'We're in a good place': Pacers take lessons from Game 1 loss to prepare for Game 2
MILWAUKEE -- Myles Turner didn't want to suggest that he knew any more about what his teammates were thinking than he does, but in the two days since the Pacers took what he called a "punch in the mouth" in the first half of their Game 1 loss to the Bucks on Sunday, he has seen his team look a lot more like itself.
"Everybody processes things differently individually," Turner said after the Pacers' shootaround at Fiserv Forum on Tuesday morning. "As a team, I think we kind of know where we stand right now and how our backs are against the wall. Everyone has our own individual process, but as a team I think we're in a good place."
It was only Game 1 so the No. 6 seed Pacers are a long way from having their backs truly against the wall and facing elimination. But the first two games are obvious tone setters for a series, as the lower-seeded team that begins the series on the road gets two shots to flip home-court advantage. The Pacers also know that losing Tuesday's 8:30 p.m. game in Milwaukee would be even more perilous because they can't count on two-time MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo being out much longer. He's listed as doubtful for Game 2 after missing Game 1 with a left soleus (calf muscle) strain, but Antetokounmpo is historically a quick healer, so they have to operate as if he'll be back by Game 3 on Friday at Gainbridge Fieldhouse.
And if they're to pull off a win on Tuesday night, they need to be decidedly better on both ends of the floor, starting on the defensive end.
The Pacers didn't push the pace nearly as well as they wanted to on offense, but that was primarily because the Bucks were efficient enough on offense to keep Indiana from running. The Pacers fell 29 points short of their average for the regular season and posted just 42 points in the first half because the Bucks scored 69 before the break with a second-quarter efficiency figure of just under 1.7 points per possession.
"When you're taking the ball out of the (hoop) it's hard to control the pace, so we have to do a better job of getting stops so we can run," All-Star point guard Tyrese Haliburton said. "I felt like we were rarely able to do that. Kinda in that second half when we were fighting back from a big deficit we were able to do that more, but we have to do a better job of getting stops so we can run. That's a big part of our offense is what we do defensively."
Defensively in Sunday's first half, they had no answer for seven-time All-NBA Damian Lillard who picked them apart off the bounce and drilled 3-pointers over their heads for 35 first-half points. They held him scoreless in the second half because they so frequently double-teamed him, getting the ball out of his hands but into those of others who also managed to score. They acknowledged they'll probably have to throw multiple bodies at him on Tuesday night and also rotate well behind him to make sure others don't get easy baskets. In the second half when Lillard cooled, Khris Middleton scored 15 of his 23 points.
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"We have to talk," forward Aaron Nesmith said. "Whoever's guarding him up on the ball, make sure he knows he's got help behind him whether he has to press or whatever job needs to be done. Just make (Lillard's) life as difficult as possible."
And even beyond guarding Lillard, Nesmith said, the Pacers simply have to be better defensively across the board.
"Play harder, play tougher," Nesmith said. "Play with more force. If we do that for 48 minutes, we'll be just fine."
Just as offense is connected to defense, of course, defense is connected to offense, as making shots makes it easier to get set and ready for whatever the Bucks throw at them. The Pacers shot 39.6% from the floor and made just 8 of 39 3-pointers, missing their first 13 on Sunday. After watching film they found that they liked a number of those shots and several were wide-open looks that they missed, but there were still scenarios where they could have passed and found better ones.
"We have to create more easy looks," Nesmith said. "We had good shots. We could do better though. We have to do better."
The Pacers have generally been good at taking lessons and applying them and not allowing one loss to turn into several more. In the regular season, they never lost more than four straight games, they had just three losing streaks of three games or more. They lost two or more in a row just eight times, with three of those occasions coming during stretches when All-Star point guard Tyrese Haliburton was either out with injury or on a minutes restriction. So they enter Tuesday's game believing they've identified what's wrong and fixed it.
"We're going to make shots today," Nesmith said. "We're going to play the right way today, and hopefully we're going to win. ... We learned from it. We came in and we got our work in. We fixed what we needed to fix. And we're going to come out today with a better mindset."
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Pacers 'in a good place' after taking lessons from Game 1 loss
