On this day three years ago: Indiana Pacers play most recent playoff game
Three years ago today, the Indiana Pacers played in their most recent playoff game.
On August 24, 2020, the Pacers and the Miami Heat dueled for Game 4 in the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs. Indiana, who finished with the fourth seed in the conference that year, was without All-Star big man Domantas Sabonis. He was injured and dealing with plantar fasciitis in his left foot.
That made things more difficult for the blue and gold, who went 45-28 that campaign. It was also a more difficult series due to the setting — the NBA was playing all of its games in the bubble down in Bay Lake, Florida.
For the Pacers, it was a tough best-of-seven. The Heat were hot, and they went on to reach the NBA Finals. Every game, the blue and gold could compete for roughly 40 minutes, but the other eight were dominated by Miami. The closest final score in the series was a nine-point margin.
Victor Oladipo and Malcolm Brogdon, two of the Pacers premier talents that season, had solid individual outings throughout the series. Brogdon had 34 points in Game 3 while Oladipo had 27 in Game 4, for example. But the two were inconsistent, and neither shot better than 40% from the field during the four-game stretch.
In Game 1, it was the fourth quarter that doomed the Pacers. In Game 2, it was the second frame. The short stretches that held the team back in each battle were never at the same moment, but they had the same effect. They led to losses.
Game 4 was the outlier. It was a slow, but consistent, showing of superior skill by Miami. They outscored the Pacers by just a few points in each of the final three quarters, and that was enough to win 99-87 and secure the sweep.
"They played four great games and won in four different ways," Pacers guard Victor Oladipo said after the game.
Three years later to the day, that is still Indiana's most recent playoff game. In 2021, they lost in the play-in tournament, and they missed the postseason entirely in 2022 and 2023. The Pacers are now hoping to end that streak.
Indiana was swept in their two most recent postseason series, the 2020 one against Miami and in 2019 against Boston. They have not won a playoff game since April 27, 2018.
"I need to be in there, I need to be in the playoffs. That's the goal," Pacers All-Star guard Tyrese Haliburton said earlier in the summer.
Had Sabonis — and Jeremy Lamb, who tore his ACL in February of 2020 — been healthy and available, perhaps the Pacers could have avoided a sweep against Miami in the bubble. If Oladipo didn't rupture his quad in 2019, maybe the blue and gold would have taken a game or two off of the Celtics. Instead, the Pacers have nine-straight playoff losses, and their most recent postseason game three years ago today was a rough loss.
Armed with Haliburton, and the additions of Bruce Brown and Obi Toppin, perhaps this is the season that Indiana could return to postseason action.
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