Doyel: Pacers are deep, fast, young, and Washington won't be the last foe who can't keep up
INDIANAPOLIS – Good luck, playing the Indiana Pacers this season. Look, teams are going to beat them. The Pacers won’t go 82-0, though they did rout the Washington Wizards 143-120 in their season opener Wednesday night at Gainbridge Fieldhouse. The Pacers beat the Wizards by running them silly, passing them silly, hustling them silly.
Also Washington isn’t very good – projected to be the worst team in the Eastern Conference – but that’s not the point today.
The point today? Well, take your pick. There were 143 of them, a franchise record for the season opener and two points shy of the Pacers’ record for any home game. Washington is no good, but this was no fluke for the Pacers, who were among the fastest, highest-scoring teams in the NBA last season. The Pacers used the offseason to get faster and deeper, which means every player on the floor can run until he’s panting, tug on his jersey to ask out, and then watch as his replacement runs until he’s panting and tugging on his jersey and asking out, and then…
You get the point.
It’s a vicious cycle, playing the Pacers, and I mean right now. Imagine what it’ll look like in a month or two, when teams are traveling and playing three games in four nights, and one of those opponents is the Pacers, who are so deep that productive veteran T.J. McConnell and first-round draft picks Jarace Walker and Ben Sheppard couldn’t get onto the floor Wednesday night until garbage time.
The Wizards started strong, scoring 39 points on 63% shooting in the first quarter, but they were playing a team with superior depth and cardio. By the fourth quarter, this was like watching a UFC fight where one fighter is gassed by Round 3 and the other one … just … keeps … attacking.
Washington’s score by quarters: 39, 29, 28, 24.
Indiana’s score by quarters: 34, 39, 37, 33.
It was queasy, watching what was happening to the Wizards. Like, you felt badly for them after two quarters and were looking forward to a relaxing halftime show.
Instead we got a dude with a mohawk, throwing knives at his wife, then picking up a crossbow to finish the job.
Good luck, relaxing at a Pacers game this season.
Pacers halftime show tonight. That is all pic.twitter.com/mrqof9cbIy
— Z (@zach_hale0) October 26, 2023
'Playing fast is our super-power'
And the night started so soothingly, too.
Michael Andretti was sitting courtside, which is nice. Old friend Roy Hibbert was here, and that was nice. The rest of the crowd arrived in due time, the place almost empty when the Pacers came running onto the court 18 minutes before tipoff, but steadily filling up. By game time, the announced crowd of 16,004 was in place.
What the crowd saw was a disaster, at first. Pacers coach Rick Carlisle has emphasized defense all preseason, what with the Pacers 29th in the NBA last season in points allowed, and the Wizards come out and score 39 in the first quarter? Danilo Gallinari and Tyus Jones can’t miss? At one point Wizards forward Deni Avdija was driving into the lane and finding nobody in his way for a layup. The Wizards led 8-4 and the season was less than three minutes old and Carlisle was disgustedly calling his first timeout.
Out of the timeout, Avdija drives into the lane again and this time somebody was in his way. Pretty sure it was Tyrese Haliburton, but whoever it was went diving out of there, buying the pass-fake Avdija was selling before he continued to the rim for another layup.
This was the Pacers playing the long game. They were running and the Wizards were happy to join them, but only the Pacers had the depth and stamina to carry on for 48 minutes. Some of their new players were paying off big-time, too. Obi Toppin and Bruce Brown, targeted by Pacers executives Kevin Pritchard and Chad Buchanan because they were two of the league’s most efficient players in transition, never stopped.
Toppin had 11 points in 19 minutes, including a pair of 3-pointers, and Brown had 24 points on 8-for-11 shooting. Brown, the Pacers’ prize free-agent acquisition from Denver, was making faces at the Washington bench when he wasn’t giving Wizards defender Delon Wright – who at 6-5 is actually taller than the 6-4 Brown – the “too small” gesture.
The Pacers were so balanced, so unselfish, they had 38 assists and eight players score in double figures. Haliburton, the starting point guard, had 20 points and 11 assists in 27 minutes. Andrew Nembhard, his backup, had 12 points and 10 assists in the other 21 minutes. That’s two doubles-doubles from the same position. It’s a quadruple-double or something. Never mind. Here’s what Nembhard was saying afterward.
“When you’re as deep as we are, we want to play fast – especially the first game of the season,” Nembhard said. “We wanted to bring that energy for the home crowd. And the first game of the season, we’re all fresh.”
So, the obvious follow-up: What happens later? Can you guys keep up this pace for 82 games?
“I think so,” he said. “Playing fast is our strength, our M.O. – our super-power, I guess you could call it. We have a deep team and we’re going to play fast and we think we can tire guys out.”
Nembhard’s smiling. But I haven’t told him about the halftime show.
Yet.
Hey, kids, let's watch 'Deadly Games!'
It started with plexiglass screens being set up around the court. Why? To protect the crowd in case … you know. One of those knives or arrows went astray.
The halftime act’s name is “Deadly Games,” and I wish I was kidding. I wish I’d never seen it. Do you wish I wasn’t writing about it?
Toughen up, buttercup. Because this happened at halftime: Alfredo Silva and his wife, Anna, playing with knives and arrows. Alfredo did the throwing while Anna did the posing, usually some form of the standing split, a target between her teeth – a balloon sandwiched between her mouth and her upraised foot. Alfredo would throw a knife, over and over, trying to hit the balloon and not, you know, his wife’s face.
Alfredo’s good, but he’d better be perfect. It’s a long NBA season, and people get tired. You saw what happened to the Wizards, but thank goodness Jordan Poole was just misfiring from 3-point range – he was 0-for-6 – rather than from a similar distance with a crossbow.
After throwing 20 or 30 knives without incident, Alfredo walked to a table and picked up this terrifying weapon IN THE CONTEXT OF AN NBA HALFTIME SHOW, pulled out his cell phone and turned on the video. Then he turned his back to his wife, set the thick, black crossbow over his shoulder, and looked into his phone to sight the balloon sticking out of his wife’s mouth, roughly 25 feet behind him.
Then he pulled the trigger.
What happened next? Put it this way. The headline on this story wouldn’t be … whatever it is … had he missed the balloon.
Anyway, after that lesson in sadism, the second half was a breeze. Maybe not for the Wizards, who couldn’t stop Bennedict Mathurin (18 points), Buddy Hield (13 points off the bench) or Jalen Smith (13 points in 13 minutes). Myles Turner had 14 points, eight rebounds and three blocks, and that looked easy. Because it was.
Afterward, Nembhard is talking about how difficult the Pacers want to make it for opposing teams this season, and I’m telling him about something really difficult to watch: the halftime show. I’m describing it briefly – Mr. Mohawk, his wife, the knife, the crossbow, the balloon – and Nembhard looks queasy, kind of like Wizards guard Corey Kispert looked after missing most of his 11 shots from the floor.
“I’m not feeling that,” Nembhard said of the halftime show.
Neither was the crowd, which was stunned mostly silent. Then came the second half, and it was more sadism: The Pacers running the Wizards right into the wrong side of history.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana Pacers are too deep, fast and young for Wizards in NBA opener
