Oshae then: Pacers go down 0-2 to Celtics (Patreon)

By: Caitlin Cooper I @C2_Cooper

Other than Pascal Siakam transforming into Atlas and strong-arming his team to within arm's reach of the Celtics, with Indiana trailing 56-51 headed into halftime with him scoring the final 10 points of the second quarter, the Pacers largely played tall rather than big. In fact, during the 18 minutes in which Boston played without a traditional center on the floor, Indiana got outscored by 15.3 points per 100 possessions -- unable to take advantage of obvious mismatches at one of the floor while also too often surrendering mismatches out of confused coverages at the other. Then, to add injury to insult, they didn't just come up short against Boston's smaller lineups, of which many included old friend Oshae Brissett, they also finished the game short-handed, as Tyrese Haliburton exited the game during the third quarter with hamstring soreness and never returned.

As such, although Haliburton's status for Game 3 is unknown and obviously looms large over the remainder of this series, Samson Folk is here to discuss everything that changed in Game 2, as well as what needs to change for the Pacers to exploit the gap they have in size while also narrowing the potentially widening talent gap.

Here are the relevant timestamps:

0:00 - Introductions

0:59 - Nembhard and Siakam as bright spots

2:48 - Changes in coverage from the Celtics against Indiana's point guards

9:35 - What needs to change on offense if Haliburton is or isn't available

13:42 - Playing tall instead of big

18:48 - Applying full court pressure with Turner, Siakam, and Toppin

21:35 - What might change about the defense if Haliburton isn't available

27:16 - Mixed or non-communication on screens for Jaylen Brown

38:11 - Discourse about the discourse surrounding Pacers-Celtics

40:30 - Playing bigger while staying big or trying to out-small the Celtics

42:50 - Guarding Oshae Brissett without actually guarding Oshae Brissett

47:02 - Brief aside on offensive rebounding & tagging up

52:58 - Thank you and Goodbye!