3 positives, 2 negatives from Pacers In-Season Tournament win vs. 76ers

Negative: Foul trouble throughout

Speaking of defense, this was about the only thing the Pacers didn't do right on that end of the floor. It's never fun when a player hits foul trouble, and even less fun when two or more hit foul trouble. Against Philly, the Pacers had four players with four or more fouls, and one that accumulated two fouls before getting sent to the hospital two minutes in.

Guarding Joel Embiid is a tough task for any player, let alone a guy whose struggles against him have been well-documented. While this isn't directly targeted at Myles Turner, who played fantastically against Embiid in the fourth quarter, he did foul out at the end of the game, accumulating his sixth foul in just over 19 minutes.

In addition to Turner, Isaiah Jackson also committed four fouls, and Jalen Smith got sent to the hospital after a wild elbow shot from Marcus Morris took him out of the game. In the two minutes Smith played before his abrupt hospitalization, he accumulated two fouls on Embiid.

This does match up when you look at Philly's box score, as Embiid himself shot 17 free throws while no other Pacer took more than eight.

Following Turner and Jackson's early foul trouble and Jalen Smith being taken out of the game, Indiana resorted to some interesting tactics on Embiid, sticking the much smaller Aaron Nesmith on him to surprising success.

This game was full of questionable calls from the referees, from multiple Embiid flops being rewarded with free throws to the one flop call being put on Obi Toppin, to the referees quite literally awarding extra free throws to the Sixers because of a mistake made five minutes early.

It seemed like the Pacers were playing eight-on-five. Some of this had to be on them, as a team doesn't shoot 35 free throws on a night off purely bad referee calls. More on the free throws later.