Difficult to find more glaring than the truth of the results: this season, the Pacers are in difficulty as soon as they evolve far from their bases. As of November 25, after a home victory against the Nets, Rick Carlisle’s squad had 11 wins and 7 losses, for a surprising fourth place in the Eastern Conference, and a record of 4 wins and 3 losses away from home.
Since ? Tyrese Haliburton and his comrades have gone on a seven-game road trip, and at the time of this writing, they’ve won just one of five games, a buzzer win on the Lakers’ floor, with two last complex trips to come, at the Warriors then the Wolves.
And suddenly, their record on the move went into the negative, at 5 wins for 7 defeats, while their overall record is approaching it, slowly but surely (12-11).
The main explanation for this laborious “road-trip” so far? Defense.
If these young Pacers have not shone in this area since the start of the season, they have been particularly weak since leaving Indiana. In their last five games, they have actually conceded 124.2 points on average, the second worst in the league over time.
The latest defensive crack to date: the third quarter, last night on the floor of the Blazers, during which the teammates of a bitter Myles Turner conceded 39 points (63% on shots for Portland).
” We become nonchalant defensively. » thus regretted the pivot. ” We get a little too excited in attack, and it rubs off negatively on our defense. A game is 48 minutes. That’s what I tell our guys. We must assemble a good 48 minutes to win. As a young team, that’s where we have to improve. »
Attack no longer catches up with defense
One problem often leads to another, and in the Pacers’ case, it’s offense.
Indeed, while they are pierced from all sides in defense, Rick Carlisle’s men fail to balance the scales in the other half of the field: they point to 41.3% success since the start of their “road- trip”, the worst average in the league on this sample, and have never done better than 44%, as the IndyStar points out. For an average of 109.8 points over the last five games, against 115.1 over the whole season (the 9th best average in the league).
Last night, without Tyrese Haliburton (also announced absent for the trip to the Warriors), one of the safest leaders in the league since the start of the season, it is in particular in the exercise of outside shooting that the young Pacers hit rock bottom: 10/33. Without the game vision of its brilliant leader, the young troop of Indiana displayed all the difficulties to get away from the good shots, punctuating the match with 15 losses of ball for 22 assists.
Opposite, the Blazers distributed 32 passes, for a similar total of ball losses…
” These matches [en déplacement] are complicated. It’s a long journey concluded Rick Carlisle, who categorically refused to hide behind the excuse of the youth of his group. ” Precisely, it is an opportunity to strengthen ties in adversity. We have to stick together, keep fighting. »
| Shots | Bounces | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Players | GM | Minimum | Shots | 3 points | LF | Off | Def | Early | pd | bp | Int | CT | party | Points |
| Tyrese Haliburton | 22 | 33.2 | 46.1 | 36.9 | 83.9 | 0.8 | 3.9 | 4.7 | 10.9 | 2.6 | 1.8 | 0.3 | 1.1 | 19.1 |
| Bennedict Mathurin | 22 | 27.9 | 43.0 | 40.0 | 80.4 | 1.3 | 2.6 | 4.0 | 1.6 | 2.0 | 0.6 | 0.1 | 2.0 | 18.9 |
| Myles Turner | 17 | 28.9 | 54.0 | 38.5 | 81.3 | 1.4 | 6.6 | 8.1 | 1.5 | 1.7 | 0.6 | 2.5 | 3.2 | 17.2 |
| Buddy Hield | 22 | 31.0 | 41.7 | 36.6 | 87.5 | 1.0 | 3.4 | 4.4 | 2.5 | 2.2 | 1.0 | 0.4 | 2.2 | 16.6 |
| Jalen Smith | 22 | 23.6 | 44.0 | 29.3 | 78.6 | 1.8 | 5.2 | 7.0 | 1.0 | 1.3 | 0.3 | 0.9 | 2.3 | 11.5 |
| Chris Duarte | 9 | 19.6 | 39.4 | 34.2 | 91.7 | 0.4 | 1.7 | 2.1 | 1.0 | 0.9 | 0.1 | 0.4 | 1.8 | 8.9 |
| Aaron Nesmith | 18 | 21.7 | 36.5 | 35.1 | 79.2 | 0.6 | 2.7 | 3.2 | 1.3 | 1.0 | 0.7 | 0.6 | 2.9 | 7.6 |
| Andrew Nembhard | 17 | 22.0 | 44.7 | 40.4 | 100.0 | 0.5 | 1.9 | 2.4 | 3.4 | 1.1 | 0.9 | 0.2 | 2.6 | 7.4 |
| isaiah jackson | 21 | 16.4 | 56.7 | 25.0 | 69.5 | 1.6 | 3.0 | 4.6 | 1.1 | 1.0 | 0.5 | 1.1 | 2.5 | 7.2 |
| Tj McConnell | 21 | 18.0 | 46.5 | 33.3 | 91.7 | 0.7 | 1.9 | 2.5 | 4.3 | 1.8 | 1.2 | 0.2 | 1.2 | 5.8 |
| Oshae Brissett | 17 | 14.3 | 40.0 | 33.3 | 75.0 | 0.7 | 1.8 | 2.5 | 0.4 | 0.4 | 0.6 | 0.2 | 1.1 | 5.1 |
| Goga Bitadze | 14 | 10.2 | 53.8 | 20.0 | 50.0 | 1.1 | 1.3 | 2.4 | 1.0 | 0.7 | 0.4 | 0.6 | 1.9 | 3.8 |
| James Johnson | 6 | 9.7 | 40.0 | 14.3 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 1.3 | 1.3 | 0.8 | 0.2 | 0.2 | 0.3 | 2.3 | 2.2 |
| Terry Taylor | 14 | 9.0 | 35.5 | 20.0 | 80.0 | 0.6 | 0.9 | 1.6 | 0.4 | 0.3 | 0.1 | 0.3 | 0.9 | 2.0 |
| Kendall Brown | 3 | 5.1 | 100.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.3 | 0.3 | 0.3 | 0.0 | 1.0 | 0.0 | 1.0 | 2.0 |
