How many more games will the Indiana Pacers win?

The Indiana Pacers are just a few wins away from locking in another winning season, but how many wins will they end the regular season with?

The Indiana Pacers went into the All-Star break with the 5th best record in the NBA at 38-20, nearly 20 games above .500. Unless the Pacers finish the season 2-22, they are all but locked into another winning season.

A losing record seems rather unlikely especially when you consider that even without Victor Oladipo this year, they’ve gone 13-7, with a pair of solid winning streaks building that record up. This team is an underdog without their franchise player, but they’re still not a team anyone should want to tangle with.

An aside: the Indiana Pacers only had one losing season since 2011, and that was the 2015 season where not only Paul George was out, but Indiana saw over 200 missed games by their roster. Even then, with 37 wins, they nearly snuck into the playoffs.

But back to the present: Indiana’s got about a third of the season left to play and the 8th toughest schedule left to play, according to Tankathon. So how many wins do they have in them? What’s their final record going to look like?

Tough road ahead for the Indiana Pacers

If you ask FiveThirtyEight, the prognosis is grim. Their projections have Indiana finishing the season with a 50-32, meaning they expect Indiana to go 12-12. That would drop them down to 5th in the Eastern Conference and out of home court advantage in the first round.

It’s understandable that there is some skepticism on how the Pacers will finish out the year. They’ve had the easiest schedule in the NBA going into the All-Star break and built up the record with a full-strength roster more often than not.

If you’re looking for their toughest games left, they’ve got dates with the Milwaukee Bucks, Golden State Warriors, Philadelphia 76ers, Portland Trail Blazers, Boston Celtics (twice), Oklahoma City Thunder (also, twice), Denver Nuggets (again, twice). If they lost all of those, that’s 10 losses there.

There are also some pesky teams like the Atlanta Hawks, Brooklyn Nets, and Orlando Magic that aren’t pushovers, even if Indiana is favored. There’s some hope with games against the New York Knicks and others, but looking at it math-wise, projection-wise may hypnotize one into expecting a tough road ahead for Indiana.

Numbers are a bunch of no good, dirty liars

But this team keeps proving that they aren’t helpless without Oladipo and they’ve figured out a few things about themselves along the way. The evolution of Myles Turner into an offensive weapon raises the Pacers’ ceiling. Bojan Bogdanovic proves, again and again, he can carry the scoring load for Indiana.

On top of that, modest gains by Thaddeus Young and Darren Collison stabilize Indiana while Wesley Matthews figures out his role. Throw in a stable bench, and you’ve still got a pretty good team.

While saying Indiana finishes the season 12-12 or better is only barely spitting in the face of the science of FiveThirtyEight, it only requires Indiana to take care of business against losing teams — the Pacers are 26-9 against them this season — and to steal a few wins in games they aren’t favored in.

The Pacers, in my mind, at least, are capable of doing that. And I believe they will win at least 12 games the rest of the way.

The Indiana Pacers are finishing the season with a winning record overall. The only real question is if they can finish the remaining 24 games with a winning record as well.