You can look at this as well the game should have never came to foul calls either way. I understand that point, and I’ve never been that guy saying oh the ref cost us the game. You want to put yourself in that position to score. I look at Paul George in that final possession for the Pacers, and I thought he wanted too long to make his move anyways. I understand waiting for just a small bit of time, but you have to be ready for a miss as well, and want some shot at tipping it in. With the final possession  the Pacers never got anything off, and do we really want a missed call to be the blame for that?

In all sports, it’s about getting the call right. But where’s the getting the call right in a matter of days later?  Is there an asterisk on this game? It’s just worthless to me for the NBA to even come out with this at this point.  Maybe that night you can come out and say oh there was a missed call that could have put the Pacers in a position to win the game.  Even the next day early morning.  But two days later, I don’t get it.  Can someone explain this to me?

Indiana Pacers  (26-19)  101

What a tough loss for the Indiana Pacers last night as a late late foul call seals the deal for the Denver Nuggets.  The Pacers battled back with less than 6:00 minutes to go and down 14 points to get tied up with less than a minute remaining.  Paul George gets the call to do something with the ball, but Andre Iguodala plays great defense and makes a play on the ball.  He gets the steal with .5 left in the game.  Then there was the lob at the goal that George falls backwards and ends up fouling Iguodala, who makes one free throws and misses the other one on purpose.  102-101 is the final.  A tough loss for the Blue and Gold, who allowed another 100 points and end up on the losing end.  Like I said in the preview, allow 100 points and it ends up a loss for this team.

Still can’t figure out where that stellar defense has gone.  The Pacers were great at shutting down those high scoring teams, but have lost that touch about them.  They need to get back to it, so they can really get their game going in the right direction.  Maybe the friendly confines of Banker’s Life on Wednesday night will help, especially against a bad Detroit Pistons team.

There were some good things in this game to take home.  Lance Stephenson gets 20 points on some great shooting from the field.  He brings a good energy to the team, and last night he found himself able to get some good scoring going.  Paul George leads the way with 23 points, but it’s those last two plays that he’ll be remembered for in this game.  Even to the point of declining to comment after the game.  Hopefully he’ll put away this one, and come back strong against the Pistons.

But this small slide is a good indictator of how well the Pacers have played.  3 games is the most they’ve lost all season, and they haven’t lost three in a row since early November at the beginning of the season.  Still 1.5 game back of the Chicago Bulls for the division, and with the month of Feburary setting up nicely for the team, they should be able to get back into the lead soon.  4.0 games back of the Miami Heat in the Conference standings, so that’s probably starting to get out of reach. But there’s still 2,3,4 seeds available. Right now, the team sits in fifth, but I believe they’ll be up there at 2 or 3 come season’s end.  Just need to right things on Wednesday night, and look forward to some home cooking against the Heat on Friday night.