Indiana Pacers: What to Expect After Their Opening Win

For those of you—and I am as guilty as any—who are packing your bags or maybe have already boarded the Pacers bandwagon, slow down. The train isn’t leaving the station just yet.

I understand it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement. There hasn’t been this much hype for the Pacers in almost a decade, and Indiana did a good job in backing it up during their season opener Monday night.

Indiana’s 91-79 win over the Detroit Pistons was indeed impressive.

Led by Roy Hibbert’s 16 points and 14 boards, the Pacers dominated the glass, were suffocating defensively and more importantly, for the first time in the Danny Granger era, didn’t have to completely rely on their All-Star forward for all their scoring. Five players ended in double figures with three posting double-doubles.

Yet while it was a good start, that is how it was supposed to happen. Detroit isn’t an elite team. In fact, they aren’t projected to be very good and neither are any of the Pacers’ next four opponents.

The team’s early schedule is a lot like the SATs. As The Princeton Review and high school teachers readily reminded us, the SAT starts off with the easy section first.

With each subsequent test the exam gets progressively harder and if you don’t ace the easy section, you are pretty much screwed.

You can’t flub x^2 +5 = 21 and expect to score a 700 or better on the SATs.

Similarly, a 3-2 start against those teams and trouble will be ever present. Anything less than three wins and it will be obvious that the team hasn’t emerged from the rebuilding phase.

So before the Pacers can be considered real contenders, wait five games and see what transpires over the next 10 days.

Wait and see if the Pacers can take care of business against Toronto, Cleveland, Detroit and New Jersey (sans Brook Lopez). 

The Pacers must go 5-0 or 4-1 before they can be judged as a dangerous team and legitimate contender.

That being said, there are encouraging signs.

David West picked up from where he left off last year before his season-ending knee surgery, finishing with 11 points and 12 rebounds. Roy Hibbert was the dominate big man Pacers fans have longed for him to be and Paul George flashed superstar abilities at times.

Can the Pacers finish top four in the East? Absolutely.

Will they? Let’s wait and see. The next four games will go a long way in showing the Pacers’ true identity.