The Indiana Pacers entered Bankers Life Fieldhouse on Tuesday night already without Malcolm Brogdon and Domantas Sabonis available due to injury.
And they left with a 113-97 loss to the Chicago Bulls and a sprained Myles Turner ankle.
Goga Bitadze also took a couple blows down low battling for position against Chicago. In this shortened season, the Pacers are just 22-27, along with a 8-15 home record.
But maybe even worse, they can’t stay healthy.
“For Myles it’s the same ankle he had problems with before,” Head Coach Nate Bjorkgren said after the final horn. “It’s sprained pretty good but he actually had an x-ray and it came back negative.”
If there’s one thing Indiana cannot afford right now it’s absolutely another week-to-week injury.
T.J. Warren has already been shut down for the year, and the Blue and Gold are just throwing stuff at the wall right now with lineup combos hoping they stick.
It also didn’t help that the Bulls roster has significantly changed since the last time Indiana saw them. Nikola Vucevic torched Bjorkgren’s club with a 32 point and 17 rebound double-double.
There was no answer for the former Orlando big man after Turner departed.
“Vucevic is a tough cover,” Caris LeVert mentioned. “We were throwing different coverages at him and Zach LaVine. What killed us was on the glass though so everything was tough in the half court.”
Caris wasn’t kidding.
At the end of the first half, the Bulls had eight offensive rebounds to Indiana’s zero.
LeVert was asked later if Chicago was tough to contain because the club was missing key players.
“This is the NBA,” he responded.
There’s no rest for the weary now though as the Chicago loss was the first game of a back-to-back.
The Minnesota Timberwolves come to town on Wednesday night with a similar problem to Indiana; Inconsistency.
