Five meaningful developments in the Pacers' 3-2 five-game road trip

CHICAGO -- The Pacers followed one of their finest offensive performances of the season with one of their worst on Wednesday night, ending their five-game road trip with a 125-99 loss to the Bulls.

It was an unfortunately predictable backslide for the Pacers who have struggled all season to turn impressive wins into sustained momentum. They have had just one winning streak longer than three games all season -- a six-game stretch from Dec. 26 through Jan. 3 -- and they haven't even strung three together since the Feb. 14-Feb. 25 stretch that jumped over the All-Star break.

It was the first time all season the Pacers, with the highest-scoring offense in the NBA, failed to score 100 points but the offense didn't bother Pacers coach Rick Carlisle nearly as much as the overall inconsistency of effort and defensive mistakes against a Bulls team battling to hold on to a spot in the play-in round of the postseason.

"They were playing hard," Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. "I don't care about 100 points. Ok, so, that doesn't matter. What matters is our spirit and just learning how you have to compete against these teams that are desperate. Give Chicago a lot of credit. They were very determined. (Alex) Caruso is a major force in the game. They have a lot of other guys that play hard and they have a bunch of other guys who play hard. We allowed them to get going."

Still, the Pacers' inconsistency is something that has been well-established and they have particularly struggled in scenarios where fatigue has been a factor, such as the second night of back-to-backs and the end of long road trips. This counted as the latter as the Pacers were wrapping up a week-long stretch away from Indianapolis that included three games in California prior to Wednesday return to the midwest, and the Pacers not surprisingly looked like a team still not-quite refreshed after a trip to the West Coast.

That being said, the late-season road trip clearly qualifies as a success for a young Pacers that still needs to make the step of getting back to the playoffs before it pushes towards being a title contender. Seasons can go sideways for young teams when they fly to opposite coasts, and the Pacers came out of it 3-2 with two impressive wins over the Warriors and Clippers in California. While they were on the road they won Game No. 41 to assure they will finish no worse than .500 this year and clinched a top-10 finish in the Eastern Conference, which means at the very least a berth in the play-in round.

The Pacers also worked out a few issues that were necessary for them to take care of during the stretch run. Here are five things that mattered during the Pacers' five-game road trip.

They got and held the No. 6 spot in the East

When the Pacers lost to Cleveland on March 18, they fell to 38-31 and for the moment tumbled into the No. 7 spot in the Eastern Conference. That of course would mean a spot in the play-in round, something the Pacers would like to avoid after having not reached a seven-game playoff series since the COVID bubble playoffs in 2020.

At the time, the Pacers held just a 1/2 game lead on Miami for seventh place and the ninth-place Bulls were even starting to nip at their heels, sitting just four games back of Indiana. Though finishing in the top eight doesn't guarantee a playoff spot like it used to, it's still important to hold on to because teams in the top eight have to win just one of two play-in games to move to the best-of-seven round. Teams seeded 9th and 10th have to take two win-or-go-home games. If the Pacers had a disastrous road trip, the Bulls could have jumped them and put Indiana's season in real peril.

The Pacers started the trip with a win at Detroit, however, and that combined with a loss by Philadelphia put them back in sixth by the end of March 20. They haven't fallen out of sixth place since and they still hold a one-game lead on seventh-place Miami and a 1 1/2 game lead on eighth-place Philadelphia with the road trip now over. Neither of those teams play Thursday so they'll still hold that lead when they get back into action on Friday against the Lakers. They're also up 5 1/2 games on the Bulls now with just eight games remaining on their schedule and nine left on Chicago's. The Bulls won the season series 3-1 so they have the tiebreaker if the teams were to finish with the same record, but Indiana's cushion is a helpful one.

And for as fair as it is to criticize the Pacers for their inconsistency, they've also never allowed a losing streak to fester very long and never allowed the bottom to fall out of their season. They haven't had anything longer than a four-game losing streak all season -- their post Las Vegas hangover from Dec. 13-18 -- and they haven't allowed a losing streak to reach three games since Feb. 2 when All-Star point guard Tyrese Haliburton was still on a minutes restriction for his strained hamstring. They are 7-7 in the month of March while Miami is 6-7 and Philadelphia is 6-9, so of their immediate competitors, they've been the steadiest team so far down the stretch.

Tyrese Haliburton -- for the most part -- found his shot

Carlisle would very much like the shooting and even the scoring of his All-Star point guard -- who has signed a max contract extension set to take effect in July -- to be less of a point of discussion.

"I'm not worried about Ty's scoring," Carlisle said after Monday's win over the Clippers. "You know? People gotta quit talking about that. The guy's a great point guard. Maybe the best point guard in the world. So the important thing is that he's doing the things that are necessary to help our team win. ... We've got to get off the whole narrative that any of this is about Ty scoring. It's about our team."

On one hand, that's certainly fair because Haliburton's game has a lot more to it than 3-point shots. He still leads the NBA in assists with 11.0 per game and even though he's struggled since the All-Star break, his 9.6 assists per game are the third-highest figure in the league in that stretch. He's still averaging 16.5 points per game since the break, he's made 59.8% of his 2-point field goals, and he actually leads the Pacers with 1.5 steals per game since the break.

But on the other hand, Haliburton attempts 7.7 3-point shots per game, which is 3.0 more than anyone else currently on the roster. The trade of Buddy Hield, who was averaging 6.9 attempts per game and the season-ending shoulder injury suffered by Bennedict Mathurin, who averaged 5.6 per game in seven appearances after the All-Star break, left the Pacers without their other two most willing high-volume 3-point shooters. Three-point shooting matters to the Pacers' ability to play uptempo, so it's a significant problem when a team's most frequent 3-point shooter makes just 20 of his first 94 attempts after the All-Star break.

