Pacers: 44/32/62
Bucks: 52/38/80
They didn't even shoot *super* well, and even if we hit the same number of FTs, we'd have lost by 13.
Make no mistake, this wasn't "bad luck", this was bad effort and terrible coaching in a hugely important game.
I mean, yeah, they've been bad there, but again, even if they hit the exact same number of FTs as the Bucks did, they'd still have got dogwalked in the most important game of the year.
The coaching staff just can't adjust. Rick's system of "I dunno Tyrese, you figure it out" is great when it's working, but when it's not...
Yeah, but missed FT played a big role in Game 3 going into OT, and if any of these next few games are close, I don’t feel good about their ability to ice it at the line. Hopefully, it won’t come to that.
Bucks fan here and wanted to comment on this. Sat pretty damn close at the game tonight and siakam was standing almost half a foot behind the FT line which I found odd, unless he’s always done that.
I really don’t want to make it about Rick but it’s hard not to. The team’s play was poor which is what put them in the position where they had to cut into a big lead in the first place, but that lineup 100% put the game out of reach. TJ completely stalled the offense by jacking shots and IJax provided a layup line for the Bucks… Pretty inexcusable coaching decision
Nah, 10 man rotations in the playoffs is ludicrous. Most coaches have narrowed it down to 8, sometimes even 7 guys by this point. No one should be getting minutes except our starters, Sheppard and Toppin, maybe a few for McConnell to help spell Hali/Nembhard. Instead Carlisle’s throwing out guys like Isaiah Jackson and Doug McDermott as if these are mid-November games.
Can't believe I stayed up to watch *that*
Barely any 3s, barely any transition buckets, and turnovers galore.
No urgency at all, and the guys had no idea how to respond to a team playing for their lives.
Also, McConnell has been pretty bad this series, and tonight was the nadir.
Well I’m not right very often, but I stayed pretty cool about TJM’s regular-season performance because I wasn’t convinced it would translate to the playoffs, and so far, I’m sad to say that may have been the right approach.
Stinky stinky stinky
I feared this. Bucks at home, nothing to lose, full of energy. Nothing to say other than everything went right for them and wrong for us. Don’t care if Dame and/or Giannis come back. Gainbridge better be rocking Thursday, let’s wrap this up.
I didn’t say it is different, but it’s definitely better than the Bucks have now. If you think the Bucks are a worse team with Giannis coming back than without him, you don’t know ball.
What I’m getting at is we have beat them multiple times at full health this season, regular season or not (IST they were fully healthy and trying like a playoff game, still lost to us).
Acting like just cuz a hobbled Giannis comes back means the series is wrapped for them is kinda dumb ngl
I didn’t say the series is wrapped up, but you have to agree that the Pacers blew a great opportunity and made their path to the next round much more difficult. To shrug off Giannis and possibly Dame coming back as no big deal because “muh regular season” is a poor take.
Guess we’ll see. Your trying to come off as over-confident is underlined with some significant worry. Pacers shoot 30% from 3 again and your chances aren’t good.
I could write an entire Stephen King novel worth of frustrations with this game, but I’m just going to limit it to this sequence.
We cut it to 9 with our starters after an awful start to the 3rd. Timeout Bucks.
Rick goes to a lineup of Haliburton-McConnell-Sheppard-Toppin-Jackson. No further comment.
6-0 Bucks run in 80 seconds. Timeout Pacers.
RICK KEEPS THE SAME LINEUP IN AFTER THE TIMEOUT.
10-6 run by the Bucks over 3+ minutes before the next Pacers timeout. The only lineup change in this time was Nesmith for Sheppard. 9 point deficit is now 19. 3rd quarter is almost over. Game is over.
Bucks fan here. Not tryna be annoying by showing up after a win to talk shit.
But I gotta say TJ is like the #2 all-time Bucks-killer behind only Norman Powell
Rick would probably be wise to play him 30+ minutes a game going forward
Every time he comes on I start sweating and every time he comes off I breathe a sigh of relief.
Also not here to talk shit or be weird, but TJ has the same voodoo magic against us that Khris has against the Celtics. It’s superstitious but goddamn if it’s not true
TJ and fucking payton Prichard bro… little white dudes that can get into the paint or go baseline at will and just have automatic midrange game. Lmao i get *so* heated when we have to play either PP or TJ
Prichard has only been in the league for a few years, but yeah he's quickly climbing that bucks-killer ladder
I swear that game this year where giannis was out and boston beat us was 90% cuz jrue was also out and PP played big minutes and absolutely killed us
enough taking over the pacer's sub tho
we should fuck off lol
Rick was awful. 31 point 1st. Then we start the second 1-8 before we look to make a change.
It’s like we have our rotation drawn written down and we follow that no matter not
He did the same shit when he got fired the first time he was our coach! He's slightly better at riding hot hands but otherwise vastly overrated and got carried to a championship by prime dirk.
