Sorry in advance for this long read…
What do I want to show with that threat? I was just curious how people reacted back then to a similiar situation: a lot of new faces start the season with a lot of changes to the starting lineup. I really enjoyed reading some of your comments back then cause they are awfully similiar to those from the latest postgame threat. I love PD but somtimes the bad vibes start to depress me and I need a reality check, so I won’t lose my faith in this team. I just wanted to share this little time journey with you. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Game 1 of the 2017/2018 season: BKN 131 – IND 140
That was against a new formed Brooklyn squad, which everybody thought would be a very bad team. Top scorers in the game for Brooklyn were D’Angelo Russel (30 Pts, 5 Ast), Trevor Booker (20 Pts, 10 Reb) and Jeremy Lin (18 Pts, 4 Ast) who went down with a season ending injury in that game. We had a good team effort and the consensus on PD was that Sabonis is great (went 7 of 7 from the floor), Turner may actually be good at rebounding (had 14 Reb) and the team as a whole will be really good offensively, but not so much on defense. But it was a win, so everybody contributing to the game threat was happy (somehow we didn’t have postgame threats at that time).
Game 2: POR 114 – IND 96
After the first game we played a good Portland team without Turner, so Sabonis was starting at the 5. Top performers for Portland were Aminu (16 Pts, 16 Reb), McCollum (28 Pts, 7 Reb) and off the bench Evan Turner (17 Pts on 7 of 12 shooting). Sabonis had just 3 Pts and 8 Reb and nearly everybody played bad besides…wait for it…TJ Leaf with 17 Pts on 7 of 11 shooting with 4 Reb. So that was the first bad loss of the season, meaning people went crazy on PD. I will just post the most interesting comments in the order they appeared in the game threat:
by dal9:
„how much is Bogdan getting paid compared to CJ Miles? He seems to be a pretty serious step down“
by D-BONE:
„Sabonis needs to come off bench to be effective.“
by D-BONE:
„Bojan ever going to start hitting 3s?“
by Eleazar:
„Between Turner, Sabonis, and Leaf we have a bright future“
by McKeyFan:
„I didn't like it when we cut Seraphin, and we already see the fallout after game 2.“
Overall the consensus was that our defense is just really bad and we couldn’t hit freethrows.
Game 3: IND 108 – MIA 112
First road game of the season in Miami against a not so good Miami team that played without Whiteside. Top performers for Miami were Dragic and Waiters. They played with Jordan Mickey at starting C and Olynyk as their big men. The Pacers had the second start from Sabonis and against that kind of competition he pleased us with 18 Pts and 12 Reb. Al Jefferson had his second good game in a row with 14 Pts on 6 of 10 shooting and 8 Reb off the bench. Those two and Oladipo (28 Pts on 10 of 23 shooting, 5 Ast, 4 Stl) were the only bright spots. I will note that Bogie had another meh game with just 7 Pts without a 3pt attempt in this game. Best comments on PD where some people got a little nervous already:
by Trader Joe:
„Pretty disappointed in CoJo so far. Just underwhelming in all aspects.“
by owl:
„Bogdanovich is the most disappointing.“
by khaos01207:
„I want to see sabo Myles pair starting“
by Major Cold:
„This team is trash. Not enough spacing on offense. Scrambling on defense.“
by McKeyFan:
„Aren't Thad and Dipo supposed to be good defenders? Not seeing it.“
by owl:
„At small forward the Pacers need somebody athletic and can hit a shot. Not a lot of good options currently. Maybe Leaf or GR3“
by IrishPacer:
„Only watched the first half. Bojan is so horribly slow, even worse than I feared. GRIII will surely start when he is back.“
by LA_Confidential:
„Bojan is the weak link. We will never compete with him as the starting SF. I'm eating crow right now when it comes to TJ leaf. He's definitely going to be the starting PF of the future. Myles, Sabonis, Leaf are a good trio to grow with.“
So overall the people in the game threat started to love Sabonis and were pleasantly surprised by Collison. On the other hand they started to hate on Bojan. They didn’t like our defense at all and they thought that it was worth a try to start Sabo and Turner together.
