Pacers End Winless Road Trip With Blowout Loss In Golden State

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INDIANAPOLIS – A scoring issue has plagued the Indiana Pacers for two weeks now.

It was exposed even more by the explosive Golden State Warriors (49-22) on Thursday night.

Indiana shot a season-low 37.8 percent from the floor and the Warriors eventually ran away from the Pacers, with a 112-89 victory.

Heading into Thursday’s game, things didn’t look great for the Pacers’ chances in finding one win on this four-game western road trip.

Darren Collison (quad contusion) and Nate McMillan (death in the family) were not available on Thursday, with the Warriors starting their All-Star quintet.

Early on though, the Pacers (44-29) stingy defense had these teams trading leads through the first quarter and a half.

But when the Warriors starters re-entered in the second quarter a quick spurt to end the first half stretched the lead to 10 points.

Continued third quarter woes showed up again for Indiana and the end of the night saw the Pacers starters get virtually the entire fourth quarter off with the game no longer in doubt.

Thaddeus Young led the Indiana starters with 18 points. The other Pacers starters scored 9, 4, 3 and 2 points.

Thanks to a late flurry by the bench, the Pacers tied a season-low with 89 points, as they shot just 6-of-23 from behind the arc.

The Warriors had all 5 starters in double figures, despite that bunch spending the final period resting on the bench.

In their two meetings this year, Golden State beat Indiana by a combined 55 points.

The Pacers have now lost 8 straight road games.

Three Pacers’ Takeaways:

-Golden State Eventually Golden States You: Through the middle-ish part of the 2^nd quarter on Thursday, the Pacers were maintaining pace with the vaunted Warriors. Thanks to some sound defense and the Warriors missing a few open looks, the Pacers were playing a game at a very manageable pace. But the spurt ability of the Warriors showed up right before half and lasted all throughout the third quarter. A 19-19 tie after one quarter was the Pacers’ chance to possibily build a lead and keep things interesting for longer than just a half on Thursday. But the Warriors took off when their starters re-entered in the second quarter and that ended any small hope the Pacers had in the Bay Area.

–Starting Lineup Provides Minimal Scoring Output: Without Victor Oladipo (knee), Darren Collison (quad contusion) and Nate McMillan (death in his family), no one expected the Pacers to win on Thursday. But this game eventually turned into one of the team’s poorest performances of the season. The starting lineup was putrid, excluding Thaddeus Young (7-of-13 for 18 points). The other starters (Bojan Bogdanovic, Myles Turner, Wesley Matthews and Cory Joseph) combined to go 7-of-36 from the floor. No wonder Indiana shot a season-low 37.8 percent from the floor. Having an offensive effort like that could not happen against a worst team in the NBA.

–Winless Road Trip: Thursday marked the 4^th loss for the Pacers on this 4-game western road trip, all against playoff teams. Their best chances at a win (or two) on this trip came in Denver last Saturday and Portland on Monday, but they squandered double-digit leads in both of those contests. Credit to Pacers play-by-play man Chris Denari for bringing up this stat during Thursday’s telecast on Fox Sports Indiana: The Pacers have been down double figures in 8 straight games. They are 3-5 in that span, with two of those wins over Chicago and New York. With 9 games to go in the regular season, the Pacers are now a half game up on Boston in the 4/5 race. Next week is massive for Indiana in that pecking order, with a trip to Boston next Friday highlighting another difficult week.