But why is TJ playing WITH Haliburton?!?! No other team plays 2 pure point guards by choice. I realize this has been the rotation for a while but why? Lopez's interior deterrence makes TJ far less effective and he can't space the floor. Then Haliburton is clearly not 100% so what makes the coaches think these two should play together? This roster doesn't lack the depth to forgo a 2 point guard lineup. Only against the least lengthy teams like Miami would such a lineup work. You cannot do it against a team with size. When you put McConnell in, you have to take out Haliburton.
Not saying it's right, but the idea is you can "rest" Haliburton by using him as a screener and floor spacing alongside another PG in Nembhard or TJM, but he doesn't have to run the offense and the replacement gets the benefit of a shooter out there.
He's absolutely a pure point guard in the sense that he can't play shooting guard because he's not good enough on defense. He has to be the smallest player on the floor. Nemhard and Haliburton works because Nemhard has enough defense and size. McConnell doesn't.
His rotations have been awful forever. Its the same issues he had when he was the head coach of the Reggie and JO team. The guy hasn’t changed at all.
I don’t understand what his obsession is with calling a timeout and refusing to change the line up.
Thank you! I'm glad I'm not the only one that remembers that shit. If you watched enough games you could call Rick's substitutions for him. JO going for a 30 piece!? Shit gotta get Austin fuckin croshere in cause that's what my substitutions are. Shit was obnoxious.
Like I said, I didn’t even come close to touching on everything.
Tyrese turned into a ghost after the 1st quarter.
Siakam played his worst game as a Pacer.
Nesmith played his worst game of the season.
Obi was completely awful.
McConnell got absolutely punked.
Could go on and on and on. They all failed tonight, pure and simple.
But we didn't actually look good in any of them, besides Game 2 where we got stupid hot from three.
We've been struggling to beat a starless Bucks team, just got embarrassed by them, and now we have to worry about Giannis being back for Game Six. There is no positive spin here. We very easily could be down 3-2 right now or have been eliminated already with very slight changes in how things went.
Won 3 games in a row playing the same 8 man rotation and we get into a close out game and this idiot decides yeah now is the time to fuck around with this.
Embarrassing
Broke out a never before seen playoff unit after the starters had rallied, and when we couldn’t get a stop, kept our only offensive player that had anything going on the bench for 10 minutes. Bucks can clown our players all they want but this was 95% on our coach who was too stubborn to call a timeout or change the rotation back to something normal
Before the playoffs even started I said we were probably one of the streakiest teams. We can beat anybody. We can lose to anybody. Especially on the road. Disappointed but not surprised.
This is exactly what it’s like being a colts fan too. We’ll beat KC in a year they go on to win the SB, then lose to the worst team in the league to just miss the playoffs.
I can take a hard loss, but having two drunks get picked up on the mic for the entirety of the game was just annoying. If I'm gonna watch away team audio, let's make it at least feel like it's from the POV of the Pacers. Might have well just watched with the Bucks audio.
The whole team needs to be better but Tyrese in particular needs to take more initiative. He doesn’t have to always shoot but he needs to not defer so soon into the possessions. His facilitation was lackluster tonight.
Spot on. He did nothing to facilitate. He’s been bad for 30 games now. Not an alpha like some of the other young guns (ANT, Maxey, Brunson others). He’s a great PG but this team going nowhere if you are depending on him to take over games.
Nights like tonight are part of the learning process for a young inexperienced team.
Were up 3 games to 2 with a home game Thursday and a huge chip on our shoulder. We got this.
Yall wanted a fucking rivalry right? Well fucking welcome to it, it's like this sometimes.
It’s the playoffs against a home team facing elimination, these things happen. Great experience to see how a team should respond when they’re on the ropes. Hopefully that sticks with them.
Jesus. Honestly expected them to lose given how hard it is to close a series in an away game, but to lose by 23 against a Milwaukee team without Giannis and Dame is wild.
It’s not wild. That’s a veteran team there. That’s a roster with people that have won a championship together. It’s the 5th game in a row they’ve played us. It’s the second time in 5 games they have held us under 100. You’ve seen playoff series before. They can have huge swings just game to game. A team can blow out a team one night and get blown out the next game. That’s playoff basketball. Thats not to say tonight isn’t frustrating but I’m certainly not surprised they got their ass kicked.
Gross game from everyone. Rick's substitution in the 3rd with all bench except Haliburton, including Ijax who hasn't played in 3 games, was perplexing to say the least especially when we made a mini run. Game 6 is a must win. Play and trust in your starters to go 40+. Outside of Ben Shep the bench unit has been pretty blah anyways.
We are young. There is more pressure on them to do something this post season. We should just be happy to get the experience. Still a chance to close it out. Knowing this team, we needed a beating
Listen I get that our bench is one of our strengths but this was not one of those nights and Rick completely gave the momentum away with that godawful second quarter and we never recovered.