Game 4: IND 130 – MIN 107
Everybody expected a loss to the new formed Timberwolves who, on paper, looked like a real threat in the west fort he first time since ever. On that night Jimmy Butler was out, so there was a slim hope to steal a W. At the end the Pacers blew out the Wolves with a great game by nearly everybody (Collison had 16 Ast to 1 TO, Joseph shot 8 of 11 for 21 Pts, Leaf 5 of 10 for 11 Pts, Sabo 7 of 7 for 15 Pts and 11 Reb in his 3rd start and Vic with 28 Pts on 11 of 16 shooting. It was also the first good game for Bogie with a 19 Pts outing on 9 of 12 shooting, but just 1 of 3 from three.
Since it was a W I won’t copy and paste the comments, cause there was not much to complain about…PD was at peace.
Game 5: IND 96 – OKC 114
The next night in Oklahoma, the Pacers would meet the new trio of Paul George, Russel Westbrook and Mello for the first time. It was the total opposite to the night before. Vic and Collison were the only bright spots. Sabo had just 4 Pts on 1 of 9 shooting, but 11 Reb. The bench as a whole went 6 of 25 shooting and Bojan had just 4 Pts on 0 of 7 shooting (0 of 5 from three). They were just down 6 at the half cause Dipo was on fire.
The mood on PD was okay given that loss, since it was on a back2back after a nice game. People already found that our team was never giving up and that Dipo might be great. They wanted Turner back and hated Bogie even more. They also wondered what happened to Lance Stephenson, cause he didnt have a good game at all since the start of the season.
Game 6: SAS 94- IND 97
The game Vic surpassed Paul George one to zero in game winners. Sabo had another good outing, but the bench was again just 5 of 21. After 6 games I could find the first positive comment about our defense on PD:
by LucasRL13:
„Our team is playing great defense...
Even Collison, lets get this W, and stay positive after OKC, Minnesota and Spurs, i think no one tough this was possible“
Now we jump to game 38: IND 101 – MIL 122
A lot happened since game 6. Oladipo is out for his 5th straight game and the Pacers lose their 5th straight and fall to 19-19 on the season. Meanwhile on PD Vnzla is hating on Turner and advocating for Sabo to start in his place since he is destroying bench bigs with good numbers in Pts and Rebs. Other than that everybody hates on the starting unit, the coach and Bogie who was still looking for his shot.
Coming back to Game 1 of the 2019/2020 season:
We have a lot of new guys and our starting unit has 4 new guys in it. What does history show us? The team in 2017 had also a ton of new guys with 3 new starters in the line up. Took them a while to acclimate, especially Bogie. They had really bad defense at the beginning. And they were a really bad team without Vic. You sometimes tend to forget how good Vic is and how important he is, especially closing out a game. It took them 39 games to get over .500 for good that year. The one big difference from 2017 to 2019 is about expectations… So I would say we wait a little bit, cause history shows us that a team with that huge number of new faces needs half a season to jell. It’s as easy as that. Once they found their identity they started to win games. Everybody started to find his role after Dipo. The chemistry got better and better. I guess thats why last year they played so good without Vic, cause they already knew who they were, they were a veteran team. I hope some on here will give it a little bit mor than 5 games to judge this team, the coach, the players and so on…
I will end this with the best comment I found about yesterdays game:
by Kid Minneapolis:
„I'll tell you why we lost:
- Identity. Both offensively and defensively. The Pacers have a lot of new faces and are still figuring each other out, and it showed... whereas the Pistons largely have their identity, which is a .500 ball club, but still, when one team has an identity and the other is still feeling it out, I give the team with somewhat of an identity the advantage most of the time. It becomes more evident down the stretch of a close game... the team with an identity can apply that pressure and that's exactly what happened, because the Pacers controlled large parts of this game until the last 5 minutes or so. I'm actually somewhat impressed the Pacers scored 110 while going some stretches looking a little confused and rusty, which might be a good sign down the road.
--- Defense. We hit our target of 110, but we let the Pistons throw down almost 120 on us, and they were at 25th-ranked offense last year. Again, the first point above had a big part of that. Another big part of why that happened was the dribble penetration by their guards. Drummond was huge tonight, but I felt like a lot of their offense was being initiated by their guards, there just wasn't enough pressure on them. DRose had his way last night, and Jackson didn't particularly score a ton, but was still setting up the offense. The ball was swinging and getting inside and that allowed Drummond to do what he does, which is shoot from 1 foot or less, and it also resulted in some nice looks from 3 for Kennard and others.
I'm not terribly tore up over this loss, when I put some context around it. We were in the driver's seat and basically didn't close them out. Young team, still learning each other, that's what happens. I think it'll take them 10 games to figure everything out and then things'll get rolling.“
Spot on if you ask me.
