Game 6: Cleveland Cavaliers 87-121 Indiana Pacers - 5 Talking Points

There will be a Game 7 back in Cleveland on Sunday.

A spirited Game 6 performance by Victor Oladipo and the Indiana Pacers ensured a huge 34-point home win at the Bankers Life Fieldhouse, keeping their season alive in the process. The 34 points were the second-largest margin of victory in franchise history for the Pacers, the largest since 1994.

Meanwhile, for LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers, it was a loss of record proportions. For James, it was his third-worst postseason loss which forces him to play his first career Round 1 Game 7. With their season on the line, it was a different Pacers team that showed up for their elimination game at home.

There were a lot of factors that played into the team's blowout win. We take a look out at the 5 biggest takeaways from the game:

#5 Cavaliers' role players start well but struggle again

The performance of the Cavaliers' role players has been a talking point for every game of this series. However, unlike the previous time, they actually had it going early. At one point in the first quarter, with four minutes left, Cleveland was leading 22-17 on the back of six made 3-pointers [LeBron -1; Kevin Love - 1; Kyle Korver - 2; JR Smith -2].

Since that point, JR Smith had only more three-pointer all game, Korver didn't score again and Love only added four more points to his tally. Until JR's next 3-pointer, with 6:38 left in the third quarter, Cleveland had missed 11 straight from beyond the arc. So they started well but things fell apart for the other starters and the bench followed suit.

Jeff Green had 13 points off the bench but all in garbage time. Jordan Clarkson had 5 points on 2-of-8 shooting in 24 minutes of play.

Add to all of this, Love, the team's second All-Star was non-existent again. He took an elbow to the face in the third quarter, which left him out of his senses for a while and pretty much a non-factor since but even before that, it wasn't like he was contributing a lot. He finished the game with 7 points on 3-of-10 shooting.

#4 Complete team effort for the Pacers with their bigs posting up

Domantas Sabonis had another spectacular game off the bench

We had mentioned in the talking points for Game 5 of this series how the Pacers' big men were taking great advantage of the Cavaliers' weak interior defense and how they didn't use that enough when it mattered.

This game, they went to those switches time and again, irrespective of which big men was out there - Myles Turner, Thaddeus Young or Domantas Sabonis. They made hay early, just like they were doing late in Game 5. Although it didn't have a game-changing impact, because of the other good things the team did, it was still good to see this young Pacers team make the right adjustments.

Overall too, the team had it going on both ends of the floor, shooting 56.3% from the field, 50.% from beyond the arc and forcing the Cavaliers into 14 turnovers [Indiana had only 7]. A lot of those turnovers, where forced by the Pacers, recording 9 steals for the game.

For the game, Indiana had seven players score double-digit points (Corey Joseph had 9). Key underrated contributions came from Darren Collison (15 points, 5 assists, 6-of-9 shooting and 3-of-4 on 3s) and Lance Stephenson (12 points, 6 assists, +28). Meanwhile, Sabonis continued his string of sensational games with 19 points, 6 rebounds (4 offensive) on 9-of-11 shooting and a +28.

#3 No slow starts for Indiana in this game

Darren Collison had a much-needed good game as the starting point guard.

Apart from Game 1, for a majority of the series, the Pacers have been battling from behind and have been forced to make huge comebacks to make these game relevant late. To their credit, they have won one of the past four games with a comeback but that isn't enough to win a series.

Ideally, you don't want to play from behind at all. Each of the past four games, they had one quarter that they started off very bad. None of that happened in this critical elimination game.

Instead, they showed shades of the Pacers team that exploded in Game 1 and in the second half in Game 3 by going off in the third quarter of this game, where they outscored the Cavaliers 35-20, this after already leading by 10 at the halftime break.

#2 Quiet game by LeBron James

LeBron James

Cleveland needs a huge game from LeBron James to just be competitive this series. Their three wins too where he stuffed the stat sheet, they've been extremely lucky, because it seemed like Pacers lost the plot in two of those three games.

Anyways, James still put up team-leading numbers but it just wasn't enough. He sat close to five minutes in the first half and the entire fourth quarter (31 minutes) and still had 22 points, 7 assists, 5 rebounds, 2 blocks and a steal on 7-of-16 shooting. He knocked down a couple of long 3s in the third quarter, looking to start a comeback but against a relentless Pacers offense, he just couldn't do it alone tonight.

Each of their wins, or the games where they have been competitive, it's been one quarter where James and the Cavaliers absolutely dominate, take a huge lead and just hang on to it.

There was just no energy in this game.

#1 Victor Oladipo

Victor Oladipo

Stat line: 28 points, 13 rebounds, 10 assists, 4 steals on 11-of-19 shooting [6-of-8 on 3s]

If the Victor Oladipo that played in Games 1 & 6, showed up in similar fashion all through the series, then the Pacers would have probably finished up this series by now.

He had a disastrous Games 3, 4 & 5 averaging 15.7 points, 8.0 rebounds, 5.3 assists on 24.0% shooting on 21.7% on 3s. Those are not great numbers but credit Oladipo for having a stupendous bounce-back game on both ends of the floor.

This is his first Playoff series, where he's the team's No. 1 option and the opponents are game-planning to guard him. So maybe he can be excused those few drop-off games.

In Game 6, he was aggressive from the beginning but not like the previous three games where he forced the issue. He didn't jack up 3-pointers on consecutive possessions if it wasn't going in.

Every time he made a bad play on the offensively, he didn't drop his shoulders. Instead, in the next available chance, he more than made up for it by making sound decisions of either driving to the hole himself or driving and kicking it out to the open man.