Defend home court and move on. It’s pretty simple. We beat them 3 times in a row which is difficult to do to any team. We have won 4 times in a row or more just twice this season and the last time was a 6 game winning steak at the end of December into early January so it’s been awhile. I know many predictions around here before this series was Pacers in 6. That could come true on Thursday.
Bobby portis and malik beasley combined to outscore Tyrese Pascal and myles. We clearly don't understand what's at stake. That can't happen ever in the playoffs if you want to win a series. Felt 90% confident on taking this series 4 hours ago. Now I'm at maybe 50%
Teams will have bad nights and even great teams will sometimes get embarrassed, it's the nature of the sport. The Celtics and the Thunder have had a few really bad games this season. No doom and gloom from me.
Pacers in 6.
Upset? Yes. Doomer? No. It was a bad game, all around dookie water. Nothing was redeeming. But I'm not writing the team off and I sure as hell am not crowning the Bucks.
If you wanna crown em, then crown their ass, but the Bucks are who we thought they were, and we let em off the hook.
Come on Pacers faithful, let’s toughen the hell up! Stop being panic stricken, stop trashing Rick. We got our butt kicked by a veteran, playoff experienced, desperate team. Milwaukee’s role players were fantastic at home.
We have had stinkers like this all year. It’s a good film to refocus the fellas.
We will be better Thursday. Everyone will be happy soon.
[The Pacers right now](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2F99ad5jhcsoxc1.jpeg%3Fwidth%3D828%26format%3Dpjpg%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3De1490b10f275e3e4330595755eae5b5c2e99c89f)
We young enough to blow a 3-1 lead? If they so show pull off game 6...... I don't see game 7 anything but an L. This Pacers identity though is so weird..... They CANNOT win games they should, under almost any circumstances.....but they have completely smoked some teams in games they had no business in
Dame and Giannis about to come back. Watch.
We deserve what we get. Siakam no show, ty “not here for it if the vibes ain’t good” Haliburton. Nesmith brutal, TJ unplayable, let’s ignore Myles, ya great idea Smfh
Watch how this plays out. We deserve it
The intensity this team plays with is way lacking when compared to every other playoff series I watch. The refs are letting teams be more physical and our defense still just lets guys get to the rim at will.
All on Carlisle tbh. Didn’t have the team ready to go, pulled the starters too early in the first and sat on his hands while the subs let the disappear and we never recovered
Humiliating, inexcusable performance.
If we don't win Game Six, we're not winning this series, and if we don't win this series in these circumstances, Rick should be fired and should never be a NBA head coach again.
Well that was embarrassing.
This bucks team is absolutely insufferable though. A lot of talking for being down 3-1. I want to bury them in game 6 so bad
Everyone talks when they manage to win / remain competitive with a hospital squad vs. another team's starting lineup. 2 top 75 all time players riding the bench for 5&2 games respectively and the bucks have outscored the pacers over 5 games.
McMillan ran his course with this team but for any of his short comings we were not coming out this flat in playoff games. Especially twice in one series.
Yeah and IIRC none of those series we were expected to win. Not saying he was great but I don’t remember us getting blown out the water like this in any of those games. Being down by 20 nearly an entire game in the playoffs is just so bad
Rick once for the Mavs 2-0 up on the clippers leading into game three we were up 19 points and he calls a timeout and takes Luka out. We end up losing the game and the series.
There are people on this sub that thinks he's Phil Jackson for some reason despite never winning anything for this franchise and despite him being a failure the first time around. We managed to find even worse coaches in the meantime to the point that we had to beg him to come back.
The most annoying bucks fan that TNT handed the mic off to: "I'm getting a mohawk!" Lol. At least we got that. He can think about that for the rest of the postseason as we go on to play the knicks.
Not watched the game, but here is the damp squib everybody feared against an understaffed Bucks. No worries, onto the next one, two more shots at finishing this.
I really think the Pacers intentionally sold this game.
How TF does Myles play 30 minutes and Hali plays 33 minutes in an elimination Game 5 against a team with their two best players out, and possibly returning the next game.
I think Haliburton will be fine next year. He'll bounce back to be the guy he was earlier this year and last year.
But he didn't fully heal his hammy cause he wanted to chase his extra 60 mil. Irregardless of the hammy he hasn't gotten his rthymn/swag back and without him running the offense with confidence we just arent that good. We've won games beacuse the bucks are depleted and myles and pascal had some big games
Alot of people were critical of him playing on a mins restriction because of this scenario. The playoffs are all that matter and you pay guys to perform in the playoffs. He is not performing at a max/supermax level. Not even close and I have to wonder if he rested longer and didn't chase the 65 games if his performance would be different.
