Pacers Go Cold in Miami: 118-83

As a Pacers fan, I was putting a lot of stock into what this game could mean for this young Pacers team.  Maybe too much stock.  Luckily it's one game that it's very early in this short season, and the Pacers can use this as a learning experience.  As a test, the Pacers failed with flying colors.  They couldn't seem to do anything against this Heat team.  Even with Dwayne Wade out, Lebron James stepped up and easily took over the game.  The Pacers also got beat by guys like Mario Chalmers and James Jones.  They missed the memo that James Jones shoots a lot of threes, and hardly closed out on him when he did shoot.  Jones had 14 points with 4 three pointers.  Chalmers also put up 14 points.  To me this Pacers team always gets beat by guys like that. Those you don't expect to have great games.  I think there were two major issues that this team has got to fight through to get to where they should be.

1.  Start shooting the ball better.  This has been said since game one, but the Pacers are still shooting pretty bad. The New Jersey game they did shoot over 50%.  But surprisingly they are shooting three pointers better than two pointers.  That's not a terrible thing, but you need to be more consistent in the two point game if your three pointers aren't going down.  Also scoring just 12 points in a quarter isn't going to win a lot of games.

2.  Danny Granger is something of an issue. I can't figure out if he just doesn't know how to play with the guys he has now or if there's something wrong with him physically that is making him not as explosive as I think he should be. All these past seasons, the Pacers have relied on Granger to carry them.  Now he's got David West that can help out and score.  Roy Hibbert can score if he needs to.  Paul George is coming on.  So there are options around him.  I don't have access to watch these games, but listening to Mark Boyle on the radio call, you can hear in his voice that Granger needs to make much better decisions, and I am sure watching the games you can see that.

Maybe this was just one of those bad nights at the office. Every team will go through it.  The Dallas Mavericks got smoked by this same Miami Heat, and they took care of them last year in the NBA Finals.  The Pacers won't have to rest and think too much about this loss as they head to Boston on Friday and come home Saturday night for a game.  That's two nights to pick up a couple of wins and be back on the right track.