Basketball, She Wrote

Explaining the Inexplicable: Pacers throw away win

Added 2024-05-22 20:20:38 +0000 UTC

By: Caitlin Cooper I @C2_Cooper

After clawing out of 12-0 hole to start the game and taking a three-point lead with less than a minute to play, the Pacers looked poised to win until, well, they lost their poise. Suddenly, despite generating separation with a pair of self-created twos from Andrew Nembhard, which saw the Pacers readily find and pull on the loose string in Boston's tangled web of off-ball switches, Indiana let go of the rope, committing costly turnovers that were compounded by coaching errors and questionable shot-selection. Put simply, they overcomplicated what should've been simple.

And yet, even though they arguably snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory, they were also very much on the cusp of victory, executing many things well in order to put themselves in position to potentially steal Game 1 on the road before it was stolen out from under them.

As such, with Samson Folk returning to the show, this is our attempt to explain the inexplicable, while also parsing the potential takeaways of what went right from the loud minority of what went (admittedly) very, very wrong.

Here are the relevant timestamps:

0:00 - Introductions

0:44 - Whether the glass is half empty or half full

3:19 - The witching hours (minutes) of mistakes

13:22 - Thoughts on the final ATO of regulation for the Pacers

15:15 - The Pacers playing hide-and-seek with Al Horford

16:46 - Siakam generating efficient offense as the screener

23:20 - Trapping Jayson Tatum at 3/4 court with Myles Turner

27:27 - Defending with guards in drop against Tatum as the screener

30:37 - Overzealous with stunts at the point of the pop against Horford

36:06 - Nembhard checking Tatum after Nesmith fouled out

38;50 - Boston playing 2-1-2 zone against the bench + its effects