Here come the Pacers! Is their resurgence for real?

[ad_1]

Back in September, one of the most interesting questions on the board was what the Pacers had in store as an encore to build on their breakneck, breakthrough 2023-24 season. Twenty-five games into the new campaign, though, the answer appeared to be, “Um, not much.”

The Pacers sat a dismal 10-15, about as close to last place in the East as they were to the top four. The league-leading offense that had carried Rick Carlisle’s club all the way to the Eastern Conference finals had plummeted near the bottom third of the NBA; the permissive defense that offense had to carry like a grudge sunk even further, a bottom-five anchor. They dropped games to would-be Flagg capturers in Toronto, Brooklyn and Charlotte — a level of struggle that prompted All-NBA point guard Tyrese Haliburton to say, “The product we’re putting on the floor right now as a group is embarrassing.”

What a difference a month makes.

Since early December, Indiana has been one of the NBA’s hottest teams, winning 12 of its last 15 and six straight — the second-longest current winning streak in the NBA and the longest string of double-digit wins in franchise history — capped by an impressive win over the NBA-best Cavaliers on Sunday. The Pacers enter Tuesday’s nationally televised rematch with Cleveland at 22-18 — just a half-game out of fourth place in the East and a long way from “embarrassing.”

The Pacers have turned their season around, thanks to inspired play on both ends. (Ken Blaze-Imagn Images)

The only teams with better records than the Pacers over the past five weeks are the Cavs team they just beat and the Thunder, whom they recently took down to the wire. Only Denver has a higher team field-goal percentage in this span, nobody’s got a better assist-to-turnover ratio, and only Cleveland and Denver have been better on offense than the Pacers, who have scored 119.4 points per 100 possessions outside of garbage time over their past 15 games, according to Cleaning the Glass.

That’s not quite as high as the clip at which they scored last season, when they joined the Celtics in rewriting the offensive record books. But…

[ad_2]
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/here-come-the-pacers-is-their-resurgence-for-real-155921588.html

Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2025-01-14 15:59:00

Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.