We Went There for Opening Night: Indiana Pacers trounce the visiting Grizzlies

I hit the road for Pacers opening night. Here’s what I saw.

The NBA season is here! All but three teams have played their first game, and the regular season is off and running. I hit the road for Indianapolis to check out Opening Night for the Indiana Pacers and the Memphis Grizzlies. It was a packed house in Bankers Life Fieldhouse with Pacers blue and gold dotting the city in every direction, and the Pacers did not disappoint.

Led by the twin towers of Domantas Sabonis and Myles Turner, Indiana dominated the glass and leapt out to a big second quarter lead on the strength of its bench. The Pacers led by 17 at the half and got every player into the game in a comfortable blowout win, with a final score of 111 to 83. The season’s only two days old, but Indiana sits atop the NBA standings with an unblemished record and a league-best +28 point differential.

So what went wrong for the Grizzlies, and what went right for Indiana? I was there for Opening Night and I’ve got you covered.

1. Domantas Sabonis 1, Myles Turner 0

If you remember last summer, the Turner vs. Sabonis debate was a main topic of discussion as Indiana’s season wrapped. Which big is better? Can Sabonis and Turner play together? And which is more central moving forward?

Indiana answered that question resoundingly when they signed Myles Turner to a massive rookie extension last week. The deal was four years for $80 million, though it’s more like $72 million including unlikely incentives. The Pacers lose about $8 million in cap flexibility next summer, though they still have quite a bit since about half this team are on expiring deals.

Turner’s not an $18-million-a-year player right now, but the Pacers are paying for future production. I wonder what the big rush was. The risk of waiting until next summer was Turner breaking out and looking like a max player. Turner will be a restricted free agent, so Indiana could match any offer and keep a now-max-worthy player on its hands. Is any team going to tie up all its cap space for a deal Indiana will surely match? The Clint Capela route seems more likely, with no real suitors as Indiana waits things out and gets a bargain deal, maybe much like this one. Worst case scenario, Turner regresses and looks more like a $10-million rotation big man than the definite starter he’s now paid as. Unfortunately, this is the world small-market teams live in. Indiana paid a few million bucks a season as a small-market tax to keep their guy happy and around long-term.

So how did Turner and Sabonis fare on opening night?

Turner looked worth every penny early. He looked like the breakout star that was promised in the first quarter, racking up six points and five rebounds in the first eight minutes before leaving the game with two fouls. Turner attacked the boards and was especially good on defense. All that added strength stymied Marc Gasol on the glass and in defense. Turner moved well and showed good hands, tallying four blocks. He also flashed a nice dribble drive attack. And then… he didn’t play the rest of the half.

That was when Sabonis checked in and took over. For all the talk about Turner’s increased strength, it’s Sabonis who looks the part with ripped, added muscle tone. Sabonis was one rebound shy of a double-double at the half, finishing with 14 points and 15 boards and a game high +26. Sabonis is so smooth in the post. He’s light on his feet, always playing on his toes with a quick first and second jump. He’s got nice hands and a good spin move, and you get occasional glimpses of what Dad must have been like back in the day. (By the way, best jersey of the night: a throwback C.C.C.P. Arvydas Sabonis jersey I saw on my way out of the arena. Nice!)

Sabonis took Round 1 over Turner with his performance, the star of Opening Night. The duo posted remarkably similar numbers last year. Sabonis was better on the boards and as a passer, with Turner the better defender. That was the case again Opening Night.

Sabonis and Turner played a handful of minutes together, mostly with the game out of hand. That pairing should work against most teams, with a versatile enough skill set and a solid defensive duo. So is Sabonis or Turner the big man for Indiana’s future?

The fans made their choice clear. Pacers fans love Sabonis. He’s clearly the second most-liked Pacer behind Victor Oladipo. Indiana fans were all over the city with Pacer blue and gold everywhere you looked. Indiana seems intent on building around Turner and even had him address the fans before the game, a curious choice over Oladipo. The fans have already made their choice.

