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P L A Y O F F S - S E M I F I N A L S


THE SKINNY


Round 1 is over. Round 2 approaches quickly against a rested Washington Wizards team coming off a convincing 4-1 victory over the Chicago Bulls. After clinching their own semifinals berth in Game 7 against the Hawks, the Indiana Pacers look to start off this series on the right foot. Is Blue Collar Gold Swagger finally back? Or will John Wall and company compound the myriad doubts swirling about this recently maligned squad?

THE LINEUPS



Point Guard

The toughest matchup in the series for anyone guarding him will be John Wall. Wall, like Derrick Rose before him, has developed a legitimate 3-point shot, sinking more than 100 of his attempts at 35%. He's even better than Teague, and can potentially make the Pacers look like a bad defensive team when he disrupts the defense with his prototypical point guard skills. Expect to see Paul George spending some time checking him.

Shooting Guard

Bradley Beal is another tough matchup due to his shooting stroke, but there are a few holes to his game. If Lance Stephenson can punish him on the other end of the court with his size advantage, and if Beal is made to put the ball on the floor, his dynamic shooting would be much less of an issue. Expect to see George Hill slide over to check Beal.

Small Forward

Paul George has been a true leader thus far in the playoffs, being the only Pacer to play consistently in the first round, capping it off with a 30-point performance in the final game. Trevor Ariza is a huge spacer, with more than half of his attempts coming from beyond the arc where he shoots above 40%. Once he's run off the three-point line, his shot is much worse. He was 20% from the 10-16 ft. range out this season.

Power Forward

As a more conventional big man, Nene will be able to be defended more straight-up by the Pacer's interior players. He is an effective jump shooter as well as a post-up threat, but that's much more in David West's wheelhouse.

Center

Roy Hibbert is coming off his first effective performance of the postseason and it couldn't have come at a better time. The scrutiny will only continue, so hopefully he can build upon Game 7 (where he outperformed his season averages) and allow everyone else to see why Vogel continues to have such faith in him.

THE BENCH






Ian and CJ Watson have been coming up big for the Pacers. It remains to be seen if Turner and Scola return to the rotation, but given their skillsets they'll probably get the nod. The Washington bench has a good amount of

THE COACHES




Frank Vogel's policy of keeping the media stuff outside of the locker room paid off as he got a decisive Game 7 performance while playing Big Roy for more than 31 minutes in Game 7 of a series where everyone (including yours truly) had deemed the struggling center useless against the Hawks. Expect to see more on-court adjustments over personnel changes in this series.

THE INJURY REPORT



Pacers
Andrew Bynum: Knee - Who the hell knows/cares?

Wizards
None.

THE HEAVY MATTERS



-Play all 48 minutes of fun, intense basketball.
-Box out and board. This Wizards team has good rebounders besides just their bigs.
-Stay aggressive. Get with the crowd and don't spend too much time feeling like the calls aren't going your way.

THE TRADITION

To be honest, I'm still salty at the Wizards. I hope Indy takes it to them. The last couple of games Indy has shown more passion. Hibbert seems to have found his groove a little bit. Hopefully you guys have better luck with Wizards than we did. We still see you Nene.

^^We're gonna body them, free.

Well, uh, you've outdone my game threads.

Do you plan to do all of them for this series or just this one?

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Things I'd like to see in this series:

An aggressive George Hill!
Wall would rather save his energy shredding our defense. We can't let him do that. Hill is effective when he wants to be. Weather it's he or PG who checks Wall, I want him a little gassed.

Mt. Hibbert!
I Don't care if Hib scores four points a game, as long as he does it efficiently. Although I'd like to see him get at least that many just from the free throw line. I would like to see a big effort for blocked shots. Discourage penetration and make everything under 8' in not worth the bother. At least be aware of rebounds. Out rebound somebody.

Washington in foul trouble, early and often.
Our strengths against them are many and marginal. We must use them effectively. Some of them are our good foul shooting, and their relative lack of depth. Take it inside! Post up. Drive the guards! I'd like Beal on the pine in perpetual futility from trying to keep Lance from dancing. I'd like to put pressure on their bigs too. West, and Scola can score inside. Hib can be a force sometimes. If we keep forcing it inside instead of settling for jumpers then we will HAVE open jump shots, and bonus situations regularly. I'f we can shoot free throws and make them play their bench more it favors us nicely.

Team play.
Iso BS and hero ball kills us. I hope this springs lesson has sank in very thoroughly. Move the ball with solid simple passes. Don't stand around, don't pound it out top, don't SETTLE for covered threes. Work it inside out, swing it around and get good looks.

Timely corrections.
If there is one thing clear about us is that we can go on bad runs. Whether it's our patented 2-17 stretches or three minutes of lax D that destroys us- we need to recognize the problem and call a time out. Take a breather, make a substitution, call a play....SOMETHING, before it's too late.

In the end I hope our experience, depth, and HCA will suffice against a squad that matches up pretty well.

Can't wait!!

Solid wrote:Things I'd like to see in this series:

An aggressive George Hill!
Wall would rather save his energy shredding our defense. We can't let him do that. Hill is effective when he wants to be. Weather it's he or PG who checks Wall, I want him a little gassed.

John Wall is the key to this series. If they can defend him and make him shoot, as opposed to him driving in for layups/dunks/free throws, then that will be a big success for the Pacers, and how well we defend the pick-and-roll, which Wall runs so well, will also be a big factor in this series.

Couple interesting stats i saw... to keep an eye out for...

-Washington is a good three point shooting team. They won't throw it up like Atlanta did, but we've talked about adjusting (Turner/Hibbert) vs. Atlanta. I wonder how Washington will adjust if they go down early and decide to air it out a bit more like Atlanta?