What do I want to show with that threat? I was just curious how people reacted back then to a similiar situation: a lot of new faces start the season with a lot of changes to the starting lineup. I really enjoyed reading some of your comments back then cause they are awfully similiar to those from the latest postgame threat. I love PD but somtimes the bad vibes start to depress me and I need a reality check, so I won’t lose my faith in this team. I just wanted to share this little time journey with you. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Game 1 of the 2017/2018 season: BKN 131 – IND 140
That was against a new formed Brooklyn squad, which everybody thought would be a very bad team. Top scorers in the game for Brooklyn were D’Angelo Russel (30 Pts, 5 Ast), Trevor Booker (20 Pts, 10 Reb) and Jeremy Lin (18 Pts, 4 Ast) who went down with a season ending injury in that game. We had a good team effort and the consensus on PD was that Sabonis is great (went 7 of 7 from the floor), Turner may actually be good at rebounding (had 14 Reb) and the team as a whole will be really good offensively, but not so much on defense. But it was a win, so everybody contributing to the game threat was happy (somehow we didn’t have postgame threats at that time).
Game 2: POR 114 – IND 96
After the first game we played a good Portland team without Turner, so Sabonis was starting at the 5. Top performers for Portland were Aminu (16 Pts, 16 Reb), McCollum (28 Pts, 7 Reb) and off the bench Evan Turner (17 Pts on 7 of 12 shooting). Sabonis had just 3 Pts and 8 Reb and nearly everybody played bad besides…wait for it…TJ Leaf with 17 Pts on 7 of 11 shooting with 4 Reb. So that was the first bad loss of the season, meaning people went crazy on PD. I will just post the most interesting comments in the order they appeared in the game threat:
by dal9:
„how much is Bogdan getting paid compared to CJ Miles? He seems to be a pretty serious step down“
by D-BONE:
„Sabonis needs to come off bench to be effective.“
by D-BONE:
„Bojan ever going to start hitting 3s?“
by Eleazar:
„Between Turner, Sabonis, and Leaf we have a bright future“
by McKeyFan:
„I didn't like it when we cut Seraphin, and we already see the fallout after game 2.“
Overall the consensus was that our defense is just really bad and we couldn’t hit freethrows.
Game 3: IND 108 – MIA 112
First road game of the season in Miami against a not so good Miami team that played without Whiteside. Top performers for Miami were Dragic and Waiters. They played with Jordan Mickey at starting C and Olynyk as their big men. The Pacers had the second start from Sabonis and against that kind of competition he pleased us with 18 Pts and 12 Reb. Al Jefferson had his second good game in a row with 14 Pts on 6 of 10 shooting and 8 Reb off the bench. Those two and Oladipo (28 Pts on 10 of 23 shooting, 5 Ast, 4 Stl) were the only bright spots. I will note that Bogie had another meh game with just 7 Pts without a 3pt attempt in this game. Best comments on PD where some people got a little nervous already:
by Trader Joe:
„Pretty disappointed in CoJo so far. Just underwhelming in all aspects.“
by owl:
„Bogdanovich is the most disappointing.“
by khaos01207:
„I want to see sabo Myles pair starting“
by Major Cold:
„This team is trash. Not enough spacing on offense. Scrambling on defense.“
by McKeyFan:
„Aren't Thad and Dipo supposed to be good defenders? Not seeing it.“
by owl:
„At small forward the Pacers need somebody athletic and can hit a shot. Not a lot of good options currently. Maybe Leaf or GR3“
by IrishPacer:
„Only watched the first half. Bojan is so horribly slow, even worse than I feared. GRIII will surely start when he is back.“
by LA_Confidential:
„Bojan is the weak link. We will never compete with him as the starting SF. I'm eating crow right now when it comes to TJ leaf. He's definitely going to be the starting PF of the future. Myles, Sabonis, Leaf are a good trio to grow with.“
So overall the people in the game threat started to love Sabonis and were pleasantly surprised by Collison. On the other hand they started to hate on Bojan. They didn’t like our defense at all and they thought that it was worth a try to start Sabo and Turner together.
