Bucks down 2 at the half. Giannis missed 2 FTs with 1 second left or it would have been tied. Bucks +4 in Giannis' 17 minutes and -6 in the 7 minutes he's sat.
Giannis at 12-9-4 at the half. Dame has 2 points.
Same problem as the playoff series last year is that Lopez isn't really playable against them. I think they have to close with Giannis at the 5 to have a chance in crunch time.
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Bucks lead by 2 in the third, but mainly because the Pacers are missing wide open 3s. The Pacers just run actions over and over to get Lopez isolated on Haliburton. Haliburton blows by him and forces help and they get a wide open shot. It will kill them in a playoff series if the Bucks face them.
Bucks have gone to zone to protect Lopez on the switches and that just results in relatively easy jump shots for the Pacers.
Tied at 88 going to the 4th. Dame has struggled from the floor again. He's 7 for his last 23 from three.
Losing the non-Giannis minutes badly again. Now down 6 again and Doc takes a timeout.
+3 in Giannis' 26 minutes. -9 in the 10 minues he's sat.
@MichiganPacker2 posted:+3 in Giannis' 26 minutes. -9 in the 10 minues he's sat.
They can't afford to play Lopez big minutes against teams that force him to switch on the perimeter and they can't afford to play Sims big minutes on offense against good teams.
Now down 8 as Dame bricks another open 3 and Giannis is finally coming back in.
Back to even with Giannis coming back in.
Now down 5 and fading after Lopez gets burned by Haliburton to set up an open 3 and Porter turns it over with Dame resting.
Giannis has made some beautiful passes here in the 4th. Pacers have decided they are not going to let Giannis score to beat them. Giannis has not taken a FG attempt in the last 17 minutes of game time.
What a terrible way to lose. Haliburton hits a circus 3 point shot and gets an and one.
Are you fucking kidding me?
@MichiganPacker2 posted:What a terrible way to lose. Haliburton hits a circus 3 point shot and gets an and one.
Yes indeed......
It was a good shot by Haliburton, but a bullshit foul call on Giannis
That was not a foul on Giannis. Nice job refs. Almost as bad as the Ball phantom call in Charlotte that won the game.
Watch the play again. Whistle blew like 2 full seconds after the ball was released. Pathetic. My guess was the refs didn’t think Halliburton had any chance of making it so why not blow the whistle?
For all the talk about the league clamping down on players initiating contact or looking for fouls on shots here’s one that cost them the game. That’s the third game this season the officials fucked them over at the very end resulting in two losses. The Detroit game very well could have been a loss as well.
It was an exciting game in March. In the end, I don't think home court makes as much difference in the playoffs as having everyone as healthy as possible. As long as you get at least the 6th seed and don't have to deal with the play-in (and avoid the top 2 seeds as long as possible) you are better off.
The bigger concern is that the Pacers missed a lot of open shots last night and still were able to steal a win. Lopez is targeted over and over on switches. He's just not playable against the lineups they use. They get him switched onto Haliburton and it's a blow by almost every time.
Also, I don't think it was Doc's fault for the poor way they played the final Pacers shot. But I don't know why Lopez is on the floor in that situation.
The issue I have with Doc is they wasted a challenge and timeout at the end so they couldn’t t advance the ball. Just dumb.
@Tschmack posted:The issue I have with Doc is they wasted a challenge and timeout at the end so they couldn’t t advance the ball. Just dumb.
I still think the challenge was worth it. The foul call on Giannis was ridiculous. He didn't even touch his legs and that part should have been overturned. The interpreation of that call is that Haliburton can launch himself sideways 8 feet and if Giannis breathes on him while he's doing that it's a foul? That's ridiculous.
It was also fairly likely his foot did hit out of bounds. The problem was that the camera angle that would have definitively shown it was blocked by Lopez running in front of the video precisely when they could have seen that.
If they win the challenge on the foul, the game is going to OT at worst. That should have happened.
Haliburton looked like he could have stepped out of bounds right in front of the Bucks bench. They probably had a better view than the cameras. If they win that challenge, the Bucks win immediately. I agree with the call of not overturning it, but that was not a dumb challenge.
They also had plenty of time to draw up an inbounds play to get Dame the ball and let him work for a shot. As it was, Giannis almost hit the shot. You should have drawn something up to anticipate running a play if you are down 1. They had 3.5 seconds. That was the biggest screw up
I will go back and look at some point, but that's at least the 4th game this year they've lost when either Giannis (twice) or Dame (twice) had good shots that would have won at the buzzer. I don't think they've won anything on a last shot this year yet.