Tonight finally features a game between two Eastern Conference opponents that doesn’t make us want to take a nap before the late Western Conference games. That’s because the two titans of the Eastern Conference, Miami and Indiana, face off at 7 p.m. EST NBA TV as voted in for Fan Night. On the eve of that rumble, Pacers wing Paul George tacitly challenged LeBron James when he said Kevin Durant was his hardest matchup.
After the Thunder handed the Pacers just their third loss of the year on Sunday night, George informed reporters that Durant was his toughest guard. From Scott Agness at Pacers.com (by way of Ball Don’t Lie):
Following the Pacers’ 118-94 loss in Oklahoma City, George told reporters that Durant is his toughest cover in the league.
“It is,” he said. “It is a tougher matchup. I watch their games, I watch a lot of NBA games. And offensively, KD is most of the times he’s scoring in bunches off of iso plays and one-on-one plays.
“And when they play against us, he’s moving a lot. He’s the screener, he’s getting back-screened and he’s coming off pin-downs and it’s a little different when I’m guarding him and it makes it a tougher cover.”
Agness then goes through all of Durant’s 14 buckets against the Pacers (he was 14-for-23 on the night) to imply KD wasn’t able to score in the few one-on-one battles when George was the solitary defender and Durantula was without screen help. Durant wasn’t as productive when faced against George exclusively despite scoring 36 points in a resounding Thunder victory.
But the quote, as Kelly Dwyer notes at BDL, is important in that it elevates Durant above the NBA’s regular season MVP the last two years, LeBron James. George is an elite perimeter defender, and Pacers coach Frank Vogel even feels he’s the best in the league. PG matched up against Carmelo Anthony and James in last year’s Eastern Conference playoffs, and usually handles the top wing player on the opposing side, even as he inherits a more substantial portion of Indiana’s offense. So if there’s anybody that can make claims about who is the toughest player to guard in the league, it’s George, which is why it’s indirectly aimed at James.
For LeBron’s part, he’s downplaying Miami’s visit to Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis tonight. He told Ira Winderman of the Sun-Sentinel, “It’s not a statement game, I’m not going to fall into that,” before continuing to lessen the impact of tonight’s game.
“I mean obviously everyone’s going to make it into a marquee game,” James said. “I don’t really get too much involved in regular-season matchups, especially early, in December.
“They’re a very good team. They’re a great team right now, the way they’re playing basketball.”
It is still December and there are still three more meanings between the presumptive favorites to meet in this year’s Eastern Conference Finals, just like they did during last year’s 7-game affair. But to say the game isn’t important is to forget all the bad blood that exists between Miami and Indiana after meeting in the playoffs in consecutive postseason appearances. The Pacers suffered another tough loss to the Heat in 2012, too. They had Miami down 2-1, only to lose three-straight, so Miami rightfully plays a prominent role in their mind, which is what makes tonight’s game so intriguing even if it’s still so early in the season.
Keep reading to find out how the two teams are viewing this matchup in two different ways…
The Indianapolis Star‘s Bob Kravitz is taking the long view, too, echoing James’ comments and lumping this game in with all the rest:
There will be the obvious and understandable temptation to turn Tuesday night’s Pacers-Heat clash of the titans into some kind of “statement game” for whoever wins the game.
If the Pacers win, it will be a statement that they are very much for real, that they’re not going anywhere, that they still have Miami’s number (to the extent anybody has Miami’s number), that they are the new bullies on the block.
If the Heat win, it will be a statement that they are still the big dogs in the East and throughout the NBA, that they are sick and tired of hearing how great these Pacers are and want to restore the natural order of the basketball universe.
That would certainly make for the better column, because we’re all about “grand statements” in my biz.
But no.
While this is certainly more than one game out of 82, while this is the most intriguing game in the moribund Eastern Conference, there are no statements to be made here.
While Kravitz might mirror Miami’s resistance to labeling this a “statement game,” the Pacers take each game seriously, but doubly so when it comes at the expense of their biggest challengers for supremacy in the East, and an all-important No. 1 seed heading into this year’s playoffs. Remember, Indiana was forced to go on the road in Game 7 during last year’s ECF’s after winning Game 6 in Indiana. If Game 7 had been in Indiana, things might have gone a lot differently. The Pacers understand this better than most.
George told the Sun-Sentinel‘s Winderman:
“We were a couple of plays [from] we could have been in the Finals. And they do forget that. They feel like we were just dominated in that playoff series. We were one game away, maybe a couple of possessions away of being in the Finals.”
“We’re going to do everything in our power to get home-court advantage over them during the season,” Pacers forward David West told Brian Windhorst of ESPN’s Heat Index. “It’s something we have focused on from the very beginning.”
Pacers coach Frank Vogel agreed, saying, “We’re trying for the No. 1 seed. We’re really going for it.”
And while LeBron already appeared to downgrade tonight’s matchup, he did note the importance of home-court advantage in the playoffs.
“At the end of the day, you would love home court throughout the playoffs,” James told Windhorst. “We’ve been on both sides of that fence and we’ve handled it both ways. It’s always challenging to go on the road to start a series.”
Paul George, the same guy who very publicly claimed Kevin Durant was the toughest player in the league to guard even after James has captured the last two regular season MVP’s and consecutive NBA Finals MVPs (one coming against Durant’s Thunder, no less), doesn’t think much separates the top two teams in the East, which is why tonight’s game is important. It’ll be the first step in determining which of the two teams will sit at the top of the Eastern Conference in April.
“I don’t think that team is that much better than us. I don’t know if we’re that much better than that team,” George told the Indianapolis Star. “I think we’re quite even.”
Yeah, but at least one team is going to get a head start on that all important home court with a win tonight.
What do you think?
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