San Antonio Spurs vs Indiana Pacers Prediction: Battle of two highly struggling teams

The NBA carnival has now hit its last stop and now we are seeing the final stages of the Regular Season. In this window, the Postseason stage is determined which means that each game only becomes more valuable for each team. However, for some teams, the postseason aspirations are pretty much over. One of those teams, the San Antonio Spurs takes on Play-in contender Indiana Pacers.

The Spurs come into the fray after extracting a rare win as they defeated the Jazz 102:94 thanks to a 25 points outing by Keldon Johnson. This win curbed a 16-game losing streak and the Spurs have been accustomed to 10+ losing streaks throughout the season. Because of that, they have slipped to 47 losses and 15 wins. Since Guard Devin Vassell has been injured, things derailed further and Spurs arguably have one of the weakest guard rotations in the league. Keldon Johnson has been the most dependable scorer since then, Malaki Branham has shown promise whereas Jeremy Sochan has shown considerable improvements. The Spurs are one of the worst offensive and defensive teams in the league and are surely heading into the NBA draft. 

The Pacers head into the affair after defeating 124:122 as Tyree Haliburton dropped 32 points. This was the second straight win for the Pacers and they have now won three of their last four affairs. The Pacers' campaign derailed when they lost Tyrese due to an injury and at that point, they had 23 wins and 19 losses. From there, they lost 10 of their 11 games and due to such a poor rhythm, even the return of Tyrese didn’t pay dividends. A decent run recently has put them to 28 wins and 35 losses. The upcoming game has a ton of away games but some of these games are against struggling teams but overall, Indiana has an big mountain to climb. Let us see how they fare from here in the backdrop of another injury to Tyrese.

• Spurs: OUT: Khem Birch, Romeo Langford, Isaiah Roby. QUESTIONABLE: Malaki Branham, Keldon Johnson, Tre Jones. PROBABLE: Devin Vassell;
• Pacers: OUT: Kendall Brown. QUESTIONABLE: Tyrese Haliburton.

• Expected Leading Scorers: Tyrese Haliburton(24+ Points-QUES), Keldon Johnson(22+ Points);
• Expected Leading Rebounders: Myles Turner(9-11 Rebounds), Zach Collins(8-10 Rebounds);
• Expected Leading Playmaker: Tyrese Haliburton(9+ Assists- QUES).

The Spurs are doing an awful job even at home but they did an amazing job in the last game. The Pacers aren’t exactly a winning unit but lately, they have done well. The injury list for the Spurs looks lengthy. I see the Pacers taking control of this game early on and finishing the game on a high too. I predict a scoreline of 124:113 in favor of Indiana.