Agreed Easiest schedule in the NBA The East blows Easy to put up big numbers and have a good record in their situation. I will be surprised if they win a championship with their current squad. They need an elite shot creator to get it done in crunch time, and I'm not convinced that Paul George counts.
A good not great team in one of the luckiest circumstances in the league being in a historically awful conference with exactly one other competent team in the conference. Shoe in for the ECF and thats as far as they will go. Not elite and not a contender. Would be fighting for a playoff spot in the West.
Name 5 better players than Paul George RIGHT NOW. He's not Lebron or Durant or Paul, but he's better than pretty much everyone else right now. Dude is elite on BOTH ends. Pacers won't win the championship simply of a guy named Lebron.
But majority of those 14-1 games are against losing teams in the Eastern Conference. Normally a 14-1 team looks like a championship favorite but if they played in the West I doubt they go top 3 in the conference. This is is essentially the same one that only won 40 games last year, only diff is PG raised his game to another level and you have Scola as your bench dude. Maybe they can beat the Heat with D, but even if they do I don't see them winning a ring, that team would get obliterated IMHO by the Clips, Spurs, OKC and of course the Rox.
Beating bad teams, sure, but (of course) they're supposed to do that. I'm not gonna discredit that though. Side note: They did win 49 last year, not 40. So a top six team at worst, right? They're in the conversation then. Heat, Spurs, Thunder, Clippers, Rockets, Pacers
plus Hibbert is healthy (he was injured the first half of last year) plus Stephenson has more than doubled his scoring plus crappy DJ Augustin was replaced by CJ Watson plus they are a much better defensive team overall (getting used to playing together) Teams that average 100 ppg like the Wizards struggle to score 73. now it gets real, 6 games in 10 days Sun, Dec 1 @ Los Angeles Clippers Mon, Dec 2 @ Portland Wed, Dec 4 @ Utah (yay, a breather) Sat, Dec 7 @ San Antonio Sun, Dec 8 @ Oklahoma City Tue, Dec 10 home vs. Miami
The Pacers are taking advantage of a historically weak conference and schedule. But I would bet that they finish the season behind the Heat.
Lol thanks for the correction, I just remembered the first digit. Yes they're in the conversation, hard not to be when you basically get a bye to the ECF. Unlike teams in the West who have to bleed and scrape for every win, the Pacers are locked in for a showdown with the Heat. That can either hurt or help them, on one hand they'll be a heck of a whole lot fresher than teams in the West, but then again winning masks a lot of ills, they can't really see the cracks in their armor until it's too late to fix them. PG has been playing great ball, however he hasn't yet learned to balance scoring for himself and making plays for others, similar to how JH was acting early in the year. There are major problems with the Pacers front court, specifically West has no D and Hibbert has very limited O. Most of their vaunted D is based on an elite paint protector and PG's suffocating D, what happens when one of those two get injured or worn out? These are questions they'll need to answer if they want to win a ring, however considering the only decent team they've played is Memphis it's hard to say if they can find the answers this season or not. I believe their next few games are gonna tell us how good (or bad) this Pacers team really is. My guess is, LBJ already cracked their code last season and they'll be nothing more than an appetizer to the Finals.
Not a pacers fan by any stretch..but they should have beaten Miami in 2012 and 2013...they simply did not execute down the stretch...and Bron went to work...they should beat them this year as they are better on paper and off...but anything can happen in a game 7...If Greg Oden has a "battier" game 7....they might come up short again...
i think they're really good but it seems almost mathematically impossible to be 16-1 and to just get your first win over a team with a current winning record.
IND is obviously one of the four best teams in the NBA. And Miami had better up their game considerably if they want to have any chance of winning against them in the 2014 ECF.
