The Washington Wizards are playing the Indiana Pacers Wednesday night at Capital One Arena.
The Wizards are coming off a quality loss to the San Antonio Spurs on French Heritage Night, where Bilal Coulibaly, Alex Sarr, and Victor Wembanyama were honored. That marks three straight losses for the Wizards, who are the only team in the NBA south of 10 wins so far this season.
The Pacers will be playing the second night of a back-to-back after facing the New York Knicks on national TV in Indianapolis Tuesday night. This preview is being written on Tuesday afternoon, so the stats and information are accurate as of the Pacers’ last game, a loss to the Los Angeles Lakers on Saturday.
I’ve got you covered with all the storylines you need ahead of Wizards-Pacers!
Righting the ship
The Indiana Pacers currently sit in fourth place in the Eastern Conference with a 29-22 record. That record fails to quantify how good they’ve been over the past month-plus, though. Since a 10-15 start to the season, the Pacers have gone 19-7 and re-emerged as a team at least resembling the one that was in the Eastern Conference Finals a year ago.
Pascal Siakam was selected to his third career All-Star game this season, his first as a member of the Pacers. Siakam leads the team in scoring at 20.7 points per game and also leads the team in three-point percentage at 41.1%, a massive career high.
The main factor holding the Pacers back has been Tyrese Haliburton’s play. Haliburton is averaging his worst numbers since arriving to Indiana via trade at the 2022 deadline. He’s down to 17.8 points and 8.5 assists per game on 36.6% from deep. That’s a far-cry from his league-leading 10.9 assists per game last season and his historic three-point contest worthy shooting from downtown.
Wizards rookie status updates
In the Wizards’ last game against the Spurs, both Kyshawn George and Bub Carrington played about season-average games, while Sarr sat with an ankle injury. I like all three’s chances to make the All-Rookie team at the end of the season, especially with guys like Kyle Kuzma out of Washington now and there being more shots to go around.
Though he’s not a rookie since he played in 10 games toward the end of last season, Tristan Vukcevic really shone through against the Spurs. He nearly met his career high of 19 points by scoring 18, 14 of which came in the first half. He traded buckets with Wembanyama to put an end to a 22-0 Spurs run in the first quarter and had his overall best game as a pro.
Conclusions
The Pacers have lost two of their last three games and are still soul-searching to find that team that ran all the way to the Eastern Conference Finals last season. I’ve said it many times in the past and I will say it again, there is no better team to play than the Wizards when in that sort of predicament.
Monday’s loss to the Spurs provided the blueprint for how a Wizards loss should go — play it close with some compelling highlights sprinkled throughout, but ultimately come up short to keep pace for the Cooper Flagg sweepstakes.
That’s my guess for Wednesday. Indiana will be coming off a tough game against a very good Knicks team, and they’ll be a bit worn out, especially since they have to travel. Give me the Pacers by eight or nine points.