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It’s always gold when Mark Boyle, longtime play-by-play voice of the Indiana Pacers, and Dan Dakich get together on the radio.
They did that on Thursday to talk about the Pacers first half of the season, Victor Oladipo’s return, and what the potential of this year’s team is.
The Pacers beat the shorthanded Bucks on Wednesday night before the break to snap their six-game losing streak. Did they have to have that one?
“It was definitely needed for sure,” Boyle told Dan.
“Otherwise you’re sitting there for nine days on a seven game losing streak, and that’s I suppose mental more than anything else. You’ve still lost six of seven which isn’t that much different. It’s nice to go into the break off of a win especially against a good team.”
One of the reasons people have pointed to about why the Pacers went on a slump before the break was surprisingly because of the return of their best player, Victor Oladipo.
He made his debut after missing a year on January 29 against the Bulls, but after that the Pacers started their losing streak.
Not to say it was all on him because of course it wasn’t, but what does Boyle think of Oladipo so far?
“I still think it’s too soon to say, but some general observations – nothing we didn’t expect, at least in my opinion. I didn’t expect the six game losing streak, but in three of those games they easily could have gone the other way. I mention that not to be fan boy, but to point out that it’s not as though they’re playing horribly. They’re still out of sync a little bit, and we expected some adjustment issues.”
There have been adjustment issues. Ones they’re hoping to be able to fix after the break.
Dan mentioned to Mark about how teams in the NBA make trades at the trade deadline but don’t seem to have these kinds of adjustment issues, so why has it been a problem with Oladipo?
“But rarely a player of this caliber comes in at the trade deadline,” Boyle countered to Dan.
“That’s the difference. And that’s the other thing that’s interesting about it – You know what Milwaukee is, you know what Boston is, you know who Toronto is. Indiana is the only team in those six that you don’t know for sure who they are. They might be a first-round and out, or they might be dangerous.”
Hopefully the pieces of the puzzle start to come together better starting on the 25th so they can be the latter of the two.
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