12 days, 6 games, 4 losses, 3 time zones, 7th place: Evaluating Pacers’ ‘epic’ road trip

MINNEAPOLIS -- If it wasn't clear that the Pacers had hit a wall in the third quarter of Saturday when they were outscored by 15 en route to a 127-109 loss to the Timberwolves at the Target Center, it was when guard Bruce Brown explained how events Friday night and Saturday made an already long road trip feel even longer.

"We landed this morning," Brown said. "Got here an hour, two hours before the game. No excuses, but tough road trip. Happy to go home."

According to Pacers coach Rick Carlisle and a Pacers spokesman, the team learned before it left Capital One Arena in Washington D.C. on Friday night that its chartered plane would not be able to take off that night from Dulles International Airport in northern Virginia. They were able to get back into their hotel in D.C., let the players sleep in Saturday morning and didn't get on a plane for Minneapolis until around noon. They landed sometime before 4 and headed straight to the Target Center. That's usually about the time they get to an arena on the road anyway, but usually they wake up in the city they're playing in and don't have to fly on game day.

There have been much more physically and mentally taxing snafus in the annals of American sports team travel; the Pacers at least got a good night sleep prior to leaving Washington. However it speaks to the head-spinning nature of the Pacers' entire road trip that by the end of it, their starting guard who is about six months removed from winning an NBA title with the Nuggets seemed to have lost all sense of time and just wanted to go home.

The Pacers did this to themselves, of course. They were originally scheduled to be on the road for four games in six days. It was an odd trip, because after Central Division games against the Pistons and Bucks, they had to go east to Washington and then back west to Minneapolis for a back-to-back, but manageable in itself. They made it a lot more taxing by reaching the semifinals then finals of the In-Season Tournament in Las Vegas, which meant a cross country flight on Dec. 5 and five days in the desert. After losing to the Lakers in the finals in a game that doesn't technically count, they flew straight to Detroit, which meant they spent 12 days on the road, operating in three different time zones and never playing back-to-back games in the same one.

In the games that count on that trip, they finished 2-3.

"This is an epic trip that we've been on," Carlisle said. "We've experienced things that no other team has ever experienced. We played a championship game that doesn't count on our record. We went through really an epic 24 hours getting here to Minnesota. Our guys never complained. ... It's the end of the trip and we battled."

Though they battled, they did end the trip wounded in multiple ways, including physically.

In Las Vegas in the semifinals against the Bucks, they lost promising young guard Andrew Nembhard to a bone bruise. The Pacers were fortunate the injury wasn't worse because his knee appeared to hyperextend and they expect him back in the not too distant future. However, Carlisle he's "week to week" rather than day to day, and he went back to Indianapolis for the week for treatment rather than going on the road with the team.

Nembhard's injury meant that when All-Star point guard Tyrese Haliburton went down with a left knee contusion in the second half of Friday's game and was ruled out Saturday, the Pacers were down to their third point guard. They happen to have a very good third point guard in veteran T.J. McConnell and in Brown a veteran Swiss Army Knife of a player who could play anywhere from point guard to power forward on a moment's notice.

Still Saturday was a particularly bad night for the Pacers to be missing their All-Star in Haliburton -- the NBA's leader in assists, their best scorer and, at the moment, best outside shooter. It was also a bad night to be missing a secondary creator and one of their best perimeter defenders in Nembhard. In the Timberwolves, the Pacers were facing the NBA's best defense and two All-Stars in guard Anthony Edwards and forward Karl-Anthony Towns, who happened to have spectacular nights at the same time.

McConnell and Brown had the Pacers going hard for a half and they played the Timberwolves to a near draw, trailing 57-55 going into halftime. However Minnesota hit 7 of 9 3-point attempts in the third quarter and buried the Pacers. Towns had 40 points and Edwards 37, and with the win the Wolves are now tied with the Celtics at 19-5 for the best record in the NBA.

"It was good to see fight, obviously," McConnell said. "We kinda just ran out of gas."

And so the Pacers ended the road swing in which they practically introduced themselves to the country by stunning Eastern Conference favorites Boston, Milwaukee and Philadelphia over the course of the In-Season Tournament by losing three straight games including a particularly embarrassing defeat at the hands of the 4-20 Washington Wizards on Friday night. Their only win since leaving Vegas came against the Detroit Pistons, who have now lost a franchise-record 23 straight games. By Saturday, the team they put on the floor seemed to barely resemble the seemingly uncontainable offensive force that wore Pacers uniforms in Las Vegas.

After representing the Eastern Conference as its effective IST champion, the Pacers head home holding a 13-11 record, which puts them seventh in the East playoff race even though they've beaten four of the top five teams in the standings.

It can be tempting then to question whether the trip to Las Vegas was worth it, wondering whether pursuing the goal of a championship in a game that didn't count ultimately cost them other wins. But Carlisle keeps in mind that the returns they were hoping for in the investment weren't necessarily immediate.

The Pacers had just one nationally televised game this season on either ESPN or TNT scheduled outside of the In-Season Tournament. They managed to not only triple their exposure with three in the knockout rounds, but in each case were the only game in the NBA on nationally in that window. Approximately 4.5 million people watched the Pacers play the Lakers in the In-Season Tournament final, and that matters to the Pacers in terms of growing themselves as a business and as a team as they try to attract more talent to the roster.

"Tremendous exposure for the franchise," Carlisle said when asked the value of the total experience. "Exposure for our players and how we play."

As Carlisle is quick to remind everyone who will listen, many of these Pacers have never experienced playoff basketball and many of those who have played a small role for their teams. Every road trip teaches lessons, even the ones that don't result in many wins. And experiencing something no one else has can, in his mind, only be an advantage.

"For us, it's great experience," Carlisle said. "And we're grateful."

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Pacers vs. T-Wolves: Pacers' 'epic trip' ends in third straight defeat