While we’re here, I’d like to take this opportunity to rank my 10 favorite Pacers all-time:

1. Reggie Miller — duh
2. Jalen Rose — he’s also ranked #81
3. Stephen Jackson — I think of Stak as a Pacer first, then Warrior, then Spur, though #TheJump is moving quickly up the list
4. David West — class, fundamentals, heart
5. Jermaine O’Neal — good ol’ baby face
6. Lance Stephenson — insert blowing-in-ear GIF
7. Mark Jackson — lotta former Pacers in the media, huh? I, uh… don’t enjoy Reggie and MJax on my TV nowadays, but how could you not enjoy him sticking his huge butt into guys in the post in the 90s?
8. Jamaal Tinsley — mostly for that Marcus Fizer Iowa State team
9. Al Harrington — how was his head so wrinkly?!
10. Rik Smits — just for the Dunkin’ Dutchman nickname

So that’s the list, and it’s definitely right. Or not. My buddy Mike is a lifelong Pacers fan and his list is probably a little better:

1. Reggie
2. Smits
3. Austin Croshere
4. Danny Granger
5. PG

2. Indiana is a deep, talented, well-coached team… and that made one such team Wednesday night

Indiana’s depth is its biggest strength, and that was on full display against a Grizzlies roster whose bench is sorely lacking. The Pacers blew the game open with a 28–10 run between the first and second quarters, most of that featuring the two bench units, and the game was never close again.

New Pacer Tyreke Evans leads the bench unit, and Sabonis came off the bench too. They’re buoyed by Cory Joseph and Doug McDermott (who Pacers fans are just dying to fall in love with). All four finished +20 or better as they ran the Grizzlies bench off the court.

Evans will take some getting used to. He plays a little too much iso ball for this Indiana team, demanding to run the offense instead of Joseph. That led to a few unnecessary contested jumpers and stalled offense at times. Tyreke is better slashing to the rim but he doesn’t always have a plan and sometimes lays it off to teammates who weren’t expecting it. That will need some work, and he’s going to have to endear himself to fans.

Still, the Grizzlies missed Evans, who led their bench unit last year. Kyle Anderson struggled mightily in his Memphis debut, and Jaren Jackson Jr. did not look ready for prime time (more on him below). For some reason, Memphis played Dillon Brooks only six minutes, instead opting for another Brooks in MarShon. MarShon played 22 minutes along with 30 from Shelvin Mack, and the duo shot 3-for-17. Where was Dillon? Why did Omri Casspi and Ivan Rabb get no minutes in a blowout?

The Pacers looked like a deep, well-coached team that knows what they’re doing. The Grizzlies didn’t. Indiana swarmed Memphis on defense, rotating well and covering for one other. Despite the new pieces, this looked like a team that played together all of last season. The Grizzlies looked lost.

3. A terrible, horrible, no good, very bad debut for Memphis

Memphis finished the night without any significant injuries. That’s pretty much the list of positives from Opening Night. Everything else was a disaster. The Grizzlies looked horrible. They lost every quarter and lost the game by 28, and honestly, that scoreline flatters them.

Memphis looked slow on defense and abysmal on the boards. They were out-rebounded by more than double, a 57-to-28 margin, and they couldn’t get back to defend in transition. Marc Gasol is no longer the defender he once was, and JaMychal Green and Jaren Jackson were out of position all game.

Gasol was invisible the first half. He went scoreless with three rebounds and was not involved. In the second quarter, he slipped and immediately signaled for a sub, and he looked old and slow. The injury was not serious, and Gasol was better in the third quarter during the Grizzlies’ only good stretch. The start of the quarter was filled with touch fouls as Tony Brothers made his presence felt. That put Memphis in the bonus with 7:58 left in the quarter and slowed the game down, and it meant easy points at the line and let Memphis get back and set up their half-court defense. Memphis defended much better when they scored. That just didn’t happen much.

