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No Giannis, but Pacers get punked by Bucks in Game 1 of the 2024 NBA Playoffs

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Pacers coach Rick Carlisle becomes increasingly angry, calling timeout after timeout, but nothing works. Milwaukee’s Damian Lillard is a must-see. The Pacers can’t pass, dribble or shoot. Defense? Don’t ask about defense.

Worst of all, the Pacers don’t care.

This happened in the middle of Milwaukee’s flurry of a second quarter, as the Bucks built a 30-point lead in what became their 109-94 win Sunday night in Game 1 of their NBA playoff series:

Pacers ball. Foul on Milwaukee. Whistle blows, dead ball, everyone stops. Everyone but Pacers is guarding Tyrese Haliburton because the ball bounced back to him around the rim. The Pacers had missed their first fourteen shots from three-point range – read that again – and Haliburton has the ball and a clear shot to find some sort of rhythm, something NBA players always do during a stop in the action. . Another thing NBA players do: try to prevent the other team from getting that free shot during a dead ball.

Pacers score: Damian Lillard and Bucks defeat inexperienced Pacers in Game 1 of the NBA Playoffs

Milwaukee’s Bobby Portis sees what’s happening and runs toward Haliburton, getting into his personal space and even bumping into him to prevent the shot. This is unacceptable to Haliburton’s teammates, or it should be: Haliburton is the Pacers’ leader, their point guard, their star and He is get rough? Put it this way, if Colts enforcer Quenton Nelson was playing for the Pacers, Bobby Portis had some explaining to do.

Unfortunately, the Pacers don’t have Quenton Nelson. What they have is a franchise making its first playoff appearance since the 2020 COVID bubble, and a roster littered with players making its first playoff appearance – ever – and while this series features a team called the Bucks, it’s the Pacers who have that deer. in-headlights look.

“The first half was embarrassing,” Carlisle said, the first words out of his mouth, as he sat down in front of reporters at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee. “No excuses. We just have to come out of it better. It was ugly and we all own it.”

What’s wrong with Tyrese Haliburton?

The Bucks were without All-Star Giannis Antetokounmpo. Even mention it, because the Pacers didn’t have Tyrese Haliburton. At least not the All-Star version of Haliburton. Not the Haliburton the Bucks amassed this season, averaging 27 points and 11 assists and playing in attack mode (94 field goal attempts in five games, 19.8 per game) and doing it almost perfectly: 55 assists, seven turnovers. What is that ratio of assistance to turnover, 84 to 1?

Forget it. I’m still trying to make sense of these numbers: nine points, seven rebounds, eight assists. A triple single, that’s the kind of song you call. That’s what Haliburton did in Game 1.

More numbers: 4-for-7 from the floor, 1-for-3 on 3-pointers and zero free throws on zero attempts. The contribution of a role player, that’s what you would call a shooting line. But that’s also what Haliburton did in Game 1. How does the Pacers’ best player, their leading scorer and playmaker — the guy who has the ball in his hands all game — have such negligible impact on the offensive end?

Zero free throw attempts in 38 minutes?

More of the same is what you call a game like that. Haliburton hasn’t been Haliburton since he suffered a hamstring injury in early January. He missed 10 of 11 games — missing five games before a one-off against Portland on Jan. 19 and five more games after that — and came back a different player. Before the injury, he was the talk of the NBA, the master of ceremonies for the 2024 NBA All-Star Game, the future MVP candidate averaging 23.6 points and 12.6 assists and shooting 49.6% from the floor , 40% on three-pointers in his first 34 games.

In his last 35 games of the regular season? Trying 16.8 ppg and 9.3 apg, shooting 45.5% from the floor and 32.4% on 3’s.

What you’ll notice is the headline of this story: It doesn’t focus on Haliburton, right? No, because he didn’t lose this match. This disaster, this wall-to-wall defeat — the Bucks led 32-21 with 11:18 to go in the second quarter, and the Pacers never got within single digits again — happened because no one was ready for it.

No one but Pascal Siakam: 36 points, 14 rebounds, two blocked shots. Took 25 shots and made 15.

Related news: Pascal Siakam played on Toronto’s 2019 NBA championship team. He didn’t stare into the headlights and froze at the sight. He was attacking. So did Myles Turner and TJ McConnell, albeit ineffectively. They were a combined 10-for-30 from the floor. McConnell had just one assist in 18 minutes, but that’s not his fault. No one could shoot except Siakam.

And Tyrese Haliburton, the Pacers’ best player, wouldn’t make the attempt. When he reentered the game for the final time with 8:50 to go in the fourth quarter, he was tied for fifth on the team with five field goal attempts. The ball is immediately in his hands, as it is always in his hands, and it is guarded by the aforementioned Portis.

