George scored 33 points, Monta Ellis had 15 and the Indiana Pacers beat the Toronto Raptors 100-90 in Game 1 of their first-round playoff series Saturday.
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George Hill (10) and Myles Turner (10) were also good contributors.
Paul George came alive for IN in the second half, and particularly IN the fourth quarter.
“I don’t think they’re going to shoot like that again”, Raptors Coach Dwane Casey said.
“Awesome. (He’s) the biggest reason we won”, said Pacers coach Frank Vogel. He scored 24 points, grabbed 11 rebounds and made multiple hustle plays down the stretch, allowing the Hawks to escape in Game 1 of an Eastern Conference playoff series. Paul’s shot-making at the end of the game was spectacular.
The Raptors, who’ve never won a Game 1 of a first-round playoff series in eight appearances, had been waiting a very long year to rewrite their playoff story after a humiliating four-game sweep by the Washington Wizards last spring. “It wasn’t us. I hadn’t seen us play that tentative on the offensive end all year”. “Today we didn’t play to our identity and I know we’ll come back and play more to our identity”. George credits that for his excellence in the second half: 10-of-13 from the field, including 4-for-4 from downtown, and 27 points. I know everybody’s going to say: “‘Here we go again.’ There you go there, that’s what they said”. On Saturday, we George go a long way in proving that he’s the guy – both with what he said postgame, and more importantly with his play on the court. With George leading the way, the Pacers led by three points going into the fourth quarter.
When Kyle Lowry missed his first two free throws, it reminded Toronto Raptors fans of the painful first round playoff struggles the team has had the last two seasons.
During their four regular season games, the team who reached triple digits wound up being the victor. “When he get’s in a groove like that, it’s kind of hard to get him out of it”.
Instead, DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry shot the Raptors right into a first-round hole by combining to score 25 points on 8-32 shooting.
“We not panicking. We just played bad”, said DeRozan.
After the Celtics trailed by as many as 19 points in the first half, Avery Bradley and Marcus Smart sparked a second-half rally. “We had big fella (Valanciunas) in foul trouble – he actually fouled out – and that really slowed the game up for us and we were able to box out and get out of grinds”. He’d wrap up with 19 rebounds, but Hansbrough’d his way to his final seven of the game, rebounding (and missing) off of his own misses. That’s Indiana Pacers All-Star forward Paul George’s personal mindset.
Throw in 8 blocked shots – 5 by Turner – and you have a nightmare for Toronto’s offense. He was excellent, and after coming off of his gruesome leg injury in the summer of 2014, PG is back in the playoffs ready to try and pull an upset on the Raptors.
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“We made adjustments, we blitzed him, switched, we did everything so somebody watching the game and saying we didn’t do different things with Paul George wasn’t watching the game”. In fact, the Raptors have made it past the first round of the playoffs just once in their history, in 2001. Overall, it was a great win for the Pacers who seemed to have carried on their great form from the latter stages of the regular season. They can’t afford to lose two games in their building and head to Indianapolis down 2-0 in the best-of-seven series.
