The Indiana Pacers are one of the best feel-good stories in the entire NBA.
After losing franchise centerpiece and two-time All-Star Victor Oladipo to a gruesome leg injury in late January, many wrote off the Pacers as a team that would likely still make the playoffs in a watered-down Eastern Conference but only as a lower seed.
However, Indiana has turned that assumption on its head, as the team has gone 11-8 in its 19 games since Dipo’s injury and is still currently in line for the third seed in the East with a record of 42-23, though only a half-game separates the Pacers from the fourth-seeded Philadelphia 76ers.
Indiana is currently the second-best team in the NBA in terms of defensive efficiency, and the team just completed a four-game regular season sweep of the Chicago Bulls. After that game, Pacers coach Nate McMillan was quoted in a story by the Associated Press on the subject of the team’s rotation in recent weeks in the absence of Oladipo.
“We will have to continue to see who has the hot hand, the combination we want to go with down the stretch,” coach Nate McMillan said. “We've got to use everybody here since we've got this new starting lineup.”
The Pacers certainly boast impressive depth, as the team’s new starting lineup of Thaddeus Young, Myles Turner, Bojan Bogdanovic, Wesley Matthews and Darren Collison will definitely be a different look from the unit helmed by Dipo.
Beyond that starting unit, which has been buoyed by an excellent season from Bogdanovic (who scored 27 points and drilled 4 threes against the Bulls), the Pacers’ bench unit is quite deep as well, with the team getting contributions from Cory Joseph, Kyle O’Quinn and Doug McDermott.
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