Ahead of their brutal two-week stretch to end the month of November, the Indiana Pacers managed to take down the last of their "easy" games on Wednesday night when they defeated the Washington Wizards 114-101.
While this was a team victory, in which four of five starters scored in the double digits, it was a game undeniably defined by the performance of Ivica Zubac, who had 20 points and 12 rebounds and absolutely demolished Anthony Davis, keeping him at a ghastly 7/20 shooting from the field.
It has not been a good start to the season for Zubac, who missed a handful of games with an ankle injury and has struggled to do much of anything. He was even benched against the Dallas Mavericks after getting dominated on the boards all night.
That stretch had many fans worried about the trade value the Pacers gave up to get the Croatian big. However, if Zubac can play at the level he did against Washington, those concerns should disappear quickly.
Who can Zubac be, and how dependent is this team on Tyrese Haliburton?
The question from the past few games has been which version of Ivica Zubac is the real one. Is it the liability who came back to a Pacers lineup that needed him desperately and failed to do anything on defense while getting decent numbers on offense? Or is it the one we saw on Wednesday night, who rebounded like his life depended on it and created a much wider margin of error for his teammates on both ends of the ball?
The obvious thought is that everything will become far easier for the entire roster when Tyrese Haliburton returns, and that his presence will simply spark the team to regain their past levels of defensive activity and offensive enjoyment.
It's hard to overstate how important joy is to good teams. If your team is playing like they are just there for a paycheck, and actively do not enjoy both the sport they are playing and the people they are playing it with, the season is cooked. In that way, Haliburton is the ultimate luxury.
Having playmakers that keep everyone involved is a fast way to get the entire team to buy in. We're seeing this with the Minnesota Timberwolves, who have the league's best net rating to start the season despite missing Anthony Edwards, because of the joy LaMelo Ball brings.
Time will tell if Zubac is worth the price that was paid, and if this roster can find a better way to work together after a 4-8 start, but for one night, Zubac was everything Pacers fans could've asked for.
And that's a big step in the right direction.
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