After starting Pacers swingman Andrew Nembhard got into foul trouble during Indiana’s Game 3 playoff series loss to Milwaukee, reserve guard Ben Sheppard found himself playing more minutes than he had in the contests prior.
Sheppard knocked down a three-point shot during his six first-half minutes and the Pacers outscored Milwaukee by six points during those minutes. He went just 1-of-4 from the field in the second half, but was a +3 in 15:26 of action on the night.
According to Dustin Dopirak of The Indianapolis Star, head coach Rick Carlisle hinted that he may want to play Sheppard more going forward.
“Time to get him involved,” Carlisle said. “He did some really good things in the first half…. He gives us another guy to chase (Damian) Lillard around a little bit. Look, we need all hands on deck. We need everybody. Guys are gonna have to be able to come in and possibly play short minutes from time to time to help us with matchups, to help us with rebounding, to help us with spacing. You name it.”
There’s more out of the Central Division:
- A lot went wrong in the Pacers’ 117-101 Game 3 defeat, as Dopirak details in another story. Two-time All-Star point guard Tyrese Haliburton believes that the team’s defense was the foundational issue. “We have to do a better job of rotating,” Haliburton said. “I gotta do a better job of staying down on shot fakes. Ground and contest, second-jumper contest. It starts with me. That was my matchup to start the game, so I gotta be better, but we were rotating and I thought we had a couple of miscommunications that led to some open ones and he got hot.” Dopirak also notes that the club leaned too heavily on isolation scoring for All-Star forward Pascal Siakam.
- The first round of the playoffs are highlighting the major problems in longtime Bulls president Arturas Karnisovas’ team construction, opines Joe Cowley of The Chicago Sun-Times. As Cowley explains, Chicago was among the NBA’s fastest-paced offenses and ranked in the bottom half of the league in defense, a profile that doesn’t match many serious contenders.
- Cavaliers swingman Max Strus has emerged as a perfect role player for the team as it gears up to sweep Miami, writes Chris Fedor of Cleveland.com.