4 Biggest reasons behind Indiana Pacers loss to Chicago Bulls

Well, all good things must come to an end. After a blowout season opener win against the Washington Wizards and a closer win against the Cleveland Cavaliers last Saturday, the Indiana Pacers suffered their first loss of the season to the Chicago Bulls on Monday night.

This was a pretty frustrating game to watch from the start, as the Pacers got off to their usual slow start, and despite taking the lead going into the second quarter, they never really looked like they wanted the win.

After two almost perfect games, the Pacers watched a lot of their efforts go in vain as Nikola Vucevic and the Bulls came away with a close 112-105 win. If we’re being completely honest, however, Indiana played like they lost by way more, especially in the closing stretches where they couldn’t buy a bucket and looked lost.

There is one thing to address when talking about the loss, though. The Pacers may have taken the game to overtime had the referees not called a bad foul on Andrew Nembhard in the final minute of the game, effectively sealing the game for the Bulls and eliminating any real hope of a Pacers comeback.

However, one or two bad calls do not excuse an otherwise bad game and certainly cannot be used as a scapegoat to distract from the crucial errors from the players and the coaching staff that led to a loss against a potentially inferior team.

Watching the game, four things stood out in particular as to why Indiana lost, and all four are equally disheartening, especially the ones that have been discussed before.

In my previous takeaways, a lot of these subjects have been brought up, and it has been stated that while the Pacers were winning despite them, they could quickly come back to haunt them in a loss, exactly like the one tonight.

Let’s get into the four biggest reasons why the Pacers lost to the Bulls.

1. Defense and fouling

This is something I have repeated over and over again, and also something that has been an issue with the Indiana Pacers for multiple years now, transcending players and coaches along the way.

It was especially evident tonight, as the Pacers seemed to pick and choose who they would pay extra defensive attention to on the Bulls team. While Indiana’s wings did a good job guarding Zach LaVine and DeMar DeRozan, holding them to 6/17 and 6/19 shooting, respectively, they seemed to have stopped the defensive attention right there. Outside of DeRozan and LaVine, every single Chicago Bull that scored shot 50% or higher from the field.

Of all these people, Indiana got consistently torched by big man Nikola Vucevic, who put up a team-high 24 points on 10/19 shooting and whom Myles Turner struggled mightily against in the paint.

In fact, smaller defenders such as Aaron Nesmith and Bruce Brown seemed to have more success guarding Vucevic than Turner had. This has been an unfortunate pattern for Turner throughout his career, as he had notoriously struggled with more physical big men and did not do great against the back-to-basket centric Vucevic. There were times when Turner looked lost under the basket, giving up an easy dunk for Vucevic in the process.

It wasn’t only Turner that looked lost, however, as the whole team looked out of place, especially in the closing stretches, giving up an easy Alex Caruso fastbreak dunk while not even making a motion to guard the paint, effectively giving up on the night far before the final buzzer sounded.

When the Pacers weren’t giving up easy buckets in transition or in the paint, they were fouling. In this game, more than ever, Indiana struggled mightily with fouls, as three players committed more than three fouls, and Aaron Nesmith fouled out with six.

Bennedict Mathurin, in particular, struggled with foul trouble, picking up two fouls on back-to-back possessions and even getting a technical foul after protesting a call a bit too loudly.

Mathurin ended the night with five fouls, which prevented him from being more aggressive on defense as the game came to an end, effectively limiting his defensive ability. This comes as a disappointment following Saturday’s game against the Cleveland Cavaliers, where Mathurin was also poor on defense, a shock considering how much improvement he showed during the preseason.

All in all, the Indiana Pacers committed 24 fouls compared to Chicago’s 17 and let the Bulls pull away in the end due to sloppy defense despite the bad call.

2. Team-wide shooting woes

It’s pretty hard to win a basketball game when basically every player on your team has gone ice-cold for apparently no reason.

After two fantastic games to start the season in which eight and six players scored in double figures, respectively, Indiana had a massive cooldown game against Chicago where the opposite seemingly occurred.

Instead of the players being red hot, nobody could hit a shot. While Tyrese Haliburton’s 19 points on 6/16 shooting don’t seem overtly terrible at first, his shooting 1/8 from behind the line does.

Bennedict Mathurin did a great job getting to the line, shooting six free throws and making all of them, but he was not effecting anywhere besides that, as his 15 points came on 4/11 from the field and 1/4 from beyond the arc. Buddy Hield hit three three-pointers, but he only shot 4/12 from the field, and Andrew Nembhard went 0/4 from beyond the arc, shooting 3/7 overall.

