How similar are the 2019 Indiana Pacers to the 2018 Boston Celtics?
Losing your best player to injury and winning anyway? We know how you feel Pacers fans. But how similar are this year’s Pacers to last season’s Boston Celtics?
The Boston Celtics may be looking into a mirror Friday night as they take on their likely first-round playoff opponent in the Indiana Pacers. The Pacers were on track for a terrific regular season, sitting comfortably in the top three in the Eastern Conference. Then Victor Oladipo went down with a terrible knee injury, ending his season and most likely the Pacers’ season as well.
But Indiana has been stubborn. They haven’t lit the league on fire, but they’ve stayed in contention for home court advantage in the first round of the postseason. The Celtics were below Indiana in the standings when Oladipo went down, and three months later they still haven’t passed them. The Celtics are only a game behind the Pacers at this point, so a win would Friday would put them in fourth because they have the tiebreaker.
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But home court advantage has not been the primary issue with the Celtics this season. Believe me, Celtics fans would love their main concern to be who has home court or who doesn’t. Their problems have centered around consistency and playing together for a full game. Not going iso-crazy when it seems like they have a team beat (cough-cough Hornets loss).
The Pacers represent the opposite play style the Celtics have displayed this season, and a remarkably similar feel to last year’s Celtics squad. As we all remember, Gordon Hayward was lost for the year after his catastrophic ankle injury, but the Celtics managed to maintain the best record in the East with Kyrie Irving, Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum and Al Horford leading the way. Then Irving was shut down for the season in March for knee surgery, removing all hope of an NBA Finals run.
Or so we thought.
The Celtics made a miraculous run to Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals, led by Brown, Tatum, Horford and Terry Rozier. They fell to LeBron James on their home floor, but the way they refused to go away due to injuries was extremely fun to root for. While it isn’t completely the same, the Pacers resemble that this year.
Next. Celtics vs Pacers matchup history. dark
Boston has had more issues this season than in all of Brad Stevens’ prior teams combined, but maybe getting an up-close look at the Pacers, an up-close look at what they used to be, could remind them of how much adversity they faced and how they pushed through by playing together.