by John Hollinger
ATLANTA – Indiana Pacers 157, Atlanta Hawks 152. I’m still trying to process what I just saw.
The Hawks and Pacers went back and forth over the final five minutes, one bucket after another, with neither team remotely capable of stopping the other. The two coaches switched to increasingly desperate tactics — double-teaming in the backcourt, pulling their centers off the court — to zero effect.
In a four-minute span of 17 possessions starting at the five-minute mark of the fourth quarter, the Hawks and Pacers scored on 15 of them, a crescendo made more emphatic by the fact that this was all live-ball action with no timeouts. Even in a wild offensive game from start to finish, this was out of control, a 200-point pace for both sides. The party finally ended when Atlanta had two empty trips in the final minute, first on a leg-kick offensive foul on Dejounte Murray, and then — after forcing a turnover! — when Murray inexplicably went to the rim while down 3 and failed to score.
Video game stats abounded. Atlanta scored 76 points in the first 20 minutes — that’s a 183-point pace, folks — and had 86 by halftime … and lost. Indiana scored 84 in the second half; Tyrese Haliburton made seven 3-pointers in the third quarter. Indiana scored 29 points on just 14 trips in a six-minute span of that quarter, an impossible rate of 2.07 points per possession. The Pacers missed four shots the entire quarter while scoring 46 points.
For the game, both teams shot over 60 percent from the field. The Hawks put up a 60-48-82 split line and lost. While the highlights of the game were Haliburton and Trae Young exchanging 3-point shots from outer space, the percentages were downright hilarious inside the arc: The league average is 53 percent on 2-point field goals, but Indiana shot 71 percent and Atlanta shot 64 percent. Overall, the two teams combined for 309 points on just 200 possessions, for an incomprehensible 154.5 offensive efficiency rating.
Needless to say, this was the crown jewel of the league’s In-Season Tournament so far, creating a November game between two off-radar teams that actually mattered — Indiana clinched its group with the win — and served to highlight the sheer insanity of what was happening on the court.
The Pacers weren’t the only ones to clinch a spot in the quarterfinals on Tuesday. The Los Angeles Lakers won their group with a convincing win over Utah and also clinched home court for the quarterfinals. Los Angeles will almost certainly be the top seed based on its unmatchable plus-74 point differential and seem fairly likely to draw Phoenix as its opponent; the Suns are likely to be the wild card on point differential if they can beat Memphis by a decent margin on Friday.
Also, the Cleveland Cavaliers’ overtime win over the Philadelphia 76ers leaves the Cavs firmly in the wild card hunt despite Indiana having already won its group. Cleveland needs to win its finale next week against Atlanta and do some work on padding its plus-6 point differential along the way.
Originally posted on theathletic.com