In fact, even Indiana’s leading scorer, Myles Turner, struggled from the field, shooting 6/14. However, he was actually one of the more efficient players on the floor tonight, as while the Bulls had seven players shoot 50% or higher, the Pacers only had two players do such a thing, with Bruce Brown shooting 6/12 and 3/6 from three, and the ever-reliable Jalen Smith putting up eight points on 4/7 shooting, despite going 0/2 from behind the line.

The issue here wasn’t even that Chicago was playing fantastic defense, as their defense was usually heavy on the ball and in the passing lanes, leading to steals and turnovers for Indiana.

The Indiana Pacers got a lot of great looks from three and just missed them, throwing up quite a few airballs in the process. In fact, Indiana got plenty of wide-open looks right at the rim and even missed those point-blank opportunities, including Jalen Smith missing an alley-oop on a fast break with nobody around him.

All in all, Indiana shot 41% from the field compared to Chicago’s 46% and shot a putrid 26% from three on 12/46 shooting compared to Chicago’s 35%. Efficiency like this does not help win basketball games if one person is shooting like this.

When the whole team is struggling from the field, there is a serious issue, and any idea of a team win should be thrown out the window until the players can actually make their shots, especially when the defense isn’t hampering them too much.

3. Turnovers, turnovers, turnovers

The problems didn’t end with the shooting, as the Indiana Pacers also had 17 turnovers on the night. Now, the issue isn’t exactly the number of turnovers, as Chicago had the same amount and won, but it was exactly how those turnovers came to be and how easily avoidable they were.

The Pacers just seemed out of it when it came to passing the ball, with some passes either ending up short, sailing into a defender’s hands, or being completely overshot and going into the stands.

When they weren’t turning the ball over with passes, they were turning it over right under the rim, as Bennedict Mathurin did once. At one point, Mathurin had a layup right under the rim, power dribbled, and lost possession. In fact, while Mathurin only had two turnovers on the night, it felt like a lot more, as he was dribbling errantly into the defense and looked pretty lost with the ball a lot of times.

More of the same applies to Andrew Nembhard, although he is a more extreme case. While Mathurin only got two turnovers in 27 minutes, Nembhard doubled his total with four in only 21 minutes.

Nembhard had a pretty rough game overall, not hitting a three, throwing bad passes, and eventually getting the game-sealing foul. While these aren’t exactly things to be too worried about when it comes to these two, as they are still very young and are learning with each game, the entire team should look to be more careful with the ball, as Tyrese Haliburton also had four turnovers’ while Bruce Brown had three.

One of the most important things when it comes to offense and playmaking is being able to take care of the ball, and the Indiana Pacers did not do that against Chicago, often dribbling right into the defenders and essentially asking them to take the ball the other way.

Speaking of taking care of the ball…

4. Confusing rotational decisions

Here’s a bright idea: If your team is struggling to take care of the ball, why not bring in one of the most reliable bench ball handlers in the league to take some of that load off your point guards who are struggling with turnovers?

In a confusing turn of events, TJ McConnell did not log a single minute against the Chicago Bulls and spent the whole game on the bench, along with six other Indiana Pacers. In fact, Indiana only played nine players on the night, as McConnell, Isaiah Jackson, Jordan Nwora, Daniel Theis, Ben Sheppard, and Jarce Walker all logged DNPs.

This comes as a huge surprise, as one of Indiana’s best qualities is depth, and fans have praised the team’s ability to go 12 deep if needed. With that being said, Rick Carlisle’s decision to play only nine players comes off as very surprising, especially when they could have used the inside scoring of Isaiah Jackson or the playmaking and energy of TJ McConnell.

In addition to these players not logging minutes, this marks the second game where rookies Jarace Walker and Ben Sheppard logged DNPs. Now, while I did say not to worry about this at first, as Carlisle is still tweaking the rotation to what he wants for the season, that does not mean that I am okay with it.

Sheppard and Walker are fantastic players who could slide into any team’s rotation right now, and it is a shame seeing them log DNPs, especially on such a youth-forward team like the Pacers.

Hopefully, this will change soon, as one of the main reasons for tonight’s loss may have also been due to player fatigue, as talented options were resting on the bench for no reason when they could have been out there contributing to a potential win.

Who knows if these issues will be fixed come Wednesday and a matchup against the contending Boston Celtics? We will have to see where Rick Carlisle and the Indiana Pacers go from here.