28th December - New Orleans Pelicans VS Indiana Pacers - 9-23
After a somewhat surprising but pleasant win, we now have 9 wins, which means a victory tonight would tip us into the double digits in the W column. That's kind of cool. A good win over a good opponent on Christmas Day was a nice way to celebrate, even if it did start so late that it was technically Boxing Day where I live when it started.
Statistical fact: our ORtg has remained about where it was, at 21st in the NBA, but our defense has improved from 27th to 24th, so that's progress I guess, even if some of it is just the result of luck when it comes to shots falling for the other team.
At home this time, our opponents are the Indiana Pacers. The Pacers are currently 21-11, and have won 6 of their last 8. Their 2 losses in that span came against Milwaukee and Miami, who are good teams, meanwhile they've steamrolled Charlotte, Atlanta, and Sacramento while also filing solid wins against the Lakers, Boston, and Toronto. Basically, they've looked pretty good.
The Pacers are 14th in ORtg, and 8th in Drtg, so we have a team that's fairly balanced here although clearly better on defense than offense. They're also a slower team, falling in at 24th in the league in Pace, which is something we can take advantage of: part of our success against Denver came from being faster than them. There's no need for us to go at 200 miles an hour, but if we can just push the pace a little past where Indiana is comfortable, that could help us.
Pacers are 8th in FG%, 5th in 3pt%, and 6th in FT%. They are, however, only 29th in 3pt attempts and 30th in FTAs: they much prefer attacking inside the arc, but somehow don't get fouled a lot. Kind of odd, from a purely on-paper perspective, but there we are. A part of that might come from the fact that Malcolm Brogdon is the 2nd most efficient mid-range shooter in the NBA this year, hitting around 51% of his midrangers (2nd only to 54% from D-Lo) so while yes, they're hitting from inside the arc they're still jumpers rather than crashing the rim. Speaking of Brogdon, he's listed as questionable on Basketball Reference, and he didn't play in their last game, so who knows if he'll be present tonight?
Other than Brogdon, Domantas Sabonis is awesome and we should all appreciate him being awesome.
That's about all I'm going to say tbh. Hopefully we can pick up a win tonight but the Pacers are a good enough team where that's no guarantee. It will be made easier if Brogdon is out, and of course it helps that they're on the second night of a back to back.
#WBD
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Originally Posted by WildlifeAirGrp
