The intensity and pace at which the Pacers play makes them a tough out in the postseason. Indiana dusted off a weary, banged-up Cavaliers team in five games and now awaits the winner of the Boston-New York series in the Pacers\u2019 second straight trip to the Eastern Conference Finals.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hard to play at our pace over a seven-game series,\u201d guard Tyrese Haliburton<\/a> told Dustin Dopirak of the Indianapolis Star<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to play at our pace in a one-game series. I think we\u2019re doing a great job of playing our way, controlling what we can. I really feel like that\u2019s important. Coach has been stressing that the last few years. It\u2019s not just about one game, it\u2019s how can you wear on teams for 48 minutes every game every day. I feel like we did that with our physicality, we did that with our pace, many different ways.\u201d<\/p>\n Here\u2019s more from the Central Division:<\/p>\n In-season acquisition Thomas Bryant<\/a> played an underrated role in Game 5 on Tuesday, Dopirak<\/a> notes. He made several key third-quarter plays that swung the momentum in the Pacers\u2019 favor. He finished with nine points on 4-of-6 shooting and three rebounds. \u201cThomas Bryant in the second half gave us some of the greatest minutes you can ask of a backup center,\u201d coach Rick Carlisle said. \u201cHe ran. He rebounded. The three in the right corner was enormous during a run where we were starting to get into their legs a little big. His enthusiasm, it just permeates our team.\u201d
\nKeith Langlois of Pistons.com<\/a> tackles a number of topics in his latest mailbag, ranking the Pistons\u2019 priorities this offseason, in order, as player development, retention of their own free agents and a strategic addition via trade or free agency.
\nCenter Jalen Duren<\/a> is eligible for a rookie scale extension this offseason and his growth this season stamps him as an integral part of the franchise\u2019s future, Langlois<\/a> writes. The Pistons\u2019 lead executive, Trajan Langdon, indicated as much during his postseason press conference. \u201cJ.D. took a huge step,\u201d Langdon said. \u201cAfter the first 25 games of the season, he was a different player the last 50, 60 games of the season. Got off to a slow start and we\u2019re going to push him this summer, as well, and I think he\u2019s willing to take that up to another level.\u201d
\nGiannis Antetokounmpo<\/a> hasn\u2019t requested a trade, though he\u2019s reportedly open to the prospect of joining another team. The Athletic\u2019s trio of Sam Amick, Eric Nehm and David Aldridge<\/a> take a closer view of how this offseason might play out regarding the Bucks\u2019 superstar, noting that the next move \u2014 whether to stay or go \u2014 is up to him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The intensity and pace at which the Pacers play makes them a tough out in the postseason. Indiana…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32658,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3773],"tags":[7,296,188,3860,123,912,6,297,362,6244,278],"class_list":{"0":"post-32657","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-detroit-pistons","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-detroit","10":"tag-detroit-pistons","11":"tag-detroitpistons","12":"tag-giannis-antetokounmpo","13":"tag-jalen-duren","14":"tag-nba","15":"tag-pistons","16":"tag-thomas-bryant","17":"tag-trajan-langdon","18":"tag-tyrese-haliburton"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114507036012689576","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32657\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}