7 stats from the Indiana Pacers’ 7-game win streak
By Ben Gibson
The Indiana Pacers’ win streak ended ingloriously to the Cleveland Cavaliers, but there are seven stats that defined the streak.
It was fun while it lasted, wasn’t it? The Indiana Pacers should have had a longer streak back in December, but they let the Cleveland Cavaliers stop that from happening.
But a seven-game win streak is still pretty good, no? And, while we’re here, we should probably mention they are currently on a five-game winning streak right now.
Within their previous streak, we saw the Pacers learn to win without Victor Oladipo and then continue to grab wins once he returned. We saw Myles Turner step up offensively as of late while Bojan Bogdanovic continued to get buckets. There were plenty of storylines within the streak that now came to an end.
But for now, let’s take a quick look at seven stats that defined the streak.
4 wins without Victor Oladipo, 3 with the Indiana Pacers’ star
One of the other epochs of this season was the time spent without Victor Oladipo. Indiana was breaking even before the streak began with a 4-4 record.
Wins over the Chicago Bulls, Orlando Magic, Sacramento Kings, and Washington Wizards weren’t overly impressive, but at least the Kings(!) had a winning record.
But once Oladipo returned, the schedule was far less kind. Meetings with the Milwaukee Bucks and Philadelphia 76ers are never easy, much less when the team tries to reintegrate a key player coming off an injury.
Yet, the Pacers field dressed the Bucks before rallying to modestly rout the 76ers, then dispatched the New York Knicks, a team with a sub .500 record.
Considering Indiana went 0-7 last year without their All-Star, starting the win streak without him was impressive.
Indiana’s opponents had a combined 98-114 record
Saying the Pacers opponents only had a .462 win percentage isn’t a great way to prop up the accomplishment, but it’s worth noting that the wins over the Bucks and 76ers were clearly against good teams. The win over the Kings isn’t bad either as they had a winning record at the time as well.
But going back to the first point — doing things without Oladipo — getting things started without him, even against bad teams, isn’t an easy task. “Luck” could have gotten wins over any of those .500 teams, but stringing them together takes more than that.
And the wins over the Eastern powers can’t be discounted, either. The recent losses cast some doubt on just how good Indiana might be, but they earned all seven wins one way or another. A team can only play who is on the schedule, and the Pacers did just that and won seven times in a row.
Myles Turner averaged 8.6 rebounds
The easiest — and fair — criticism of Myles Turner is the fact for the majority of his career, he was an average rebounder or worse.
But once Oladipo went down, Turner started playing differently. And once the streak got going, he pulled down rebounds with authority.
A more aggressive Myles averaged 8.6 rebounds during the streak while still playing the defense that everyone expects of him. Along with his 3 blocked shots a game, Turner grabbed nearly 20% of the defensive rebounds when he was in the game.
Indiana’s defense was great before his upturn in rebounding — team rebounding matters more than any one player’s — but cleaning up the glass only made his defensive impact greater. If he wasn’t blocking shots or causing opponents to miss, he often was picking up afterward.
To live up to the expectations of him, his rebounding needs to keep up like this. It’s worth noting over his last 21 games, he is averaging 8.9 a game.
Myles Turner averaged 57.9 percent from 3-point range
We knew Myles Turner has the range to make 3-pointers, but the stat sheet otherwise wise for most of the season. Before the streak, he was only making 21.2 percent of his attempts from deep.
But during the streak, he was making 57.9 percent of his attempts from beyond the arc. His 11 of 19 shooting from 3-point range helped stretch the floor and give Turner a bigger impact on the offensive side of the ball.