RealGM

The Pacers passed their first road test on Saturday night in Cleveland, coming away with a 125-113 victory over an undermanned Cavs team. Indiana's bench was dominant in the win, combining to outscore the Cavs' reserves 61-11. Aaron Nesmith was particularly impressive, tallying a career-high 26 points on 10-of-16 shooting (5-of-9 from 3-point range) and pulling down nine rebounds.

All-Star guard Tyrese Haliburton was once again the closer, hitting three straight 3-pointers and then setting up Myles Turner for a three on the next possession to help the Pacers pull away in the closing minutes.

The Bulls, meanwhile, have had an up-and-down start to their season. They lost a home by 20 to Oklahoma City in their season opener, a result that prompted a players-only meeting postgame. They bounced back with an overtime victory over Toronto on Friday, but then fell 118-102 to the Pistons on Saturday on the second night of a back-to-back.

Wheat Hotchkiss
https://www.nba.com/pacers/news/preview-pacers-bulls-231030

Sent from my SM-G970U using RealGM mobile app

Are the Pacers real or not, that is the meaning of this game for me. Let's see if we can beat this Bulls team too. We are healthy, as far as I can see.

This team is WORLD’S better at screening this year than they have been in a decade.

Close at halftime. I'm not feeling good about this game

Well this team returned back down to earth.

They let the Bulls hang in way too long to a point where the Bulls took advantage and took over the game for the win. I see it more as the Pacers lost the game, not Bulls won it.

Horrendous ball movement (credit the Bulls defense), sloppy with the ball, they had 17 turnovers. Nembhard threw the ball into the 5th row.

12/46 from 3PT... thats 26%. When the Pacers tried to play half court, they just couldnt get anything going.

Interior defense was awful. The Bulls only hit 6 threes tonight on 17 attempts.

Bummer

Sent from my SM-G970U using RealGM mobile app

Grang33r wrote:Interior defense was awful.

Looked to me like they were getting to the rim (or close enough) pretty much any time they wanted.

Tom White wrote:

Grang33r wrote:Interior defense was awful.

Looked to me like they were getting to the rim (or close enough) pretty much any time they wanted.

looking at this game and the Boston game,.. seems like our individual defense is still in the 'thinking' stages,.. not in the 'instinctive' stage? Yeah, there were some missed assignments, yeah there were some motion plays where we were slow to react, but generally the positioning, at least to me, seemed much better. We just got blown by because people were slow to react, or got caught biting on fakes, hesitations, or not continuing their defensive position (one quick side step & stop when the attacker doesn't stop)?

I guess I thought the defensive scheme was ok,.. but the execution was slow, which lead to a TON of pressure at the rim and a bunch of open looks. In the Boston game,.. we were just playing a much more cohesive, proactive, committed team, that on top of their execution just went nuclear hot. They were hitting some contested 3's, that I don't think you could have better defended. They just hit them.

White or Holiday are both just the right combination of too long and too quick for Bruce to defend. When he stayed in front of him, he got a hand in their face, and they still just knocked down the shot. When he was forced to tighten up to interrupt the shot,. they just blew past him. That's no knock on Bruce,... Holiday is one of the best in the league, and imo, White has been ridiculously underrated for years. There aren't many teams that are really going to defend the Celtics backcourt this season.

Derozan and Vucevic destroyed us. Defense lost this game period. Their guards were effective in blowing past us to create plays for the Bulls that our defense broke down repeatedly against.

Pacers gave this game away and really are a bit better than the Bulls. Hopefully by season’s end the record shows this.