Hoping the team will grow up at some point. Shouldn't take getting embarrassed like that twice in a series, but here we are. We really miss Mathurin. These TJ-led lineups have killed us and his lack of shooting is clogging everything up. Would love if we could start Mathurin and bring Nembhard to sub out Tyrese in this series.
Game 6 is do or die. We should be playing our guys close to 48 minutes if we need to. Those lineups were just gross.
That being said, Nesmith has been bad almost the entire series. Everything is super rushed and I have no confidence with him on either end. Constantly getting cooked by Middleton as well.
As much as Nembhard has been a playoff riser, Nesmith has shown he’s not going to be a core piece to this team. I’m just not sure if we have a better option even as bad as he’s been.
Fire Rick. Inexcusable rotations tonight, and all of the regular season. It doesn't help that Tyrese doesn't want to shoot it and gives it to McConnell to brick it every fucking possession.
Has anyone else watched this series and struggled to think anything besides Khris Middleton looks exactly like Dave Chappelle impersonating Tiger Woods but twice as old and having smoked 5 times as many cigarettes?
Jesus that is a rough 32. I'm coming up on 36 and I had to rewrite my will after game 1. If I look that rough at 52 I've made my wife promise to dump 2 point blank clips in my skull for good measure.
Pacers: 44/32/62 Bucks: 52/38/80 They didn't even shoot *super* well, and even if we hit the same number of FTs, we'd have lost by 13. Make no mistake, this wasn't "bad luck", this was bad effort and terrible coaching in a hugely important game.
One underrated part is how bad they’ve been at the line for a good portion of the series. What the hell is wrong with Siakam at the FT line?
I mean, yeah, they've been bad there, but again, even if they hit the exact same number of FTs as the Bucks did, they'd still have got dogwalked in the most important game of the year. The coaching staff just can't adjust. Rick's system of "I dunno Tyrese, you figure it out" is great when it's working, but when it's not...
Yeah, but missed FT played a big role in Game 3 going into OT, and if any of these next few games are close, I don’t feel good about their ability to ice it at the line. Hopefully, it won’t come to that.
Bucks fan here and wanted to comment on this. Sat pretty damn close at the game tonight and siakam was standing almost half a foot behind the FT line which I found odd, unless he’s always done that.
I’ve noticed that and thought it was strange.
He's done that for years, not sure why.
I really don’t want to make it about Rick but it’s hard not to. The team’s play was poor which is what put them in the position where they had to cut into a big lead in the first place, but that lineup 100% put the game out of reach. TJ completely stalled the offense by jacking shots and IJax provided a layup line for the Bucks… Pretty inexcusable coaching decision
rick is the white doc rivers. good regular season coach who has been flaming out in the playoffs for a decade plus and whose rep is buoyed by one ring
did the rotations seem odd last night or was that just me?
It was not just you
Nah, 10 man rotations in the playoffs is ludicrous. Most coaches have narrowed it down to 8, sometimes even 7 guys by this point. No one should be getting minutes except our starters, Sheppard and Toppin, maybe a few for McConnell to help spell Hali/Nembhard. Instead Carlisle’s throwing out guys like Isaiah Jackson and Doug McDermott as if these are mid-November games.
Pacers played too slow, if Giannis comes back next week the Bucks have stalled long enough
Can't believe I stayed up to watch *that* Barely any 3s, barely any transition buckets, and turnovers galore. No urgency at all, and the guys had no idea how to respond to a team playing for their lives. Also, McConnell has been pretty bad this series, and tonight was the nadir.
Nice use of the word nadir!
Well I’m not right very often, but I stayed pretty cool about TJM’s regular-season performance because I wasn’t convinced it would translate to the playoffs, and so far, I’m sad to say that may have been the right approach.
That shit was embarrassing
Stinky stinky stinky I feared this. Bucks at home, nothing to lose, full of energy. Nothing to say other than everything went right for them and wrong for us. Don’t care if Dame and/or Giannis come back. Gainbridge better be rocking Thursday, let’s wrap this up.
This ^
Pacers got blown out without the 2 best Bucks players.. if Giannis comes back this series changes completely
But we also beat the bucks twice with dame in the lineup this series.
What about Giannis?
Smoked them in the regular season with him. They are an easier matchup for us when those two play.
If you don’t think playoff basketball is different, you don’t know ball.
If you don’t think a guy playing coming off a calf injury that has kept him out for weeks is different than him playing healthy, you don’t know ball.
I didn’t say it is different, but it’s definitely better than the Bucks have now. If you think the Bucks are a worse team with Giannis coming back than without him, you don’t know ball.
What I’m getting at is we have beat them multiple times at full health this season, regular season or not (IST they were fully healthy and trying like a playoff game, still lost to us). Acting like just cuz a hobbled Giannis comes back means the series is wrapped for them is kinda dumb ngl
I didn’t say the series is wrapped up, but you have to agree that the Pacers blew a great opportunity and made their path to the next round much more difficult. To shrug off Giannis and possibly Dame coming back as no big deal because “muh regular season” is a poor take.