Game 4: IND 130 – MIN 107
Everybody expected a loss to the new formed Timberwolves who, on paper, looked like a real threat in the west fort he first time since ever. On that night Jimmy Butler was out, so there was a slim hope to steal a W. At the end the Pacers blew out the Wolves with a great game by nearly everybody (Collison had 16 Ast to 1 TO, Joseph shot 8 of 11 for 21 Pts, Leaf 5 of 10 for 11 Pts, Sabo 7 of 7 for 15 Pts and 11 Reb in his 3rd start and Vic with 28 Pts on 11 of 16 shooting. It was also the first good game for Bogie with a 19 Pts outing on 9 of 12 shooting, but just 1 of 3 from three.
Since it was a W I won’t copy and paste the comments, cause there was not much to complain about…PD was at peace.
Game 5: IND 96 – OKC 114
The next night in Oklahoma, the Pacers would meet the new trio of Paul George, Russel Westbrook and Mello for the first time. It was the total opposite to the night before. Vic and Collison were the only bright spots. Sabo had just 4 Pts on 1 of 9 shooting, but 11 Reb. The bench as a whole went 6 of 25 shooting and Bojan had just 4 Pts on 0 of 7 shooting (0 of 5 from three). They were just down 6 at the half cause Dipo was on fire.
The mood on PD was okay given that loss, since it was on a back2back after a nice game. People already found that our team was never giving up and that Dipo might be great. They wanted Turner back and hated Bogie even more. They also wondered what happened to Lance Stephenson, cause he didnt have a good game at all since the start of the season.
Game 6: SAS 94- IND 97
The game Vic surpassed Paul George one to zero in game winners. Sabo had another good outing, but the bench was again just 5 of 21. After 6 games I could find the first positive comment about our defense on PD:
by LucasRL13:
„Our team is playing great defense...
Even Collison, lets get this W, and stay positive after OKC, Minnesota and Spurs, i think no one tough this was possible“
Now we jump to game 38: IND 101 – MIL 122
A lot happened since game 6. Oladipo is out for his 5th straight game and the Pacers lose their 5th straight and fall to 19-19 on the season. Meanwhile on PD Vnzla is hating on Turner and advocating for Sabo to start in his place since he is destroying bench bigs with good numbers in Pts and Rebs. Other than that everybody hates on the starting unit, the coach and Bogie who was still looking for his shot.
Coming back to Game 1 of the 2019/2020 season:
We have a lot of new guys and our starting unit has 4 new guys in it. What does history show us? The team in 2017 had also a ton of new guys with 3 new starters in the line up. Took them a while to acclimate, especially Bogie. They had really bad defense at the beginning. And they were a really bad team without Vic. You sometimes tend to forget how good Vic is and how important he is, especially closing out a game. It took them 39 games to get over .500 for good that year. The one big difference from 2017 to 2019 is about expectations… So I would say we wait a little bit, cause history shows us that a team with that huge number of new faces needs half a season to jell. It’s as easy as that. Once they found their identity they started to win games. Everybody started to find his role after Dipo. The chemistry got better and better. I guess thats why last year they played so good without Vic, cause they already knew who they were, they were a veteran team. I hope some on here will give it a little bit mor than 5 games to judge this team, the coach, the players and so on…
I will end this with the best comment I found about yesterdays game:
by Kid Minneapolis:
„I'll tell you why we lost:
- Identity. Both offensively and defensively. The Pacers have a lot of new faces and are still figuring each other out, and it showed... whereas the Pistons largely have their identity, which is a .500 ball club, but still, when one team has an identity and the other is still feeling it out, I give the team with somewhat of an identity the advantage most of the time. It becomes more evident down the stretch of a close game... the team with an identity can apply that pressure and that's exactly what happened, because the Pacers controlled large parts of this game until the last 5 minutes or so. I'm actually somewhat impressed the Pacers scored 110 while going some stretches looking a little confused and rusty, which might be a good sign down the road.
--- Defense. We hit our target of 110, but we let the Pistons throw down almost 120 on us, and they were at 25th-ranked offense last year. Again, the first point above had a big part of that. Another big part of why that happened was the dribble penetration by their guards. Drummond was huge tonight, but I felt like a lot of their offense was being initiated by their guards, there just wasn't enough pressure on them. DRose had his way last night, and Jackson didn't particularly score a ton, but was still setting up the offense. The ball was swinging and getting inside and that allowed Drummond to do what he does, which is shoot from 1 foot or less, and it also resulted in some nice looks from 3 for Kennard and others.
I'm not terribly tore up over this loss, when I put some context around it. We were in the driver's seat and basically didn't close them out. Young team, still learning each other, that's what happens. I think it'll take them 10 games to figure everything out and then things'll get rolling.“
Spot on if you ask me.
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