Rising Stars: Pacers’ Mathurin balls out and dominates in viral performance

The Pacers’ Bennedict Mathurin put on a clinic in the rising stars challenge. In the first game of the tournament Mathurin put up a stat line of: 7 points, 2 rebounds, and 1 steal. And while from the a distance that doesn’t seem to be much, he had probably the shot of the night (besides the game winner) getting his defender completely off balance.

Team Pau won easily and headed to the finals to take on a team largely led by sophomore players such as Josh Giddey and Evan Mobley. This is where Mathurin kicked it into high gear.

Mathurin seemed to start the second game like a man on a mission

Mathurin came right out of the gate in the finals scoring 7 of the first 12 points capped off by this gem of a three pointer:

You could tell that Mathurin was hunting shots in this game and rightfully so. Given that major media outlets such as ESPN and TNT hardly every cover or talk about the Pacers, this is Bennedict’s chance to show the rest of the league what we all already know: that we got the steal of the draft and potentially the best player in his class.

The icing on the cake is that Mathurin had the game-winning assist. Of course, we would have preferred that Mathurin had the game winning shot, but we will let Alverado have his due.

And let’s not forget Nembhard who had a good night himself:

While Nembhard didn’t light up the scoreboard he did have some good assists and proved that the Pacers front office is putting together an elite young core.

The Pacers will be back in action tomorrow night with the 3 point contest (Tyrese Haliburton and Buddy Hield) as well as the All-Star Game on Sunday (Tyrese Haliburton). So Pacers’ fans have a lot to be excited about in the coming days.