If you like to watch basketball, don't watch the first quarter of this game! It was brutal! Bad shooting. Bad decisions. Bad referees. Everything combined resulted in a horrible basketball stretch. I remember watching four offensive fouls in a row! Nevertheless, Indiana wins games by playing on this style and so, they had the early lead on this contest. Kobe Bryant shouldn't have played last night, as he simply couldn't move around the court. After this brutal first quarter, Dwight Howard showed us why he can still dominate games even though he isn't 100% healthy. Indiana's big men were coming from a game where they dominated the undersized Wolves, but this time they got shutdown by Howard. Roy Hibbert ended the game with 3-12 FG, while David West shot 4-13 FG. How many times do we see the starting PF and Center of a good team shooting a combined of 7-25 FG?
Offensively, Dwight Howard was also unstoppable. He didn't score or shoot that good, but he put Indiana's big men in foul trouble. Things got so bad for the Pacers that Coach Vogel was forced to put the following lineup together on the court: Jeff Pendergraph, Tyler Hansbrough, Sam Young, Lance Stephenson and D.J. Augustin! Of course, thanks to this lineup, Indiana struggled to score in the first six minutes of the second quarter with just four points during than span. Indiana bounced back in the second half and they were even leading during the fourth quarter until Howard dominated again down the stretch. Together with Steve Nash, they ran some pretty high pick and roll plays and because of the extra looks the Pacers were forced to put on Howard down low, the Lakers's perimeter players were left wide open and they buried Indiana from the outside. Antawn Jamison and Steve Blake were especially good on that. Like it happened at Miami, Indiana showed a poor offensive execution, something that they need to improve if they really want to give a serious fight to Miami in the playoffs, something that I really doubt that it will happen.
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