And therefore it's a significant development that during this five-game road trip, Haliburton seemed to have at least broken out of the will-one-ever-go-in stage of his slump. He made just 3 of 11 3-pointers on Wednesday, but that followed a 6 of 9 performance against the Clippers on Monday in which he made five straight to open the game. He was 16 of 37 from 3-point range over the five-game trip, a 43.2% clip that is twice as good as the 21.3% post-All-Star break mark he started the road trip with.

The Pacers took another step with Pascal Siakam

Pascal Siakam's only criticism of his new teammates to this point is that he's not sure they realize what he's truly capable of, and just how frequently he can be counted on to make something happen if they throw him the ball within a few feet of the rim and give him a chance to work.

"It's not just about scoring," Siakam said after the Pacers' loss to the Lakers on Sunday. "I can play-make. I can do a lot of things. I just want us to continue in the natural flow of the game but also understand what I'm able to do out there."

In the first four games of the road trip at least, the Pacers seemed to maximize Siakam's contributions at a level beyond what they had all season. He scored 25 points against Detroit, 25 more against Golden State, 36 against the Lakers and 31 against the Clippers. The Bulls walled off the paint and made his life hard as he made just 2 of 7 field goals, but he still got to the line enough to post 14 points to go with eight rebounds and five assists.

During the five-game road trip, Siakam was by far the team's leading scorer with 26.2 points per game as well as is leading rebounder with 9.6 per game. His 3.8 assists per game put him behind only Haliburton and backup point guard T.J. McConnell. He shot 58.0% from the field on a team-high 17.6 field goal attempts per game and he shot 45.5% from 3-point range. Free throw shooting continues to be an issue for him as he made a shaky 64.9% of his attempts there, but he had twice as many attempts as any other Pacers player with 7.4 per game and twice as many makes. There are ways that the Pacers might be able to better maximize Siakam's talents, but at this point he's fully integrated into what they're doing, and getting him the ball has become an obvious priority.

Myles Turner and T.J. McConnell played like leaders

Myles Turner and T.J. McConnell are the only Pacers currently on the roster who were also a part of the last Indiana team to reach the playoffs. Their birthdays, just one day apart, both occurred during the road trip and Turner turned 28 the day before McConnell turned 32. After the Pacers' win over the Warriors on Friday night when Turner broke Jermaine O'Neal's franchise career blocks record, it was McConnell who presented him with a plate of cookies and a bottle of whiskey in celebration.

So it's fitting that with the season hitting its home stretch, the Pacers veteran leaders have taken their level of play up a notch and been among their most reliable players. Turner has been more aggressive in looking for opportunities to block shots and knock down 3-pointers and McConnell has relentlessly pushed the pace, attacked the paint, and looked for ways to turn defense into offense.

Over the five-game trip, Turner averaged 15.2 points per game, the third highest figure after Siakam and Haliburton, making 46.4% of his field goals 12 of 26 3-pointers (46.2%). He blocked 11 shots (2.2 per game) and also grabbed 6.2 rebounds per game.

McConnell, meanwhile, has scored in double figures in eight straight games coming off the bench. His 13.9 points per game in that period put him fourth on the team behind Siakam, Haliburton and Turner even though he's averaging just 19.8 minutes per game in that period. For the road trip alone, he averaged 13.6 points and 5.8 assists per game while shooting 53.4% per game. Most of those points have come on tenacious drives to the lane for either layups or short pull-ups, but he also hit 3 of 7 3-point attempts. He's made sure the Pacers aren't much less difficult to deal with when Haliburton comes off the floor and has worked well with him when they've played together making the Pacers even tougher to guard.

Together, Turner and McConnell operated like players their younger teammates can lean on in the season's final two-plus weeks and then what comes after.

Doug McDermott and Jarace Walker earned trust

In a sense, 32-year-old wing Doug McDermott and 20-year-old forward Jarace Walker are now in a battle to be the Pacers' second-unit small forward, which is essentially the last spot in Indiana's 10-man rotation. However, Carlisle can structure his substitution patterns in such a way that he can shrink the rotation to nine men or even fewer if he doesn't feel the need to play 10, and most playoff rotations tend to be shorter anyway. He can also play both men if he believes the situation calls for it, and their skill sets are different enough that they each fit best in different scenarios.

So more than competing against each other, both McDermott and Walker are trying to prove they can do what they do well enough to bring something important to the Pacers in their stretch run. During this road trip, both McDermott and Walker had moments when they did.

McDermott, a career 41% 3-point shooter, was acquired in the three-way trade for Hield on Feb. 8, but made just 7 of 24 field goals and 4 of 20 3-pointers in his first six games, scoring just 19 points before a calf strain kept him out the next 10 games. He returned at the start of this trip against Detroit, however, scoring nine points that night and then 14 in the loss to the Lakers. In five games on the trip, he scored 26 points, hitting 10 of 20 field goals and 6 of 16 3-pointers. Those aren't huge numbers, but with Hield gone and Mathurin out, the Pacers don't have an established second-unit wing shooter and the Pacers could use someone to create some needed gravity for that group.

Walker appeared in just three of the five games, but his performance against the Clippers was critical. He posted eight points, seven assists and four rebounds, but most importantly he played steady defense against the Clippers' Paul George, Kawhi Leonard and others. That's what he was drafted to bring the Pacers in the first place, but he did have to break some bad habits of gambling and reaching for steals that aren't there and he appears to have done that.

Neither Walker nor McDermott will go to many games the rest of the way assured of their playing time, but the Pacers return to Indiana with a better sense that they can be relied on when called upon.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Five things that mattered in the Pacers' five-game road trip