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Victor Oladipo was leading his team in scoring when he suffered a season-ending quad injury. The mishap led to a major tectonic shift in dynamics of the playoff-bound Indiana Pacers side, who had just one bonafide superstar on their roster. They had won 25 of the 36 games Oladipo started and were the East's third best team when he went down just weeks before the All-Star break.
What followed is something no experts had projected out of the ill-equipped Pacers ball club. With the run for a playoff berth growing more intense down the stretch, the Pacers held their own and finished as the fifth seed alongside a respectable 48-34 (0.585) record next to their name.
Their first-round series against the deeply talented Boston Celtics ended in a sweep, but it was never that close throughout the four games. The Oladipo-less Pacers side did not go down without a fight and tested Boston until their final breath. While that required some prominent contributions from Bojan Bogdanovic, Myles Turner, Damontas Sabonis and more key players besides, it did bring to light a few flawed performances too.
With that in mind, let's take a look at the three players who failed to step up to the challenge in their main man's absence:
#3 Cory Joseph
This was Joseph's lowest scoring season since the year he won a championship with the Spurs in 2014. Playing as a backup point-guard for the Pacers - and starting in just nine games - his offense was an issue which couldn't be resolved before the season ended on him.
He shot a sub-par 32% from deep range and 41% from the field in over 25 minutes per game. The 27-year-old finished the season with ordinary numbers: 6.5 points, 3.9 assists and 3.4 rebounds per game after appearing in all 82 games for Indiana.
He predominantly played as a pick-and-roll ball-handler but his 0.71 points per possession as the same go down in the 25th percentile. There aren't any jaw-dropping highlights from his 2018/19 campaign, rather his habit of dribbling far more than needed and wasting possession via a brick floater stands out.
#2 Wesley Matthews
After Dallas traded him to New York who then waived him in January of 2019, Wes found a home in Indiana, mainly because he wanted a starting spot in a potential postseason team.
In his 23 regular season games wearing an Indiana uniform, Matthews averaged 10.9 points per game - his lowest since his rookie season - while shooting an unimpressive 38% (career-worst percentage) from the field while doing so. He failed to possess the handles to create enough space for himself and so most of endeavours inside the arc resulted in missed or contested shots.
His post-up offense could amount to all but 0.48 points per possession - dead last in the league - cramping his already limited bag of tricks. To put up averages like 2.8 rebounds, 2.4 assists, 0.9 steals and 0.2 blocks in over 31 minutes of court time per game highlights the ineffectiveness of Matthews in other aspects of the game.
#1 Tyreke Evans
To put things into perspective, Evans could top his previous year's average only four times during the entire season - where he played 69 games, starting 18 times. His shooting slump left him at an inconceivable 38% conversion from the field as his 2018/19 campaign scoring averaged barely crossed the 10 ppg mark. Moreover, his three-point shooting touch also saw a noticeable downfall from 40% to 35.5% this past regular season.
Evans was brought in as a backup playmaker for Oladipo but with Vic missing considerable time, he proved certainly not the man to look to for scoring production.
One of his glaring anomalies came in the form of his inability to finish at the rim. According to NBA stats, Evans finished 146th out of 147 in terms of field goal percentage from players who averaged three or more drives per game. Safe to say, he was a high usage player who performed at unthinkably low standards in a team that had been blown wide open due to a massive injury.