-They are a poor rebounding team, despite having Nene and Gortat. This is a category the Pacers can truly dominate them in.

-They are one of the worst free throw shooting teams in the league.

-Pacers have beat the Wizards in their last 12 games at BLF.

Jake0890 wrote:Well, uh, you've outdone my game threads.

Do you plan to do all of them for this series or just this one?

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Haha. Depends on how busy I am. Honestly, you've been doing a great job keeping tradition alive given how inactive this board is compared to the olden days (pre-PD). It's up to you. I can teach you my ways if you'd like.

Regarding the bench for this series, I expect Vogel to play Scola and Turner and limit Copeland's minutes. Washington do not have stretch bigs like Atlanta but they have guys who can play inside like Booker and Seraphin. Gooden may be a stretch big and Washington could utilize that advantage, but we have addressed that problem with Copeland guarding stretch bigs. I expect them to play more of Booker and Seraphin for them to match up with the Pacers' bigs. And yes, they need a rebounder.

Turner could help the Pacers in guarding Ariza and Beal. Though it seems like Paul George will guard Wall, I can see Lance doing the job on Wall on most times, while Paul George guards the streaky Ariza. For this reason, we will need Turner to help out in the defensive rotation. IMO, we need to put a bigger body on Wall to limit him in shooting instead of penetrating. Also, it would be interesting to see if Turner will get motivated playing with 2010's top pick in Wall. Seems like too many people forgot that Turner was the 2nd pick.

This will be an interesting matchup for West, with Nene playing well. I can see Nene dominating offensively but the Wizards do not have much depth in the frontcourt that can step into what Nene's been doing. We will surely need the rim protection from Hibbert in this series.

I think depth will definitely help in this series and the Pacers got the edge with regards to that.

Finding the charity stripe early and often is really important, the fewer minutes that starting five of theirs plays together the better for us.

This is definitely a good Wizards team though, I really like Nene/Gortat inside so we need Roy to play well. From what I have seen of Beal he is a good scorer but can be overwhelmed on the other end, so Stephenson running at him will be crucial, same for John Wall, like Solid says: If we get an aggressive George Hill to keep Wall honest we will stand a much better chance.

We also need to play an inside-out game, people (non-Pacers) seem to forget that with George, Hill and Watson we actually have some decent perimeter shooters and even Lance can hit them when he is open apparently... going inside first means that we keep their D honest and we play at our own pace.

Looking forward to it!

Gold out tonight.

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thats such an awesome picture. Can't wait to tip-off.

As a Wizards fan, I wanted to wish you all best of luck on the series. I hope its a good one. I am hoping game 7 was emotional enough that Indiana has a bit of a let down two days later - this is probably the Wizards' best chance to take a game in Indy. In any event, I do hope its a great series. The Wizards have taken some serious steps this year - playing Indiana in the second round is about the best yard stick the Wizards could ask for.

PS - I love the way you guys do your opening game day thread post!

sfam wrote:As a Wizards fan, I wanted to wish you all best of luck on the series. I hope its a good one. I am hoping game 7 was emotional enough that Indiana has a bit of a let down two days later - this is probably the Wizards' best chance to take a game in Indy. In any event, I do hope its a great series. The Wizards have taken some serious steps this year - playing Indiana in the second round is about the best yard stick the Wizards could ask for.

PS - I love the way you guys do your opening game day thread post!

And here we were posting pictures of the Bulls "cheerleaders" for "inspiration."

:smh:

Have fun Wizles, looking forward to game 1, going to be pretty important straight away I reckon!

I think we'll see a lot more Scola and Turner and a lot less Butler and Cope tonight. I expect Vogel to want to get back to his normal rotation because they should have a much better matchup this round.

I also think Hibbert will re-establish himself while playing against a physical center this time around.

The question is who guards John Wall? PG did an admirable job against Jeff Teague, but if he was to guard Wall this time around, Ariza has a HUGE advantage. Ariza is 6'8" and as much heart as Lance has, he just can't overcome that big of a size disadvantage. Maybe put Lance on Wall and Hill on Beal?

To see how the Pacers come out in G1 will be very important and telling for this entire series. At home, the last 2 times Washington has visited, we've stopped them to 66 and 73 points. So, the worries of who covers who, and how to stop John Wall, were not at all an issue those nights. It's not the regular season anymore and its a bigger stage, but our defense, essp at home, can do some things to really hurt the Wiz. Which shows that we've beaten them the last 12 at BLF.

Derek Schultz just tweeted this: The last time Washington won in Indianapolis boxscore-

http://www.basketball-reference.com/box ... 80IND.html

Pacers Starting 5
McLeod
Dunleavy
Diogu
Murphy
Granger

Not to be overlooked, Maceo Baston led the bench in minutes. lol

Grang33r wrote:To see how the Pacers come out in G1 will be very important and telling for this entire series. At home, the last 2 times Washington has visited, we've stopped them to 66 and 73 points. So, the worries of who covers who, and how to stop John Wall, were not at all an issue those nights. It's not the regular season anymore and its a bigger stage, but our defense, essp at home, can do some things to really hurt the Wiz. Which shows that we've beaten them the last 12 at BLF.

The last time we played Chicago in the regular season, they held us to 78 points and won by 18. Their dominating defense was supposed to suffocate us in the playoffs. But we moved the ball, executed, and made shots and it was a different story. I wouldn't put much stock in regular season games from months ago

Grang33r wrote:Derek Schultz just tweeted this: The last time Washington won in Indianapolis boxscore-

http://www.basketball-reference.com/box ... 80IND.html

Pacers Starting 5
McLeod
Dunleavy
Diogu
Murphy
Granger

Not to be overlooked, Maceo Baston led the bench in minutes. lol

wow... I'd forgotten about McLeod and Baston, not a good era that...