The Indiana Pacers haven’t won consecutive games since winning seven games before the All-Star break. Can they kick start another streak this Sunday against the Toronto Raptors?
The Indiana Pacers have been a bizarre, inconsistent team since the All-Star break. Despite playing some good basketball and winning a road game against the Houston Rockets, they’ve also lost to the New York Knicks and Milwaukee Bucks.
Simply, this team can’t put together a win streak. The Pacers haven’t won consecutive games since early February. They won seven in a row–before losing six in a row–just before All-Star Weekend.
This Sunday presents the franchise another opportunity to start a win streak, as the Pacers face off with the Toronto Raptors.
The game will take place in Toronto. Although the Raptors are one of the better teams in the conference, they are still adjusting to the injury of star point guard Kyle Lowry and the addition of Serge Ibaka.
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They’re just 5-5 in their last 10 games and haven’t looked like the team that took the Cleveland Cavaliers to seven games last spring.
It’s time for the Pacers to strike, especially as their schedule heats up. They really should’ve won more games in the past few weeks. Now, they have four straight games against teams jostling for playoff position (Toronto, Utah Jazz, Boston Celtics, Denver Nuggets).
But, the Pacers are riding a high of their own. They absolutely dismantled the Charlotte Hornets 98-77 in their last game. Paul George had his best performance of the season—39 points with six threes—and the sporadic Monta Ellis contributed 16 off the bench.
The Pacers need to start replicating that kind of showing to feel good heading into the postseason.
Nonetheless, the Pacers’ inconsistencies haven’t truly hurt them yet. While they don’t have a winning streak since early February, they also don’t have a losing streak since February. Someway, somehow, Indiana has kept alternating wins and losses for 11 games now.
It’s almost remarkable how they haven’t been able to string more than one win or loss together.
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And, through all this, the Pacers’ conference standing hasn’t budged in the slightest. They are firmly in the sixth spot, 2.5 games behind the Atlanta Hawks and 1.5 ahead of the Bucks.
Looking at the standings, Indiana probably could only realistically rise to the fifth seed in the playoffs with a win streak. That could be worse, too, as that would put them on course to face the Cavaliers in the second round.
Once you get past the top three places in the East, it’s been a wildly inconsistent season for most of the teams. Toronto’s dealing with injuries. Atlanta’s played well, but is anybody afraid of them? The Bucks, the Detroit Pistons and the Miami Heat are about as up and down as you can get.
With all that, the Pacers’ inability to win two games in a row doesn’t look so bad.
The biggest concern for this will be in the postseason. How does a team that can’t win games in a row expect to win a road playoff series? There’s still a good chunk of the season left for the Pacers to get hot.
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Hopefully, this Sunday, they can knock off the Raptors on the road and start their first streak in weeks.