It was always supposed to be a re-tooling season for the Indiana Pacers after losing Tyrese Haliburton in Game 7 of the NBA Finals to a torn Achilles tendon, but it’s hard to deny just how lifeless Indiana — one of just three winless teams remaining in basketball — looks so far.
The Pacers will have a chance to pick up their first win of the season against another struggling side in the 1-3 Dallas Mavericks, whose point Cooper Flagg experiment hasn’t paid dividends so far. The game will begin at 8:30 p.m. at American Airlines Center in Dallas.
The Mavericks are 6.5-point favorites at DraftKings Sportsbook (-250 on the Moneyline), and the point total is set to 228.5. The Pacers are +205 on the Moneyline. Below, I’ll break down this clash and offer a prediction.
Indiana Pacers at Dallas Mavericks preview, prediction
For Indiana, the injury bug has extended far beyond Haliburton: in addition to the franchise point guard, backup point guard T.J. McConnell is out, as are combo guard Andrew Nembhard, small forward Bennedict Mathurin, and forward Obi Toppin, all of whom played critical roles in the Pacers’ surprising run to the NBA Finals last season. Even promising young guard Johnny Furphy is injured, leaving RayJ Dennis, Ben Sheppard, and perhaps even the newly-signed Mac McClung to play significant minutes in Indiana’s back-court tonight. The Pacers have been mostly competitive, taking the Oklahoma City Thunder to double overtime and losing by four to the Anthony Edwards-less Minnesota Timberwolves.
Dallas has struggled offensively, scoring fewer than 95 points twice, and while those performances came against a pair of good defenses in the Oklahoma City Thunder and in Victor Wembanyama, a loss to the Washington Wizards is pretty inexcusable. Flagg is off to a slow start to his NBA career, posting just 38-27-100 shooting splits so far, and Klay Thompson hasn’t shot the ball well, either. The Mavericks have had some positives — both of the pieces they received in the blockbuster Luka Dončić deal last February, Anthony Davis and Max Christie, have played well — but they’ve yet to put it all together.
Pacers at Mavericks pick, best bet
If Indiana wants to have a chance, it’ll need a lot from Pascal Siakam, and so far, the Cameroonian has delivered. Expectedly, he’s posted a career-high 30.5% usage rate, which ranks 18th league-wide, and he’s averaged 26.0 points, 10.3 rebounds, 6.0 assists, and 1.3 steals per game on 42.1% three-point shooting, each of which would be a career high. He needs more help, though. With him on the court, the Pacers have been outscored by 7.9 points per 100 possessions, a figure that drops to negative-20.1 without him. He finished as merely a plus-three in the loss to the Timberwolves despite finishing with 33 points, 10 rebounds, eight assists, and three steals. Overall, Indiana has the second-worst offensive rating in the league.
The only team with a worse offensive rating than the Pacers is Dallas, which has managed to score just 103.8 points per 100 possessions. In Flagg’s 126 minutes, the Mavericks have averaged just 99.6 points per 100 possessions, and by offensive box plus/minus, the 18-year-old has been the league’s 18th-worst qualified offensive player this season. He’s shown some flashes, including a 22-point, four-rebound, four-assist effort in a win over the Toronto Raptors, but Dallas’ reliance on him to be a leader in his first few NBA games hasn’t paid off. Instead, D’Angelo Russell, who’s averaging 5.5 assists in 20.8 minutes per game off the bench and has a plus-14.9 on-court net rating despite posting ghastly 29-18-65 shooting splits so far, should be the lead ball-handler moving forward.
The only above-average aspect about either of these teams so far is the Mavericks’ 13th-ranked defense, but even that unit should struggle in the likely absence of Dereck Lively II, without whom Dallas’ defense is 15.6 points per 100 possessions worse. The Mavericks did concede just 101 points to the Thunder in the game Lively missed, but they benefited from some uncharacteristically poor three-point shooting on Oklahoma City’s part. So far, they’ve allowed the fifth-highest shooting percentage in the restricted area and allowed the third-most points in the paint, even with Lively playing three games, though neither of those aspects is a particular strength for Indiana, which has no center.
Defensively, while Jay Huff and Thomas Bryant have been okay in the restricted area, the Pacers have allowed the sixth-most makes from the non-restricted paint, where Dallas has been generally effective. Indiana has also benefited tremendously from opponents shooting a league-worst 16.0% on corner triples, a completely unsustainable number. The Pacers have also allowed the eighth-most wide open threes per game, which is a concerning trend overall, even if the Mavericks have struggled to generate such attempts and are only knocking them down at a 32.1% clip. Dallas has been the league’s second-best team at preventing such shot attempts.
Overall, I don’t feel very confident in either of these teams, but Indiana had enough problems already before losing Mathurin and Toppin, and it has benefited defensively from as much shooting luck as any team in the league. The Mavericks should be able to pick up their second win of the season in an ugly affair.