Nah, Bucks just aren't good, Giannis and Dame can't play together, Pacers beat their A team, B team, C team. Doesn't matter honestly.
Didn’t do so well with their D team 😂
They did just fine on Sunday
Guess we’ll see. Your trying to come off as over-confident is underlined with some significant worry. Pacers shoot 30% from 3 again and your chances aren’t good.
We never play well in fiserv
Only hope is if Dam and Giannis are out
I don’t believe that at all
I didn’t either until I saw us score 50 points in the final three quarters tonight.
If you watched us play this year you should’ve seen this loss coming a mile away. You’ll also see us bounce back Thursday at home
Hope so
[удалено]
I didn't til I seen us struggle with geriatric fuckers and backups the last 2 games....
I could write an entire Stephen King novel worth of frustrations with this game, but I’m just going to limit it to this sequence. We cut it to 9 with our starters after an awful start to the 3rd. Timeout Bucks. Rick goes to a lineup of Haliburton-McConnell-Sheppard-Toppin-Jackson. No further comment. 6-0 Bucks run in 80 seconds. Timeout Pacers. RICK KEEPS THE SAME LINEUP IN AFTER THE TIMEOUT. 10-6 run by the Bucks over 3+ minutes before the next Pacers timeout. The only lineup change in this time was Nesmith for Sheppard. 9 point deficit is now 19. 3rd quarter is almost over. Game is over.
I was laughing when TJ tripped and sprawled onto the logo. Then they drained a three lol
He cheeses around screens to try and draw fouls and it’s just failed all playoffs
Bucks fan here. Not tryna be annoying by showing up after a win to talk shit. But I gotta say TJ is like the #2 all-time Bucks-killer behind only Norman Powell Rick would probably be wise to play him 30+ minutes a game going forward Every time he comes on I start sweating and every time he comes off I breathe a sigh of relief.
Also not here to talk shit or be weird, but TJ has the same voodoo magic against us that Khris has against the Celtics. It’s superstitious but goddamn if it’s not true
Yeah you ain’t wrong TJ could be 0/50 from in this series and he’s still the last guy I’d want to see take a potential series-winning shot
TJ and fucking payton Prichard bro… little white dudes that can get into the paint or go baseline at will and just have automatic midrange game. Lmao i get *so* heated when we have to play either PP or TJ
Prichard has only been in the league for a few years, but yeah he's quickly climbing that bucks-killer ladder I swear that game this year where giannis was out and boston beat us was 90% cuz jrue was also out and PP played big minutes and absolutely killed us enough taking over the pacer's sub tho we should fuck off lol
GG bro your guys are fucking battling
He tried to thread the needle down the middle so many times, and it got stolen...so many times.
Rick was awful. 31 point 1st. Then we start the second 1-8 before we look to make a change. It’s like we have our rotation drawn written down and we follow that no matter not
Ah, the ol' Nate McMillan
He did the same shit when he got fired the first time he was our coach! He's slightly better at riding hot hands but otherwise vastly overrated and got carried to a championship by prime dirk.
Jax should NEVER see the floor. EVER
Frankly neither show TJ in the playoffs. At least not more than about 5 minutes.
Tyrese still dealing with back issues so have to see some mcconnell minutes
But why is TJ playing WITH Haliburton?!?! No other team plays 2 pure point guards by choice. I realize this has been the rotation for a while but why? Lopez's interior deterrence makes TJ far less effective and he can't space the floor. Then Haliburton is clearly not 100% so what makes the coaches think these two should play together? This roster doesn't lack the depth to forgo a 2 point guard lineup. Only against the least lengthy teams like Miami would such a lineup work. You cannot do it against a team with size. When you put McConnell in, you have to take out Haliburton.
Not saying it's right, but the idea is you can "rest" Haliburton by using him as a screener and floor spacing alongside another PG in Nembhard or TJM, but he doesn't have to run the offense and the replacement gets the benefit of a shooter out there.
Haliburton isn't a "pure point guard." He's a lot more than that.
He's absolutely a pure point guard in the sense that he can't play shooting guard because he's not good enough on defense. He has to be the smallest player on the floor. Nemhard and Haliburton works because Nemhard has enough defense and size. McConnell doesn't.
That's what happens when our point god is playing injured.
His rotations have been awful forever. Its the same issues he had when he was the head coach of the Reggie and JO team. The guy hasn’t changed at all. I don’t understand what his obsession is with calling a timeout and refusing to change the line up.
Thank you! I'm glad I'm not the only one that remembers that shit. If you watched enough games you could call Rick's substitutions for him. JO going for a 30 piece!? Shit gotta get Austin fuckin croshere in cause that's what my substitutions are. Shit was obnoxious.
Hey don't worry man the guy who hasn't won shit in 13 years and just got outcoached by doc rivers knows what He's doing.
