2 positives, 3 negatives from first week of Indiana Pacers basketball

The Indiana Pacers have officially played one full week of basketball.

Going into the season, expectations were pretty high, and so far, the Pacers have done a mix of meeting those expectations and completely failing them.

For starters, after back-to-back convincing wins to start the year, Indiana suffered back-to-back losses to put their current record at 2-2.

The first loss was at least close, as a controversial call led to Indiana losing to the Chicago Bulls 105-112. The second loss, however, was another story.

Indiana went into their fourth game against Boston eager for a usual close matchup.  However, without Tyrese Haliburton there to lead the way, the Pacers were crushed by a historic margin of 51 points, the largest loss in franchise history since 1977. Rest assured, this game had plenty of issues we need to discuss here.

When it comes to the Pacers, it’s hard to realistically gauge expectations for this team, with some people having them ranked among the bottom feeders of the league and others projecting them to sneak into the fourth seed and perhaps even win a playoff series.

In my opinion, the Pacers will win around 44 games and finish around the sixth seed, skipping the Play-In for the playoffs. That is a long while away, though.

What matters now is analyzing the four games Indiana has played so far and looking at what we can take away from them going forward into the season. After watching every game for myself and writing down my thoughts, I came up with five takeaways, some positive and some negative, so let’s get into it.