The aforementioned Portis goes 6-10, 250 pounds. He can’t defend Haliburton at the rim, and Hali sizes him up, as he does before launching a 3. Only, he doesn’t launch a 3. Haliburton instead tries to go around Portis, which I’ll remind you is a 6. 10 and 250 pounds and can’t defend Haliburton at the rim. Only Haliburton cannot ignore him. He gives up mid-turn and throws a stolen pass.

Seconds later the ball comes back his way and Haliburton steals it. He looks like he’s about to shoot when Portis bumps into him again, this time in live action. Referees call a foul on Portis, who just manhandled the Pacers’ best player for the second time.

No response from Haliburton’s teammates.

Quenton Nelson is 6-5 and was a high school basketball star in New Jersey. And the Pacers have No. 56 available.

Just say it.

Bobby Portis hacked the Pacers

The Pacers played like they had no idea how important this game was. Or even some kind of game is. You call it basketball, but that’s not what you call what this team did in the first half when the game got out of hand:

Ben Sheppard has the ball and steps out of bounds. Haliburton drives and dishes to no one and throws a cross-court pass that wasn’t stolen only by Milwaukee’s Malik Beasley because teammate Pat Connaughton got in the way first. Jalen Smith grabs an offensive rebound, starts stumbling out of bounds and saves the ball by throwing it…out of bounds. Next possession Jalen has the ball and looks to be heading for the rim, but the officials miss the ball, which is fine because now he trips again and loses the ball out of bounds through his leg.

Myles Turner, who is listed at 6-11, continues to play like he is 4-11 by deciding that the best way to deal with the traffic at the rim is to get the ball below his waist and shoot from there .

Obi Toppin has the ball with 15 seconds left in the first quarter. The Pacers are down 27-21 and the shot clock is off, meaning they can wait until the final shot. Maybe they’ll come in 27-23. Maybe they hit a 3-pointer AND WHAT DOES OBI TOPPIN DO?

He rushes a three-pointer and misses badly, and the Bucks go the other way and Lillard buries a three-pointer at the buzzer. The scoreboard shows Bucks 30, Pacers 21. The scoreboard shows three quarters to go. The scoreboard lies, because this game is over.

The start of this game – “embarrassing,” Carlisle had called it – came after raising the alarm after the regular-season finale against Atlanta. The Hawks, already locked into the 10th seed in the Eastern Conference, were not interested in participating and the Pacers often had the same energy, and Carlisle exploded during the game, at halftime and even after the game, when meeting with local reporters. and used us to deliver a message to his dressing room:

“Our focus has to be on the physical things it takes to win playoff games,” he told players, er, reporters, at one point.

“The play-offs, that can’t happen,” he had said another time, bordering on psychological territory. “Otherwise you’ll get hit.”

The only physical team on the court Sunday night was Milwaukee. Bucks guard Patrick Beverly dived all over the field, got in everyone’s faces, confronted the TNT crew and did what he does best: irritate everyone. Bobby Portis was calling the shots all game, and the Pacers let him, and maybe that’s because Portis is one of the scariest players in the league. While with the Bulls in 2017, you may recall, he got into a fight with teammate Nikola Mirotic during practice, sending Mirotic — who also has a 6-10.250 rating — to the hospital with multiple facial fractures.

Portis set the tone on Sunday, physical and aggressive, almost crossing the line in dirty play with Haliburton – twice – and the Passives, I mean the Pacers, kept saying: Thanks Bobby, can I have another one?.

Late in the final quarter, Milwaukee’s Brook Lopez has the ball and goes for a dunk. No one is stopping him, because that would require a lot of Pacers to care enough to beat the biggest, slowest player in the game on the court, and Lopez dunks on Aaron Nesmith, the only Pacer within shouting distance. The last I saw of Nesmith was him disappearing under the avalanche called Brook Lopez, also known as “Splash Mountain.”

Afterwards, Carlisle acknowledged in his painful comments to reporters that he had seen a team that was trying very hard. And it hurt him to admit that it wasn’t his team.

“I don’t know what the loose ball count was,” he said, “but it should have been absolutely horrible in their favor. Competitively, we have to take it to a much higher level.”

Someone asked about the shooting. After all, the Pacers were just 8-for-39 on 3-pointers. The question had a hint of hope, as in: You’ll probably shoot better in Game 2.

Carlisle’s response had a hint of disgust.

“This isn’t about missed shots,” he said. “It’s about an attitude and attitude that simply wasn’t there.”

Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar.

More: Join the text conversation with sports columnist Gregg Doyel for insights, reader questions and Doyel’s behind-the-scenes look.

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