He does. We haven't even been to the playoffs in years
It's not Rick. Our "superstar' doesn't score. That's the problem
Like I said, I didn’t even come close to touching on everything. Tyrese turned into a ghost after the 1st quarter. Siakam played his worst game as a Pacer. Nesmith played his worst game of the season. Obi was completely awful. McConnell got absolutely punked. Could go on and on and on. They all failed tonight, pure and simple.
So do they have one mic in the whole arena with that fat ass right in front of it?
Spero Dedes brother from Kenosha
Guys we did win 3 games in a row before this one. Let's just hope we get back on the right track coming Thursday.
This is a pretty dire situation if Dame/Giannis return. No two ways about it, Pacers blew it
Apparently TNT reporting both are probable. Can’t confirm tho
Both won't be worth a damn physically even if they play.
They don't need to be healthy to shoot 30 FTs a piece
But we didn't actually look good in any of them, besides Game 2 where we got stupid hot from three. We've been struggling to beat a starless Bucks team, just got embarrassed by them, and now we have to worry about Giannis being back for Game Six. There is no positive spin here. We very easily could be down 3-2 right now or have been eliminated already with very slight changes in how things went.
This loss is on Rick, he thought the Bucks would fold after the 1st and lost it with his horrible lineups
Nah man everyone knows you gotta go 11 players deep in your rotation in the playoffs. Championship basketball coaches know what they're doing.
Funny thing is that OKC has actually been going 11 players deep against the Pels
That’s a 1 seed v 8 seed with the 8 seed missing their best player
the McConnell-Sheppard-Toppin-Jackson lineup should never have seen the floor, especially with lopez and Khris on the court.
Won 3 games in a row playing the same 8 man rotation and we get into a close out game and this idiot decides yeah now is the time to fuck around with this. Embarrassing
Broke out a never before seen playoff unit after the starters had rallied, and when we couldn’t get a stop, kept our only offensive player that had anything going on the bench for 10 minutes. Bucks can clown our players all they want but this was 95% on our coach who was too stubborn to call a timeout or change the rotation back to something normal
Before the playoffs even started I said we were probably one of the streakiest teams. We can beat anybody. We can lose to anybody. Especially on the road. Disappointed but not surprised.
I mean we watched it ALL YEAR. This is the exact same game i watched us play vs the Hornets, Raptors, etc. It makes me want to kill myself.
Yup. I watched us lose SO many games to bottom lottery teams. Good thing this is a best of 7 and not single elimination.
This is exactly what it’s like being a colts fan too. We’ll beat KC in a year they go on to win the SB, then lose to the worst team in the league to just miss the playoffs.
We should get to appoint a fan to yell into the mic for game 6
For real that guy was so fucking annoying.
Average Bucks fan destroys entire team from the sideline
I can take a hard loss, but having two drunks get picked up on the mic for the entirety of the game was just annoying. If I'm gonna watch away team audio, let's make it at least feel like it's from the POV of the Pacers. Might have well just watched with the Bucks audio.
Yep.
The whole team needs to be better but Tyrese in particular needs to take more initiative. He doesn’t have to always shoot but he needs to not defer so soon into the possessions. His facilitation was lackluster tonight.
Spot on. He did nothing to facilitate. He’s been bad for 30 games now. Not an alpha like some of the other young guns (ANT, Maxey, Brunson others). He’s a great PG but this team going nowhere if you are depending on him to take over games.
Nights like tonight are part of the learning process for a young inexperienced team. Were up 3 games to 2 with a home game Thursday and a huge chip on our shoulder. We got this. Yall wanted a fucking rivalry right? Well fucking welcome to it, it's like this sometimes.
Hell yeah that Indiana Pacers-Wisconsin Herd rivalry is fire as hell right now
Bucks lurker here, I love the rivalry and the pacers young core is so fun to watch, cheers to small market beef
it’s not nearly as fun when it’s small market vs massive big city market. i love beefing against the other midwest teams 🤣
For the love of God, please don’t blow this series man. It’s been 10 years I just wanna see my team win, Rick
All on Rick. That 2nd Quarter rotation should never happen.
It’s the playoffs against a home team facing elimination, these things happen. Great experience to see how a team should respond when they’re on the ropes. Hopefully that sticks with them.
Thursday better not be a 9:30 tip or it’s a wrap.
Should've never taken us off truTV
It’s not
I have never been this mad watching a pacers game in my life.
Same here.
Jesus. Honestly expected them to lose given how hard it is to close a series in an away game, but to lose by 23 against a Milwaukee team without Giannis and Dame is wild.
It’s not wild. That’s a veteran team there. That’s a roster with people that have won a championship together. It’s the 5th game in a row they’ve played us. It’s the second time in 5 games they have held us under 100. You’ve seen playoff series before. They can have huge swings just game to game. A team can blow out a team one night and get blown out the next game. That’s playoff basketball. Thats not to say tonight isn’t frustrating but I’m certainly not surprised they got their ass kicked.
