Nets Stun Pacers 98-90 for First Win: Our Pick Misses

The Brooklyn Nets are winless no more. Brooklyn went into Gainbridge Fieldhouse on Sunday and beat the Indiana Pacers 98-90, a defensive grind that looked nothing like the 136-109 blowout Indiana delivered in this same matchup just days earlier. The Nets got their first win of the season behind a strong defensive effort and a big second half from Nolan Traore, while the Pacers — short-handed and still searching for defensive answers — couldn't recapture the shooting that powered the earlier rout.

How our premium pick did

We sold the Pacers on the moneyline, betting that a rested Indiana team would handle a Brooklyn side coming off the back end of a back-to-back and that the prior blowout was inflating the market. That read was wrong. Indiana's defensive problems, which we flagged as a real concern, turned out to be the story: the Pacers never found enough offense to pull away, and the Nets controlled the second half. The moneyline loss is a clear miss.

We also called the under on the total, and that part landed. A 98-90 final (188 combined points) stayed well below the number, and the game played at exactly the slower, half-court pace the under needed. That's a win for the total.

Takeaway

This one is a reminder that a lopsided result against a tired opponent doesn't automatically flip when the schedule evens out — especially when the team we backed has a bottom-tier defense and a rotation still in flux. We were right about the under and wrong about Indiana's ability to convert that edge into a win. Future picks on the Pacers should treat their defensive issues as the primary variable, not an afterthought.