2018 NBA Playoffs: One Big Takeaway from the First 2 Games of Each Playoff series

#4 Cleveland are in for a dogfight against superior opponents

Indiana Pacers v Cleveland Cavaliers - Game One

Two games into this series, we know one thing for sure: the Indiana Pacers are no pushovers. In fact, the fact that they haven't had a single nationally televised game up until the playoffs this year has caused people to heavily underrate them.

The truth of the matter is that if we separate the individual best player from each roster and examine which team is better, you'd be hard-pressed to give the Cavaliers any sort of edge whatsoever. Myles Turner, up until this point in the series, has owned Kevin Love pretty hard.

Lance Stephenson, Bogdan Bogdanovic and Darren Collison have proved to be better complementary players to their superstar than Kyle Korver, JR Smith and George Hill.

And then again, once you factor in how Oladipo missed time in the first half of game 2 due to foul troubles, you can see how mightily the Pacers ran the Cavs close in the final 40 minutes of the game.

We have to give the edge to the Pacers at this point in the series. Despite LeBron James' superhuman effort in Game 2, the Cavs were leading only by 6 points before Oladipo signed the match off with a buzzer-beating 3-pointer of no consequence.

Contrast that with how handily the Pacers beat the Cavs when both teams had their full complement of players in Game 1 for the most part. Foul troubles are unlikely to haunt a single player too many times over a series, and Oladipo looks capable of leading the Pacers to unassailable leads at home.