or more, their lack of enthusiasm let a clearly inferior team beat them. This was clearly their worse loss of the season.

The Pacers face the Raptors tonight at 7 p.m.