Game Recap 03/16: Indiana Pacers @ Philadelphia 76ers
There is no doubt about the fact that Philadelphia has been playing much better lately. We took them on their last two games, where they faced top teams such as Miami and Indiana and while they could have defeated the Heat (they just failed to do it down the stretch), they had a great win over the Pacers. Jrue Holiday looks 100% healthy once again after a hamstring injury, Thaddeus Young keeps playing at a very high level and now even Spencer Hawes is being capable of having huge offensive games: 7-14 FG, 18 points, 16 rebounds, 8 assists and 7 blocks against Indiana is just amazing! Of course the Sixers's interior defense was crushed by Indiana's frontcourt that had a clear size edge on this matchup and this is why Indiana dominated the boards of this contest, while scoring 50 points in the paint.
Both David West and Roy Hibbert bounced back from a bad game against the Lakers on the previous day, but Philadelphia's frontcourt was still able to do damage on the offensive end, with Spencer Hawes having a monster game and with Thaddeus Young having another nice performance. But what decided this contest was the superior play from Philadelphia's backcourt, who outplayed Indiana's guards. The Pacers have been struggling on their outside shooting this season on back to back games and this game was no exception: 0-5 FG from 10-15 feet, 3-19 FG from 16-23 feet and 5-16 treys! We are talking about a combined shooting of 9-40 FG from +10 feet! On the other hand, Jrue Holiday outplayed the Pacers's backcourt on his own with 12-25 FG, 27 points, 6 rebounds and 12 assists!
As expected, Cleveland's defense simply couldn't stop San Antonio's well oiled offensive machine. If we exclude an unusual high number of turnovers from San Antonio, they crushed the Cavaliers's defense shooting almost 60% FG, with Tim Duncan destroying Cleveland's terrible interior defense, while Kawhi Leonard was by the far the best wing player on the court. Despite all of that, San Antonio was only up by 1 point at the end of third quarter, even though they were shooting 58% FG at the time!
That was due to some terrible defense from San Antonio, especially from their second unit that was completely outplayed by the Cavaliers's bench. I've been telling you for a while that Cleveland's bench is a pretty decent unit, but them owning the Spurs's excellent bench was clearly unexpected. The Spurs simply couldn't defend when Tim Duncan was on the bench. This is why San Antonio outscored Cleveland by 20 points during the 35 minutes where Tim Duncan was playing, but got outplayed when Duncan was on the bench. Cleveland had a great offensive game, especially on areas where San Antonio has been an elite defensive team all season long. The Cavaliers shot 20-25 (80%) FG at the rim and 7-15 (46.7%) 3pts! After a huge run where San Antonio's defense was great, this was the third game over the last six games where the Spurs's defense was just awful. Coach Popovich will need to do something quickly because Tony Parker's absence doesn't justify such defensive inconsistency from them.
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