Pacers' Rick Carlisle Calls Out Effort in Ugly Loss to Hornets

The Pacers scored just 83 points.

Stephen Lew-Imagn Images

The Indiana Pacers went into Charlotte with a chance to win a third straight game and four of their last five games with a winnable matchup against the Hornets. The Pacers had appeared to rebound from a tough start to a season by winning games against the Boston Celtics, Dallas Mavericks, and Orlando Magic, before putting together an ugly performance in Charlotte.

The Pacers scored just 83 points against the Hornets, easily the fewest by the team this season. Outside of solid performances from Pascal Siakam and Bennedict Mathurin, the Pacers saw limited offense from the rest of the team. All-Star Tyrese Haliburton scored just six points, and Siakam, Mathurin, and Myles Turner scored more than 10 points.

Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle believes that his team started the game well, but were unable to continue that level of play into the second half and particularly the fourth quarter, when the Pacers scored just 17 points.

"We had a great run of sustained effort, rebounding, physicality, and then we didn't sustain it," Carlisle said at his postgame press conference. "They went on multiple runs. Our bench guys, out depth guys did a great job at giving us energy in the fourth, they got back to within three, but then it was more of the same."

The Pacers simply played below their standards by the end of the game. The Hornets finished the game with almost 20 more rebounds than Indiana. The team struggled to shoot as well. Indiana shot below 40 percent from the field, and just 31 percent from the three-point line. Their bench combined for just seven points. On free throws, the Pacers shot a measly 57.1 percent.

Defensively, Carlisle said the team did not do a good enough job at stopping three-pointers.

"The three-point shot, we didn't do a good job of taking it away. A lot of them came off of second-chance opportunities," Carlisle said.

The Hornets attempted 50 three-point shots and made 17 of them. By no means did the Hornets play an otherworldly game, but they took advantage of the opportunities they got from the Pacers and came out with the win.

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