The Chicago Bulls and the Indiana Pacers played a basketball game in Indianapolis last night.
The Chicago Bears and the Indianapolis Colts were not involved, although if you watched it you might not know.
In Indianapolis, the Pacers and Bulls played defense, defense and . . . more defense. If that upsets you, you don’t like NBA basketball at it’s best.
The Pacers, using defense that was suffocating, won the war of attrition over Chicago, 97-80 in a game that honestly was much closer. Indiana pulled away in the fourth quarter through clutch long range shooting by Luis Scola and Lance Stephenson.
The offense, however, is not the story. The NBA Central is now like the old NFC Central (now the NFC North, but I like the old moniker); it’s not a game unless defense rules, tempers are short, and someone or something is stuffed. I’m not speaking of rim-rattling dunks here.
Simply put, these two teams, who’ll meet each three more times this season, are defensively better than anyone else in the league. They plan to win with defense and they execute that plan. The Pacers and Bulls are not Reggie Miller and Michael Jordan; they’re former Colts enforcer Bob Sanders and the Bears’ legendary LB Dick Butkus. The defense is that good, and the bruises are the same caliber.
Chicago’s Joakim Noah and Luol Deng are an inside effective tag team. The Bulls also throw in enforcer Carlos Boozer, the pesky Kirk Heinrich, and a guy named Derrick Rose (good scorer, former MVP, you might have heard of him, though he took last year off with injury) to form an all-NBA defensive starting five. They harass, bounce people to the floor, back screen folks to death, and generally create turmoil in all defensive circumstances. The Bulls are not picked in some circles to make the NBA Finals over the two-time champion Miami Heat, for nothing.
But the Pacers have Paul George and Roy Hibbert, and that may ultimately decide this season-long wrestling match in Indiana’s favor.
Inside, Hibbert is arguably the most complete defensive center in the NBA. Blocks, near blocks, shot alterations, rebounds and general intimidation abounds with the Georgetown grad. He’s just now getting the recognition as one of the great true centers in the league. The Pacers complement him with the solid and quiet David West (17 points and 13 points tonight), the aforementioned Stevenson, and a far better bench this year than last, led by Scola and Donald Sloan. Coach Frank Vogel preaches, lives and screams defense, and the Pacers are leading the NBA in points allowed per game; 83 coming in, and holding the Bulls to 80 will obviously drop that number.
Paul George, however, has simply become a LeBron-like monster on both ends of the court.
George put on a clinic last night. A steal of Derrick Rose in the fourth quarter which left the Chicago star wondering where the ball went; three-point bombs from both sides of the court, including a fall-away dagger from the right corner which put the Pacers up by 13 with about 3 minutes left in the game; and his defensive presence all over the court, a pain in the rear for which the Bulls was forced to account, all were proof of the former Fresno State star’s prominence. The newest Pacer hero only had 17 points, but it was a number that didn’t even remotely contemplate his overall effect on the game. The comparison to the best player in the NBA, King James, is not so far-fetched.
Both Indiana and Chicago are probably going to end up with more than 55 wins, barring injury. Both teams are complete teams, but they’re going to win games in a really ugly manner. 180 miles of I-65 geographically separates the two clubs, and given the skirmish between Heinrich, Boozer and Stevenson tonight (ghost flagrant foul on Boozer for pushing Stevenson, but Heinrich was the instigator, and the refs got the call right on review), they really don’t like each other. Familiarity usually breeds contempt, and that will be the case here. The bruises and gashes will be Bull red and Pacer blue.
Tonight was a precursor of what you’ll see in April, May and maybe June; basketball that’s not pretty, awfully gritty and the winner is the last man standing. These teams will probably see each other in the Eastern Conference playoffs in a cage match to see who plays Miami in the conference finals. You wouldn’t want to face either of them in a dark alley. The season will be fun, and not Showtime in the Laker (or Clipper) sense.
In Indianapolis, they start the Pacer introductions with the saying “In 49 other states it’s just basketball, but . . . THIS IS INDIANA”. That usually speaks for itself – but tonight it was slightly misleading.
It was football in shorts. And somewhere in this world or above, Tony Dungy and George Halas are smiling.
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