INDIANAPOLIS — The Pacers hadn’t played a game at home since New Year’s Eve and everybody and their Uncle LeRoy was excited that they were back at the crib. The Phoenix Suns, one of the worse teams in the league, just happened to be the chosen ones on the schedule on Tuesday night. By the time the clock read zeros the Pacers had beaten the brakes off of Phoenix 131-94. It was only the second time all season that they’d scored over 130 points.
Indiana jumped out of the car and went to work on the Suns with Bojan Bogdanovic scoring 10 of Indiana’s first 12 points.
It seemed as though the Pacers were about to sprint through these cats like wet toilet paper as they raced to an 18 point first quarter lead ending the period up 38-19. However, Phoenix wasn’t trying to go out like that just yet as kept a boy from completely stripping them down. They put up a 32 point second quarter outscoring the Pacers by 8 points to get to the break only down 62-51. It looked as though it was going to be a battle in the second half right?
Wrong!! Indiana came out of the break and went on a 7-2 run before Suns coach Igor KoKosKov called a timeout to call Big Momma to make sure he wasn’t doing what she told him not to do because nothing was working. Well…that didn’t work because Darren Collison went nuts right out of the timeout knocking down a pair of three-pointers and a transition layup to force ole boy to call another timeout.
I would guess he needed to call Elmer Fudd at that point because it was going down hill fast as the Pacers stretched their lead to 77-58 with 7:41 left in the third quarter. The joint exploded in their faces as Nate McMillan and Co. continued to do work.
Myles Turner was back in the lineup after breaking his nose as he put up 18 points and pulled down 6 rebounds. Indiana had 7 players in double figures with Bojan Bogdanovic leading the Blue and Gold with 20 points. Darren Collison dropped off 15 and Thaddeus Young gave them 12. Nate McMillan had three players coming off of the bench. Tierce Evans gave them 20, Domantas Sabonis had 14 and Corey Joseph 10.
They shot the ball extremely well at 52 percent from the field and 48 percent from behind the arc. The ball movement was simply outstanding as they finished the night with 30 assists. Up next the Philadelphia 76ers on Thursday.