It’s a tale of contrasting form in recent times when the struggling Indiana Pacers host the in-form, yet likely to struggle at any point Cleveland Cavaliers. Both teams need to record the win badly in this one, so join The Roar for live scores of the match from 11am (AEDT).
The Pacers have significantly dropped down the Eastern Conference leaderboard in recent times. After a fairly strong start to the season, they have now gone on a run losing six of their last eight matches.
The Pacers have struggled to match it with some of the big gun teams, and it has really affected their confidence levels against some of the lower ranked teams that they really should be beating. Injuries haven’t helped their cause either.
The Cavaliers meanwhile, have only lost one of five games since new coach Tyronn Lue took over the reigns. That has been a massive positive for the club, who really needed to come out and make a statement that sacking the coach was the right call.
While the first three victories would have been expected for the Cavaliers, they then came up with a very strong victory at home over the San Antonio Spurs by 14 points. While the Spurs were without Tim Duncan, it was a dominant performance from the Cavaliers with LeBron James, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love leading the way.
The teams have already met once this season, and with two further meetings after this, it makes it an important one to set momentum for the rest of the series. That first meeting was played relatively early on in the season, in early November. At the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, the Cavaliers were able to squeeze out a four-point victory.
Realistically, the only reason the Cavaliers were able to come home down the stretch and take the victory was due to the enormous output of LeBron James. He would score 29 points, along with six rebounds and four assists to drag his team over the line. This would be enough to overcome the Paul George and Monta Ellis combination of the Pacers who added 57 points between them out of 97.
Prediction
If the Pacers had been more convincing in their form of recent times then you might have rated them a real chance in this game against the best team of the east. Even so, if their big guns – Paul George or Monta Ellis are again able to stand up then the Pacers are right in the game, particularly if they can outweigh the output of James. It might come down to who’s bench unit can stand up.
Cavaliers by 3.
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