Pacers at Wizards
Whatever it was the Indiana Pacers lost in the second half of the regular season and through the first eight games of the playoffs, they appear to have found it again. The Washington Wizards are now back on their heels and will try to avoid falling into a 3-1 hole in the Eastern Conference semifinals when they host the Pacers in Game 4 on Sunday. Roy Hibbert came out of his funk in Game 2 and is leading a suffocating defense for Indiana.
The Wizards controlled the pace in Game 1 and looked like they would cruise to a series win before Hibbert, who had been scoreless in three of the previous four playoff games, went for a season-high 28 points to guide the Pacers to a win in Game 2. The All-Star center kept that form in Game 3 and put his stamp on the game on the defensive end as Washington was held to 32.9 percent shooting in an 85-63 loss. The Wizards scored a regular season-low 66 points in a loss to Indiana on Jan. 10 and set the franchise low for points in the Game 3 loss.
TV: 8 p.m. ET, TNT
ABOUT THE PACERS: Indiana made its mark in the first half of the regular season as a defensive juggernaut, running up the best record in the league on the strength of that defense before slumping badly over the final two months. The Pacers wanted to get back to that rugged style in the postseason and finally accomplished that over the last two games. “This was probably the ugliest game of the postseason thus far,” Paul George told reporters of Game 3. “This is our style of basketball. Every now and then this team is fortunate to get hot offensively, but what we do is play defense.” George carried the team offensively with 23 points in Game 3 while Hibbert added 14 - his second-highest mark of the playoffs.
ABOUT THE WIZARDS: Washington’s front line of Nene and Marcin Gortat was a big advantage in Game 1 with Hibbert going scoreless but the two combined for only 12 points on 5-of-21 shooting in Game 3. “(Game 3) was the worst offensive night we’ve had,” Nene told reporters. “Looked like we tried to miss shots.” The backcourt struggled to make up the difference as Bradley Beal posted his lowest scoring total of the series and John Wall committed seven of the team’s 18 turnovers. “This really was a clunker for us,” Wizards coach Randy Wittman said. “It was our first one (of the playoffs). We’ve got to let it go. We can play better.”
BUZZER BEATERS
1. The Wizards have not won a home playoff game in the second round or later since the 1979 NBA Finals.
2. Indiana G Lance Stephenson is averaging 11 points on 28.9 percent shooting in the series.
3. Washington went 10-of-16 from 3-point range in Game 1 but is just 9-of-37 from beyond the arc in the last two contests.