Congrats Pacers

 The Pacers and Thunder are the teams in the NBA that I decided to bandwagon this year in the playoffs with the Raptors out. They both won pretty exciting games last night which left me pleased! I did a big long post about the draft lottery so I'll keep it short today and just go over some of my thoughts on the Pacers game. Before I get into that, Leafs game 5 tonight! I thought they looked awful in game 4 and people who know hockey agreed with me. Things happen though, they need to bounce back big time tonight or else I am bringing back my Austin Matthews in a James Harden beard meme. You've been warned Leafs. Ok, back to ball:

Congrats Pacers

This was actually a hard fought game from Donovan Mitchell and he really deserves his flowers. If you only look at the boxscore you'll see he shot 8/25 and think what's the big deal? Mitchell was playing this game on 1 leg, heading into the 4th he was shooting a brutal 3/17 then he came alive and did absolutely everything he could to get the Cavs back into a game that was slipping away. He hit tough jumper after tough jumper, got to the cup and got fouled a ton and left everything out there like he had all series. I think to me this just shows the resolve of the Pacers. Mitchell's performance would've willed the team to victory against most opponents, but the Pacers have an awesome playoff rotation and when things aren't going there way they're able to collect themselves and punch back. Down the stretch Andrew Nembhard hit a big 3 and a massive and 1 to continue his insane playoff run. I genuinely don't think I've seen Nembhard miss a shot in a close playoff game down the stretch. Everyone chipped in for the Pacers, Siakam was hitting his mid range post fades, Myles Turner hit the dagger 3, Haliburton crushed the Cavs spirit in the 2nd and 3rd quarter, it was a complete team game from a complete basketball team. 

Now as complementary as I have been about the Pacers and Donovan Mitchell, I have to give some hate to the rest of the Cavs. Evan Mobley had the opposite game to Donovan Mitchell. If you look at the boxscore and see 24 points on 8/12 shooting you might think he had a great game. I am here to tell you that Mobley might have had a great half, but by the second half he was totally invisible. Jarrett Allen too, in the first half the Cavs were playing through their bigs and getting good results with ball movement and finishing down low. In the second half they played through their guards and neither of their bigs made any kind of impact. DeAndre Hunter I went on this blog to say is not the guy they think they need. While he is the size and shape of the type of player they need, Hunter plays way smaller than his size and was getting torched on defense. Ty Jerome has so much bravado and I really like him as a regular season player. He was awful this series, barely hitting any shots and getting hunted on defense. Garland was injured so he gets a bit of a pass, but still he's been injured every playoffs eventually you need to show up when it matters. Tons of credit to the Pacers, they are really good and I think I am going to pick them to come out of the East this year, but the Cavs proved the doubters wrong. It is interesting though, maybe it was just a bad matchup for them given the Pacers pace and floor spacing. The Cavs lost 22 games this year, 7 of those were against Indiana. They lost 10 home games this year, 5 of those were against Indiana. Whatever the reason may be, disappointing season from the Cavs.

That's that! Honestly I don't have it from a writing standpoint today but I promised myself to pump these out during the week so I powered through and made a post. Better one coming soon!