Pacers near-collapse against Nets ends week that couldn't be normal
INDIANAPOLIS -- For once in an insane week that has taxed the Pacers physically and mentally, they seemed on track to actually cruise through a fourth quarter, beat an opponent handily and not sweat out the final minute of a game.
They entered Saturday night's fourth period with a 20-point lead over a Brooklyn Nets team with more organizational motivation to lose games than to win them with the draft lottery more likely in their future than even the play-in round. They finally had All-Star point guard Tyrese Haliburton back in the lineup after three games without him due to a sore lower back and their hyperkinetic offense was running as smoothly as it usually does when he was in the game. The Pacers had little reason to be troubled and more reason to believe they'd be able to finish the game with rookie Johnny Furphy on the floor.
And then they proceeded to score two points in the first 7:47 of the fourth quarter on 1 of 10 shooting, allowing the still feisty Nets to score 21 points in that stretch to get all the way back within one point and had to hold on for dear life to escape with a 108-103 win in an exasperated Gainbridge Fieldhouse.
"We seem to not be able to have normal basketball games as of late," Haliburton said. "It's par for the course."
The Pacers tried to look on the bright side of that reality as they noted that despite the wildness and intensity of this week's games, they still managed to win them all. At 41-29 they are a season-best 12 games over .500, they guaranteed themselves at least a .500 record for the season and they maintained a one-game lead over the Bucks and a 2 1/2 game lead on the Pistons for fourth place in the Eastern Conference.
"We're doing a good job of just figuring it out," Haliburton said. "Figure it out however you can. That's what's important right now because come playoff time, it won't matter that this game was played this way. Just that we won."
Still, of the four high-wire acts the Pacers managed to survive this week, Saturday's was the most inexplicably close.
Monday night's win over the Timberwolves was actually one of the most improbable of the season considering they were missing four starters -- Haliburton, Pascal Siakam, Aaron Nesmith and Myles Turner -- for injuries or in Siakam's case, personal reasons and because they lost fifth starter Andrew Nembhard to two technical fouls and sixth man Bennedict Mathurin to six personal fouls over the course of the game. Wednesday's game against the short-handed. Mavericks was closer than it should've been and they blew a 16-point first half lead, but the Pacers were still playing without Haliburton and their come back from 11 points down and down seven points in the final minute was impressive. By Thursday night, the Pacers were playing their fifth game in seven days and the second game of their second back-to-back in that stretch and they spent the entire night running with heavy legs, so surviving that one with a win was it's own different form of achievement.
On Saturday they seemed much better rested, they were defending well and they were getting most of what they wanted on offense until they suddenly couldn't. Through three quarters, they were shooting 52.2% from the floor with 27 assists against just seven turnovers. Haliburton was commanding the same level of gravity he has throughout his torrid stretch of play since the All-Star break and that kept the Nets scrambled for much of the evening. They had 21 fast-break points and 46 points in the paint and they posted 1.13 points per possession or better in each of the first three quarters.
But in the fourth, nothing that worked in the first three quarters seemed to work then. The Nets had a lot to do with it, running traps, zones and other junk defenses at the Pacers to get them out of their rhythm and it worked. The Nets began the quarter on a 13-0 run and the Pacers went scoreless on their first six possessions with four missed shots and two turnovers. They finally got on the board in the quarter with forward Obi Toppin's remarkable 180-degree dunk on an alley-oop from Haliburton with 7:57 to go in the quarter, but then went seven more possessions without a bucket with five more missed shots and two more turnovers.
"They scramble the game up a little bit and make you make reads and make plays," Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said of the Nets. "We did well in some instances and we struggled in others. Teams make runs. The 20-point lead going into the fourth quarter, my hopes of that holding up as a 20-point lead to end the game were not particularly high being that that's just the kind of team that they are."
But the Pacers have been looking to prove that they can put their foot down on teams that when they have leads, especially lottery bound, sub. 500 squads as the Nets are at 23-48, and Saturday night was another sign of their struggles to do so. They finished the quarter with just 18 points on 5 of 17 shooting including 0 of 6 from 3-point range and they turned the ball over six times for an abysmal efficiency figure of 0.66 points per possession.
"We've been talking about it for a little bit now, just the leads and being able to close out games," Siakam said. "... To take that next step, we have to be able to maintain those leads and when the time comes, to just put teams away, we have to do a lot better at that."
They did still manage to hold it together just well enough to win the game, and that's something they've proven they can do more than once. The Nets got within a point at the 4:30 mark, but Bennedict Mathurin checked in and immediately hit a floater to make it a three-point game again and Siakam followed with a three-point play. The Pacers built a nine-point lead with 16 seconds left and managed to give up a a 3-point play, commit a turnover and then give up another 3-pointer in the next eight seconds to allow the Nets to cut the deficit from 104-101. Brooklyn got even closer and made it 105-103 with 3.1 seconds left before the Pacers got three free throws to finally end it.
"It's a bad thing where if we have a lead, we have to make sure we keep that," Siakam said. "But it's also a good thing where you get in tight situations. I know that if, when, during the season if you haven't been in tight situations and you get in tight situations in a playoff game, it can be a little different. I think just having that experience of going through and knowing you need this possession and you need this bucket or whatever, it's good practice for playoffs."
The Pacers have had plenty of practice in those situations. They've played in 32 games this season that the NBA counts as "clutch" meaning the margin was within five points in the final five minutes of the game or in overtime. The Pacers have 19 wins in those scenarios, which puts them eighth in the NBA and fourth in the Eastern Conference behind the Celtics, Cavaliers and Hawks.
Still, playing on that kind of tightrope is, as Carlisle put it, a hard way to make a living with 12 games left on the schedule. Part of their struggles have come because the schedule has been so tight, but it doesn't open up much the rest of the way. They don't have more than a day off between games the rest of the way and they still have two back-to-backs left. They will play their final five more games in the last eight days of the month then play seven more games in the first 13 days of April. Eight of those games will come against teams in playoff position.
So after all this week's madness, the Pacers are taking Sunday to do nothing.
"We need a day to clear our heads," Carlisle said. "And to rest."
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Pacers can't have 'normal' games but still win four straight
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