The Indiana Pacers swept both legs of their home and home series with the Detroit Pistons this week.
The Indiana Pacers won both ends of their series this week with the Detroit Pistons. No need to count away goals, aggregate scoring, or anything like that. They simply took care of business and kept themselves in the running for the fourth seed in the Eastern Conference — and home-court advantage.
The win on Wednesday started off ugly with an 18-15 first quarter no team could be proud of, but after that, both teams returned to playing normal basketball but the Pistons weren’t keeping pace with Indiana.
While Indiana got some offense going and led by at least three and as much as 21 points the rest of the way, the Pistons only real offense came from Drummond scoring in the paint and Wayne Ellington catching fire with 5 3-pointers.
Meanwhile Thaddeus Young led Indiana with 21 points while Doug McDermott, Myles Turner, Domantas Sabonis, and Bojan Bogdanovic joined him as double-digit scorers. Indiana doesn’t need to be flashy to win. They’ve perfected the art of winning ugly.
Thaddeus Young leads the way
Teams are adjusting to Bojan Bogdanovic being the Pacers lead scorer and the defenses often try to force the ball into Thaddeus Young’s hands. Their hope is to make Young a volume scorer but when they allow him to shoot 64.3%, then volume isn’t an issue.
Young splashed a pair of corner 3-pointers on the night as well and led the way with a blackjack worth of points.
Caught off guard(s)
The absence of regular starters Darren Collison and Wesley Matthews as the trio of Cory Joseph, Tyreke Evans, and Aaron Holiday went 6 of 32 (18.8%) from the field on Monday.
It’s easy to forget how accurate Matthews has been with the Pacers and how DC sets up their offense, but these recent shooting lines should illuminate that. Over the last two games, they’ve gone 15 of 45, which isn’t great, Bob.
Stat lines vs impact
Is Andre Drummond’s 29 points and 18 rebounds impressive? Yes. Did he have a real impact on the game? Well, the Pacers outscored the Pistons 62-36 in the paint and the Pistons were (small sample size warning) -13.8 in their net rating with him on the floor, only slightly better than the team’s -18.6 rating.
Drummond is obviously good, but when the Pistons get pounded in the paint and the Pacers bigs are shooting over 60 percent as a ground, it feels a bit hollow for Drummond. He misses Blake Griffin, for sure.
Myles Turner didn’t have the same sort of gaudy stat line (15 points, 4 rebounds), but his impact on the game was much more apparent.
The Pacers face the Celtics on Friday at 8 p.m.