Gasol had 13 and 3 in the third quarter… but finished with 13 and 6 for the game. He shot 2-for-11 from the field. Mike Conley was 3-for-11. In fact, no one on the Grizzlies could hit a shot. The team shot under 30% for the evening. They made 15-of-55 two-pointers for an abysmal 27%. No one on Memphis made more than four field goals, and only two Grizzlies shot better than 33%. Woof.

All those missed shots came from a boring, stagnant offense. The first-half offense featured JaMychal Green; the second half featured Garrett Temple. The bench unit gave its shots to MarShon Brooks. Is that really the plan? There wasn’t much off-ball movement, and the ball didn’t move well at all. Indiana checked in 12th-man Kyle O’Quinn with under four minutes left in garbage team; he would have led the Grizzlies in assists, with three.

The Grizzlies were horrible. All summer, we talked about how Memphis was unlucky to be in the West, how a healthy version of this team would be a steady playoff team in the East — like the Pacers! These two teams looked like they were from different universes. It felt like an early non-conference college game, with the Grizzlies playing the part of a visiting mid-major.

One game doesn’t make or break an NBA season. That’s about the only positive takeaway for night one of the Memphis Grizzlies season.

10 other parting shots…

1. Indiana won the game on the glass. A source told me rebounding was incentivized greatly in practices, with teams losing three game points if they missed a rebound the coaches thought they should’ve had. It looks like that extra attention paid off. Indiana dominated the rebounding battle, 57-to-28. They grabbed 13-of-34 offensive rebounds and scooped up 44-of-51 on defense. That dominance on the boards limited possessions and created second chance points.
2. Indiana had a litany of turnovers, 20 in all. Five different Pacers had at least three turnovers. If it weren’t for so many turnovers, they might have won by 40.
3. The point guards were really unimpressive all around. Darren Collison started in a 28-point win and somehow finished with a -1 differential. Mike Conley played his first game in almost a year and looked like it. He wasn’t super involved and didn’t play aggressive. He got isolated on McDermott a few times and didn’t attack or score. Let’s hope it was just rust. Conley was not an impact player. None of the point guards were, really.
4. Indiana doesn’t really use traditional point guards. Darren Collison and Cory Joseph play “point,” but the first-team offense runs through Oladipo, and the second string runs through Tyreke. That makes sense with Dipo and Reke’s handling, but what’s the point of the PGs then? At least Collison hits threes. If CoJo isn’t going to handle and can’t shoot, shouldn’t Aaron Holiday be out there? It’s an interesting team-building problem.
5. I was excited to see Jaren Jackson Jr., one of my favorite draft prospects. His body looks NBA-ready, but he got bodied up on the glass. Jackson is a great shot blocker but went after every possible block, often leaving himself out of position on defense and on the glass. The Pacers attacked JJJ in motion and Jackson got lost in rotations at times, not knowing whether to attack or sag and often getting left in no man’s land. He gave away a few points on cheap fouls, too. All of that is just as expected for a rookie big man. Jackson will be fine, but it’ll take some time.
6. Bojan Bogdanovic is a really solid scorer and all-around offensive player. He can shoot the rock and scores efficiently within the flow of the offense. He’s just not good on defense, and that wasn’t a problem against the Grizzlies since Indiana could hide him on Parsons all night.
7. Chandler Parsons is alive!!… and he’s a horrible shot. Parsons got the start but he doesn’t look particularly in shape. He kind of looks like if you took Marc Gasol and shrunk him by 15%. That’s not a compliment.
8. The NBA changed its rules this season so players can wear any color shoes they like, and Oladipo made a statement with bright orange shoes. I’m a fan. Plus it’s easier to find guys this way.
9. It’s always a good night when Larry Legend is in the house.
10. Sitting in the fan section? Good idea. Sitting 10 feet away from the drum line? Very, very not recommended.

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