5. Key absences have been too much to overcome

It is not a news flash that it is difficult for the Indiana Pacers to win games when Victor Oladipo does not play. They are now 2-8 when he logs five minutes or fewer since the start of last season.

To make matters worse, Tyreke Evans was awful filling in for Oladipo. He played for only 20 minutes against the San Antonio Spurs and recorded only two points on 8.3% from the field while missing all five of his three-point attempts.

Oladipo played for only the first five minutes of the Pacers’ win over the Utah Jazz on Monday and missed the last two games. During that period, Evans has averaged only 7.3 points while producing just a 33.5% true shooting percentage.

There simply isn’t enough perimeter playmaking with Oladipo out and it gets significantly more difficult to overcome that when Evans isn’t executing nearly as well as expected. They badly need Tyreke to find his form.

This game was different for the Pacers compared to their previous two because they weren’t without just Oladipo. Myles Turner was unable to play and his absence from the lineup resulted in a concerning lack of interior defense.

While Sabonis deserves at least some benefit of the doubt because he was playing through injury, he was a considerable negative defensively.

This game served as the latest example of Oladipo’s all-around importance to the Pacers. It also displayed why Turner is valuable to the team’s defensive execution.