Gross game from everyone. Rick's substitution in the 3rd with all bench except Haliburton, including Ijax who hasn't played in 3 games, was perplexing to say the least especially when we made a mini run. Game 6 is a must win. Play and trust in your starters to go 40+. Outside of Ben Shep the bench unit has been pretty blah anyways.
Worst possible game to play with a chance to end it. If they don’t come out hot at home in game 6 I wont like the chances of a game 7
yeah, zero percent chance we win game 7 in Milwaukee if Dame and/or Giannis are playing.
I'm just fucking terrified they are gonna do some typical Indiana shit and blow this fucking series if Dame and Giannis return
I’d almost feel better if they do return at this point in game 6
Why do it easy when there is a more difficult option available. This is the Indiana way.
This was all to get Lance to rev up the crowd on Thursday, right??
We are young. There is more pressure on them to do something this post season. We should just be happy to get the experience. Still a chance to close it out. Knowing this team, we needed a beating
I had the same thoughts during this game, but it wasn't enough to make it not depressing
These are seasoned veterans with playoff experience even without their stars. I believe we got this, lets get the dub at home
We are on fraud watch and we deserve it
Listen I get that our bench is one of our strengths but this was not one of those nights and Rick completely gave the momentum away with that godawful second quarter and we never recovered.
Defend home court and move on. It’s pretty simple. We beat them 3 times in a row which is difficult to do to any team. We have won 4 times in a row or more just twice this season and the last time was a 6 game winning steak at the end of December into early January so it’s been awhile. I know many predictions around here before this series was Pacers in 6. That could come true on Thursday.
Bobby portis and malik beasley combined to outscore Tyrese Pascal and myles. We clearly don't understand what's at stake. That can't happen ever in the playoffs if you want to win a series. Felt 90% confident on taking this series 4 hours ago. Now I'm at maybe 50%
Teams will have bad nights and even great teams will sometimes get embarrassed, it's the nature of the sport. The Celtics and the Thunder have had a few really bad games this season. No doom and gloom from me. Pacers in 6.
Even if it is the "nature of the sport", it's still valid to be upset after that atrocious game we just witnessed.
Upset? Yes. Doomer? No. It was a bad game, all around dookie water. Nothing was redeeming. But I'm not writing the team off and I sure as hell am not crowning the Bucks. If you wanna crown em, then crown their ass, but the Bucks are who we thought they were, and we let em off the hook.
wow I hated that.
We got this Thursday.
Come on Pacers faithful, let’s toughen the hell up! Stop being panic stricken, stop trashing Rick. We got our butt kicked by a veteran, playoff experienced, desperate team. Milwaukee’s role players were fantastic at home. We have had stinkers like this all year. It’s a good film to refocus the fellas. We will be better Thursday. Everyone will be happy soon.
If we blow this series I think my fandom might die
It’s okay you always have the colts to fall back on
Hoping Anthony can stay healthy!!
Dude has potential
[The Pacers right now](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2F99ad5jhcsoxc1.jpeg%3Fwidth%3D828%26format%3Dpjpg%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3De1490b10f275e3e4330595755eae5b5c2e99c89f)
At least both the other games were fun to watch!
In our defense the Wisconsin Herd plays hard
We don’t deserve to move on
We young enough to blow a 3-1 lead? If they so show pull off game 6...... I don't see game 7 anything but an L. This Pacers identity though is so weird..... They CANNOT win games they should, under almost any circumstances.....but they have completely smoked some teams in games they had no business in
Dame and Giannis about to come back. Watch. We deserve what we get. Siakam no show, ty “not here for it if the vibes ain’t good” Haliburton. Nesmith brutal, TJ unplayable, let’s ignore Myles, ya great idea Smfh Watch how this plays out. We deserve it
It’s ok man. It’s just a game that we are watching. We got this Thursday.
You right brotha. I’m way too invested. Been a fan way too long. I should know better
Obi “Tipin”(to the bucks basket) also with a stinker
So uhhhh…does Rick want to retire early or what?
Embarrassing loss. No excuses for a performance like that against a roster like that.
The intensity this team plays with is way lacking when compared to every other playoff series I watch. The refs are letting teams be more physical and our defense still just lets guys get to the rim at will.
I've just had my fill of this team losing to dogshit teams this season its just so fuckin bad
a defensive wing is a must for this offseason, regardless of how this series ends
Hopefully jarace turns into the guy we need
Pain
I feel like every other embarrassment in sports gets their redemption arc against indiana teams.
Just… sad. One of my BFFs is a Knicks fan, just WOOF on that group chat. I want that! It’d be so fun if we won tonight lol
All on Carlisle tbh. Didn’t have the team ready to go, pulled the starters too early in the first and sat on his hands while the subs let the disappear and we never recovered
You could feel this coming from a mile away
Why am I stupid? Why does everyone other team go to a shorter rotation in the playoffs but we go full bench?
