INDIANAPOLIS — “One DeMatha.”
Almost no one heard that from Victor Oladipo on Wednesday night, in the din of his return after missing the last 12 months of action with a ruptured quad tendon. Oladipo, befitting a Hollywood script, hit a game-tying 3-pointer in the final seconds of regulation against the Bulls, from beyond the hashmark, forcing overtime and an eventual Pacers win. He’d served notice that, while clearly rusty in ballhandling and defensive assignments, he was still capable of making the big shot. And that makes Indiana, suddenly, a very dangerous team.
No one cared that he’d missed his first six 3s Wednesday; at halftime, his agent, Aaron Turner, and Pacers General Manager Chad Buchanan told him the same thing: keep shooting. “Like we had to tell him that,” Turner said.
Afterward, Oladipo was decrying the lack of national media attention for his plucky team, which went 30-17 without him to start this season.
