The Pacers Just Escape the Bulls
- Chris Poindexter
- Mar 6, 2019
- 2 min read
The Indiana Pacers escaped the Chicago Bulls last night in an ugly win. The Pacers had dropped three of their last four games and were in desperate need of win as the fight for the three seed in the Eastern Conference is alive and well. The win last night gave them 42 wins guaranteeing the team an above .500 season. So why was the game ugly? Well for the first quarter and a half it wasn’t. For the first quarter and a half the Pacers looked the best they had in five games, but things started to fall apart in the last half of the second quarter. It seemed as if the entire Pacers team forgot how to block out. Myles Turner was blocking shots left and right, he had a career high seven blocks, but in the second quarter a blocked shot by Turner was the Bulls best offense. At least three times in a row Turner swatted a shot and the Pacers stopped playing which allowed the Bulls to get the offensive rebound and to get easy second chance points. The Bulls ended the night with 15 offensive rebounds. The easy fix to this is to get Domantas Sabonis back onto the court. Unfortunately, it does not seem as if he is going to be back anytime soon as he is still recovering from a sprained ankle and has yet been cleared to practice.
So if the game was so ugly how did the Pacers win this game? We have the offense of Bojan Bogdanovic and Darren Collison and the defense of Turner to thank for that. Bogdanovic led the way with 27 points shooting 9-14 from the field and 4-5 from behind the arc.
He has been on fire all season and has been one of the few highlights over the last five games. Then Collison continued his dominance against Chicago this season. He scored 22 points while shooting 7-10 from the field and 3-5 from the three points line.
Now a little more about Myles Turner. I have seen a lot on twitter that Turner is “slumping.” I guess that depends on how you define slumping. His offense has been off since he returned from his hip injury. He is only averaging 8.6 points per game on 34.1% shooting from the field. Yes, the Pacers need his offense to return, but Turner’s defense is so much more important than his offense and despite a little bit of foul trouble his defense has still been there. He leads the league in blocks and is averaging 4.2 blocks per game since his return from the hip injury. My point is his offense will come back, but his defense is invaluable, so everyone needs to stop saying he is slumping and appreciate what he gives the Pacers on the defensive side of the ball.
Long story short the Pacers won and even though it was ugly there were some bright spots. Hopefully this will get the Pacers going and fans will start to see more even play. The Blue and Gold play again Thursday March 7 against the Milwaukee Bucks at 8:00 p.m. on TNT.
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