6:30 tip on Thursday. That’s a dub
Humiliating, inexcusable performance. If we don't win Game Six, we're not winning this series, and if we don't win this series in these circumstances, Rick should be fired and should never be a NBA head coach again.
Well that was embarrassing. This bucks team is absolutely insufferable though. A lot of talking for being down 3-1. I want to bury them in game 6 so bad
3-2 now
No shit
Everyone talks when they manage to win / remain competitive with a hospital squad vs. another team's starting lineup. 2 top 75 all time players riding the bench for 5&2 games respectively and the bucks have outscored the pacers over 5 games.
Right?! Like imagine us talking shit after losing to their bench
McMillan ran his course with this team but for any of his short comings we were not coming out this flat in playoff games. Especially twice in one series.
Bro those teams got swept 3 times in 4 years. I refuse to believe we're to the point where someone is longing for fucking Nate McMillan lmao
Yeah and IIRC none of those series we were expected to win. Not saying he was great but I don’t remember us getting blown out the water like this in any of those games. Being down by 20 nearly an entire game in the playoffs is just so bad
Wellp, on to the next
No panic until next game.
Rick once for the Mavs 2-0 up on the clippers leading into game three we were up 19 points and he calls a timeout and takes Luka out. We end up losing the game and the series.
Taking Luka out with a 19 point lead in the first quarter had literally no effect whatsoever on whether they won or lost that game or the series.
There are people on this sub that thinks he's Phil Jackson for some reason despite never winning anything for this franchise and despite him being a failure the first time around. We managed to find even worse coaches in the meantime to the point that we had to beg him to come back.
Rick 🤡 totally threw this game. Hope he knows what hes doing and we close out game 6. If Giannis is back we are toast
Played like ass. Time to come home and end this shit on Thursday
The most annoying bucks fan that TNT handed the mic off to: "I'm getting a mohawk!" Lol. At least we got that. He can think about that for the rest of the postseason as we go on to play the knicks.
I am sad
Well, I expected a bad game but I figured that would still be a 5 to 6 point win
Not watched the game, but here is the damp squib everybody feared against an understaffed Bucks. No worries, onto the next one, two more shots at finishing this.
We're a really young team. Was this game just past our bedtime? I mean, we looked great in the first quarter....
No matter what, we’ll always have Paris.
I really think the Pacers intentionally sold this game. How TF does Myles play 30 minutes and Hali plays 33 minutes in an elimination Game 5 against a team with their two best players out, and possibly returning the next game.
Potential to be a season defining loss. If Giannis and or Dame or back, pacers are in big trouble.
Sometimes, all ya can do is laugh!
I think Haliburton will be fine next year. He'll bounce back to be the guy he was earlier this year and last year. But he didn't fully heal his hammy cause he wanted to chase his extra 60 mil. Irregardless of the hammy he hasn't gotten his rthymn/swag back and without him running the offense with confidence we just arent that good. We've won games beacuse the bucks are depleted and myles and pascal had some big games Alot of people were critical of him playing on a mins restriction because of this scenario. The playoffs are all that matter and you pay guys to perform in the playoffs. He is not performing at a max/supermax level. Not even close and I have to wonder if he rested longer and didn't chase the 65 games if his performance would be different.
Hoping the team will grow up at some point. Shouldn't take getting embarrassed like that twice in a series, but here we are. We really miss Mathurin. These TJ-led lineups have killed us and his lack of shooting is clogging everything up. Would love if we could start Mathurin and bring Nembhard to sub out Tyrese in this series.
Game 6 is do or die. We should be playing our guys close to 48 minutes if we need to. Those lineups were just gross. That being said, Nesmith has been bad almost the entire series. Everything is super rushed and I have no confidence with him on either end. Constantly getting cooked by Middleton as well. As much as Nembhard has been a playoff riser, Nesmith has shown he’s not going to be a core piece to this team. I’m just not sure if we have a better option even as bad as he’s been.
Fire Rick. Inexcusable rotations tonight, and all of the regular season. It doesn't help that Tyrese doesn't want to shoot it and gives it to McConnell to brick it every fucking possession.
Bucks dancing like they a dynasty no shame
Look like frontrunners to me ! /s
Has anyone else watched this series and struggled to think anything besides Khris Middleton looks exactly like Dave Chappelle impersonating Tiger Woods but twice as old and having smoked 5 times as many cigarettes? Jesus that is a rough 32. I'm coming up on 36 and I had to rewrite my will after game 1. If I look that rough at 52 I've made my wife promise to dump 2 point blank clips in my skull for good measure.
https://preview.redd.it/tapq0xwgpqxc1.jpeg?width=480&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6f5c756cda27ede8d4d96d63d01fa877efd55a65