Last night the Indiana Pacers dropped their 6th straight game to a Milwaukee club that seems to be generally in the same boat the Pacers are. The final score was 121-103. Now to most who aren't really following this team it seems as though this year's form of the Pacers, currently with a 7-16 record, are just a horrible team with no hope of the playoffs this year, but this is just not the case.


I personally have watched almost every game this season, including 4 of 10 home games in person (5 of 11 after this week), and I must tell you this just is not the case.

The Pacers are a really young team who has been trying to figure things out here in the early part of the season, most of the team has acknowledged the "feeling out" process is over and now they're trying to just win games. Here in Indy we have a fantastic team, we just have made some mistakes down the stretch that have been costing us games.

Let's start with the most recent game against Boston for starters:

We sent the game to overtime, and down the stretch in regulation we just couldn't hold on to our six point lead. In OT we just seemed worn out from the effort exerted.

Or let's look at the matchup against Detroit:

We rallied back to come within a T.J. Ford jumper of OT. If that shot would have fallen we seemed like we would have held out own in overtime and won.

Finally arriving at last night:

The Pacers seemed dead in the first half, and in the third and fourth quarters rallied back from 20+ down to take the lead. The final score is deceiving because after holding the lead the Bucks went on a 19-0 run to end the game and win by 18. In those last minutes nothing seemed like it could fall for Indiana, while the Bucks hit everything.

Through all of this though, you can see the Pacers are still playing every game as hard as they can. The real problem throughout all of this has been turnovers. If the Pacers can minimize turnovers they can win most of these games.

As for now though, the Pacers just need to get on the right track. Our schedule evens out now as we face a lot of sub-.500 teams and if we can win 5 of the next 9 it'll stop the bleeding and once again we can focus on staying in the hunt for a playoff spot.