After a 92-90 victory Friday night, the Indiana Pacers are feeling great, but here’s why they should consider themselves lucky to escape with a win in Game 3.
Improbable. Unlikely. Unprecedented.
There are many words that will be used over the next few days to describe the Indiana Pacers putting the Cleveland Cavaliers in a 2-1 hole. The guys inside their locker room won’t subscribe to a single one of them.
In case you haven’t been paying attention, this isn’t a fluke. This is what the Indiana Pacers are: a good but not great basketball team that may get beat by a better squad, but will not beat itself. They had more wins than all but six teams in this calendar year. They are absolutely for real.
The Cavs, for all of the incomparable talents of their best player, are not a great basketball team. On many nights, they are not even a good basketball team.
Friday night, they split the difference, coming out like a unit that was going to regain control of the series at all costs, and ending the game like they were hoping their leader would do it for them. He couldn’t.
Here are three takeaways from Game 3 for the Pacers, who are halfway to one of the more unlikely playoff upsets in recent memory.