There wasn’t much in the way of tempering of expectations from the Indiana Pacers tonight, blowing out the Charlotte Hornets in their preseason debut. Getting solid individual and team performances, the Pacers offered up everything they’re hoping to showcase on October 19 when the exhibition season expires, and being a preseason game, it comes with the added caveat of trying to figure out what does or doesn’t matter.
Sure the Hornets appeared to be in full preseason mode for large swaths of this game, but Indiana was also able to do a lot of things that were absent towards the end of last year, notably, play defense.