Pacers Links: Pacers surprising start has team in a nice spot

The Pacers started the season 1-4 but still showed plenty of promise with Tyrese Haliburton and Bennedict Mathurin flashing enough to make things quite entertaining despite the end result. No surprises.

Defense was the Achilles heal that would keep this team in the draft lottery conversation while the young players continued to develop. What wasn’t expected was how the offense would suddenly trend toward elite, playing at a fast pace and shooting and making threes in high volume, comparable to the league’s offensive monsters in Golden State and Boston.

After going 6-2 in the next eight, the Pacers are now over .500, in sixth place in the East and showing no signs of slowing down. The defense…