All Tied Up and it’s the Pacers’ Series to Lose

The Miami Heat triumphed last night, coming up with a four-point victory in a battle that hints at how dangerously close they are to losing this war with Paul George and co.

Falling to 0-2 would’ve been a previously unknown deficit for this team, but the sheer numbers point to this being a small setback for the renewed Pacers squad bent on upset. 

The number that has to be the knee to the Pacers faithful’s head in Game 2 is Paul George’s abysmal 4-of-16 shots made from the floor.

As ESPN reported, this is his worst output ever in a playoff game, and considering that this was his 50^th playoff game, it’s a highly significant outlier.

This was a rough game, with minor injuries to both teams coming as the physicality intensified, but George appeared more affected than any other player on the court.

Erik Spoelstra will probably spend the next few days preparing to sacrifice Michael Beasley to the basketball gods in vain hope that Game 3 will feature a similarly awful George performance. 

Lebron James and Dwayne Wade are powerful.

Their combined 45-point output in Game 2 showed this, but it wasn’t a runaway victory that we’ve come to expect when those two take over a game.

The Heat are still getting out-rebounded, and if this is made into a movie I expect all five Mario Chalmers turnovers to be accompanied by cutaway shots of Pat Riley in various states of anguish, like a father watching his son get arrested on national television.

The disparity on the offensive rebounding stat is even more painful, because if the Pacers hadn’t shot 40% from the field (I’m looking at you, too, David West), that disparity alone would’ve hypothetically won the game for Indiana. 

Simply put, the Indiana Pacers should take the series in six.

The emergence of Lance Stephenson relieves the pressure that the other four starters have to felt to produce offensively, and they’re still statistically winning this war.

Consistency has not been a part of their lives for the past few weeks, but Frank Vogel’s squad has formed a cohesive unit once again, and barring the miraculous return of Dwayne Wade to his ’06 playing ability, I believe the power is entirely in the hands of Paul George’s team.