Player Grade: Pacers can’t handle the champs, get stomped in Oakland

The Indiana Pacers finished their West coast road trip 0-4 after getting hammed in Oakland.

Beating the Warriors is very hard. Winning the final game of a week-long road trip is very hard. Combined, the Indiana Pacers had almost no chance in Oakland tonight, and it showed.

The Pacers just stunk. There isn’t much more worth saying about this game. They had almost no business winning it anyway, the team has been playing poorly of late, and it was at the tail end of a road trip. It went as bad as anyone expected.

Indiana was hanging in there for a while, they were down just 6 with about 2 and a half minutes to go in the first half. Then the Warriors went Warriors and started to tear it up, and before you could blink they had their lead to 15. They never looked back.

There were a few bright spots, I guess. Tyreke Evans put up a second consecutive solid game, showing once again he is a much more effective contributor when he can get into a rhythm. Road McDermott showed up, scoring 11 points despite missing both of his 3s. He also threw down an appealing dunk:

Aaron Holiday didn’t miss a shot on his way to 13 points. Thaddeus Young was very good. Everyone else stunk tonight.

Why is Tyreke Evans like this?

It’s game like this that almost make the Tyreke Evans experience more frustrating. He’s clearly a talented player; look at what he did out there tonight, getting to the rim wall and breaking down the defense.

He’s just been maddeningly inconsistent this season. He was great in this game and led the team in shots. He’s a rhythm player, and when he gets a big opportunity he can do things like this. I just wish it would happen more often.

Aaron Holiday is shining again.

Holiday hit the rookie wall, but he appears to finally be moving past it. Over his last 5 appearances, including this game, he is 9/15 (5/6 from deep) and only has 3 turnovers.

He’s starting to look good again, which is promising for his, and the Pacers, future.

Tell the World, they’re coming home.

That road trip sucked.

Free throws were the difference in Denver. Too little too late in Portland. And then again in Los Angeles. Then, a stacked deck against them against the best team in NBA history. This road trip was always going to be hard, but 0-4 with only one game in which the Pacers played what I would call “well” is worse than I thought it would go.

Now, Indy comes home and has just 1 game in the next week. They can rest and get their mind right with the fans behind them. That’s huge for a struggling team.

Player grades:

The Pacers head back home to face the Denver Nuggets on Sunday. Hopefully, the can right the ship in the matinee.