Look, the easy thing for the Pacers to do would be to criticize one of their players for lobbing up a cross court prayer with mere seconds remaining in a game that he could have hypothetically iced from the free throw stripe. On the contrary, the difficult thing to do after a tough loss is to think critically about what can be learned from it. Luckily for the Pacers, there is a lesson to be taken from a defeat that was snatched from the jaws of victory and it's that Bojan Bogdanovic is not cut out for crunch time. I mean, let's ignore that he's a valued member of the starting lineup whose typically safe with the ball and shoots over 86% from the line, because that turnover is enough to force last minute roster turnover. Literally all he had to do was turn his back, absorb some contact, and try to knock down a couple wide open 15 foot shots, and instead he looked like he would have rather been holding onto stock in ENRON than an NBA licensed basketball. I actually liked the Yugoslavian forward when he was member of the Brooklyn Nets, but the instincts that tell a well respected shooter to toss a ball aimlessly into an atmosphere patrolled by a defense minded team while owning a one point lead and possession can never again be trusted outside of the first 47 and 3/4's minutes of an NBA basketball game. The Indiana Pacers had potentially their biggest win of the season ripped right out from under them, but hey - at least they know what substitution they can make to avoid the rarest of embarrassing endings in the future!
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