One team will breathe a sigh of relief when its losing streak comes to an end as the Orlando Magic host the Indiana Pacers on Monday.<\/p>\n
Orlando (38-32) clings to the eighth position in the Eastern Conference despite suffering four straight defeats, the last a 105-104 heartbreaker on Saturday at home to the Los Angeles Lakers.<\/p>\n
On the same night, the Pacers (15-56) lost their 16th in a row \u2014 extending the franchise-record streak \u2014 when they went down to the San Antonio Spurs 134-119.<\/p>\n
Both teams started their respective games poorly. The Magic fell behind 37-23 while Indiana was outscored 42-29 in its opening quarter.<\/p>\n
The Pacers did well to keep pace with the heavily favored Spurs in the subsequent three periods, but it was always going to be difficult playing catchup in Texas.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s been a pattern of this,\u201d Indiana coach Rick Carlisle said. \u201cWe\u2019ve had a lot of rough second quarters. Tonight the first quarter was obviously the one. The rest of the game was even \u2014 within two points. We just needed to have a lot more resistance in that first quarter and we just didn\u2019t do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Andrew Nembhard scored 25 points while Jarace Walker added 21, which included 5-of-7 shooting from 3-point range.<\/p>\n
Recently acquired center Ivica Zubac missed the game with a fractured rib and will miss the rest of the season.<\/p>\n
Indiana shot well as a team, converting better than 50% from the floor (51.8%) and above 40% from deep (45.7%) for the fourth straight outing.<\/p>\n
Carlisle acknowledged those impressive shooting figures, while expressing concerns in other areas where the Pacers struggled.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose are respectable numbers,\u201d he said. \u201cCompared to earlier in the year, they\u2019re better for sure. Getting outrebounded 49-26 is a big problem. Second-chance points 20-7 is a big problem. We\u2019ve got to address that and get better there.\u201d<\/p>\n
After starting poorly, Orlando looked strong for long stretches against Los Angeles before ultimately coming undone by Luke Kennard\u2019s 3-pointer with 0.6 seconds remaining.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got to be better in the beginning part of the game,\u201d Magic coach Jamahl Mosley said. \u201cYou can\u2019t have lulls. It came down to those last three plays essentially. But prior to that, we gave up offensive rebounds \u2026 small things within the game caused it down the stretch.\u201d<\/p>\n
Orlando\u2019s slump has come at the wrong time, but Mosley says his team needs to come to grips with it and find a way back out of it.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou move past it \u2014 there\u2019s no other way,\u201d he said. \u201cYou face your reality that you didn\u2019t get this game done. We gave ourselves the opportunity to get it done. We did not do that, so now you\u2019ve got to go and find a way (in) the game on Monday.\u201d<\/p>\n
Paolo Banchero, who averages team-highs of 22.8 points and 8.5 boards, scored 16 against Los Angeles to lead seven players in double figures.<\/p>\n
Each of the five players who came off Orlando\u2019s bench, led by Jevon Carter and his 13 points, had positive plus\/minuses on a night when all five starters were in the red.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s always our job on the bench \u2014 to come on and bring energy to the game,\u201d Carter said. \u201cWhether we\u2019re winning or losing, no matter how the game\u2019s going, that\u2019s always our job. Tonight we were able to do that, just unfortunately we weren\u2019t able to come up with the win.\u201d<\/p>\n
Orlando has won its past four against Indiana, including both meetings this season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One team will breathe a sigh of relief when its losing streak comes to an end as the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":673342,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3774],"tags":[7,113,126,3866,6,114],"class_list":{"0":"post-673341","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-indiana-pacers","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-indiana","10":"tag-indiana-pacers","11":"tag-indianapacers","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-pacers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116275100108558010","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673341","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=673341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673341\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/673342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=673341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=673341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=673341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}