Bulls vs. Pacers game preview, a.k.a. the 'competition'

2nd round play-in matchup preview? that's so sad...

Remember when Arturas Karnisovas, in the midst of his delusional happy-talk babbling after the deadline, said the Bulls were ‘bunched up’ in the standings and were only 3 games out of sixth?

It wasn’t even true at the time, they were 4.5 games behind the Indiana Pacers. Now with ten games remaining they are 6.5 games behind them.

Technically these two teams could match up in the play-in tournament still. Should they be considered in the same ‘bunch’?

Eh, probably still not, but the Pacers have also somewhat stumbled since the trade deadline, where they did make trades (!this can happen?!). In January they made the biggest acquisition at the deadline in getting Pascal Siakam, but then later did a sneaky-cheap move to dump Buddy Hield for some reason.

Since that roster shakeup, and with leader Tyrese Haliburton in and out of the lineup, the Pacers offense isn’t quite as well-oiled as they were earlier in the season. After Hield departed they’ve dropped to 20th in the league in threes made per game.

So tonight’s result shouldn’t entirely be an effect of randomness from the Donovan-Vuc defensive strategy of “too far, let ‘em take it”.

But it still should mean something. A couple weeks ago the Pacers went 14/45 (31%) from three and only lost to the Bulls because of clutch magic.

Both squads are pretty entrenched in their seeds but not absolutely, so we should see a concerted effort from both. The Bulls are only 1.5 games (plus tiebreaker) from the Hawks achieving best-case scenario of embarrassing management by not giving ownership a home postseason game. Atlanta hosts the very-tanky Blazers tonight.