Do the Indiana Pacers finally have LeBron James’ number?

The Eastern Conference has been LeBron James’ playground for nearly a decade. James has made seven consecutive trips to the NBA Finals during his time with the Miami Heat and the Cleveland Cavaliers. No team could ever slow down the King and now in year 15 — while playing all 82 games for the first time in his career — it seems as if the dominance is destined to continue. Or is it?

Awaiting the Cavaliers in the first round is the fifth-seeded Indiana Pacers. The Pacers shipped off franchise cornerstone Paul George this summer for a seemingly feeble return of Victor Oladipo and Domantas Sabonis. No one outside of the Hoosier state gave this team a shot to do much. Yet, with Oladipo turning in an All-Star performance, Indiana has been the surprise of the NBA season.

Can this team continue to overachieve by giving the preseason Eastern Conference champions a run for their money? They’ve punched above their weight class all season long, what says that it has to end here? Well, the stats certainly don’t.

Read More: How Victor Oladipo is redefining his career through biomechanics

The Pacers won three of the four regular season meetings against Cleveland this season. Also, they have one of best one-on-one defenders against James this season. But it’s not just Bojan Bogdanovic that caused LeBron to perform below expectations; according to NBA.com matchup statistics, Victor Oladipo and Lance Stephenson also had success slowing down James.

One thing you can’t do against a player the caliber of LeBron is to continuously expose him to the same looks. With his infamous photographic memory, showing him a coverage multiple times can lead him to crack it as if it were the Da Vinci Code.

A key change for the Pacers this season was the team zagging while the rest of the NBA zigged. When Nate McMillan was first brought onboard he spoke about making the Pacers look like a modern NBA team, it did not work. This season, Indiana has looked much more like a true McMillan team. They play at a slower pace and instead of passing up mid-range looks they feast off of them.

Per CleaningTheGlass, 22.7 percent of their shot attempts came from the long mid-range area (designated as any shot further than 14 feet out, but within the 3-point line), which ranked first in the entire league. The Pacers made 43.1 percent of those long mid-range attempts (fourth-best in the NBA).

If one knock has persisted on this season’s Cavalier team, despite the many makeovers, it’s the porous defense they often played. CleaningTheGlass has them ranked 29th out of 30 teams in defensive rating, allowing 112 points per game.

Cleveland wasn’t necessarily strong in the areas that the Pacers have succeeded this year. They allowed their opponents to shoot 40.9 percent from this area during the season. With Indiana looking to slow the game down, it doesn’t help that the Cavaliers ranked dead-last in half court defense. This team surrendered 97.2 points per 100 plays in half court possessions.

Yet, in the last three LeBron-led years Cleveland has morphed into a totally different team once the postseason begins. The key to it all is LeBron himself. His career averages of 27.2 points per game, 7.4 rebounds per game, and 7.2 assists per game are outstanding on their own. However, in the league’s second season, those numbers see a bump as James kicks into high-gear. In his eight postseason appearances with the Cavaliers alone James averages 29.4 PPG, 9.1 RPG, and 7.6 APG.

Not only have the Pacers not seen this version of LeBron as constructed, but they also haven’t seen version 3.0 of the 2018 Cleveland Cavaliers. Their last regular season matchup came on Jan. 26. Just short of two weeks later the Cavaliers would make multiple moves at the trade deadline to completely reshape their team.

Reshpaing is nothing new for this franchise. Former Cleveland general manager, David Griffin, revealed on the Back2Back podcast that head coach, Ty Lue, would often wait until the playoffs to take a more hands on approach with the defense; the logic being not to show their hands to opponents before it was absolutely necessary. Last season, it worked well enough for Cleveland to get through the East unblemished.

Cleveland did opt to reveal a rabbit out of their hat earlier in the year as the season long Kevin Love at center experiment has seemingly paid off. Now equipped with some more youthful legs rounding out the roster now, it is likely that Cleveland will score more than they did earlier in the year.

Indiana does have a versatile mobile center of their own to throw at Love in Myles Turner, but with Love predominantly operating from the perimeter stashing him on Love negates his rim-protecting abilities. And with no shot blocker at the rim to deter him, LeBron has no problems dominating from inside the paint.

With so many other more intriguing matchups out there this postseason it is easy to sweep this series under the rug and forget about it. However, if we are to take the regular season at face value, there is much more going on between these two teams than what originally meets the eyes.

Next: The five most interesting player matchups in the playoffs

Oladipo’s emergence has been one of the biggest storylines of the season and he has the opportunity to cement his new found status with a strong performance in this first round series against the Cavaliers and the king of the Eastern Conference. Nobody expected anything like this from Indiana this season, just making the playoffs is the cherry on top of their sundae. A few wins could be the equivalent of extra scoops of hot fudge.

Keeping with the dessert themes, James’ trips to the last seven NBA Finals have all been categorized as “cake walks”. When the playoff seedings were finally set, it would have been easy to sense that another one was coming. Yet, when you look at the statistics from this year it would seem as if the Cavaliers plans of returning to the finals had a wrench thrown in to it.