Indiana Pacers at Milwaukee Bucks
Monday, October 26, 2026
8:00 PM ET, Fiserv Forum, Milwaukee
The Pacers are 4.5-point road favorites over the Bucks with a total of 239.5, and my play is Over 239.5 (-110).
Forget who wins. The one thing I’m sure of in Milwaukee is that nobody is going to guard anybody.
The new Bucks run, and they leak. This is a whole new team. Giannis Antetokounmpo and Bobby Portis went to Miami, and Tyler Herro, Jaime Jaquez Jr. and Kel’el Ware came back the other way. New coach Taylor Jenkins has them flying. Milwaukee averages 109.9 possessions a game, third-most in the league per TeamRankings. The trouble is the other end, where the Bucks rank 26th in points allowed per possession. Their three games have finished with 244, 257 and 243 total points. All three cleared this number.
Turnovers become layups. Milwaukee has turned it over 19 times a game, including 22 in Philadelphia on Saturday. Jenkins was upbeat anyway. “We won the transition battle, we won the paint battle, we just didn’t come up in a couple clutch moments,” he said. That’s a team that wants to play in the open floor, and loose possessions in a fast game tend to turn into easy points for both sides.
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Indiana’s paint just got a lot softer. Ivica Zubac sprained his left ankle in the first quarter in Brooklyn and left the arena on crutches. “It’s pretty unlikely he’ll play,” Rick Carlisle said. That leaves Jay Huff and Larry Nance Jr. at center. Huff was terrific Sunday, with 14 points on 5-of-6 shooting and three blocks, but he’s a floor-spacer, not the rebounding wall Zubac is. Ware just put up 19 points and 13 rebounds against Philadelphia. Indiana is also missing T.J. McConnell (hamstring), Ben Sheppard (meniscus) and Johnny Furphy (ACL). Carlisle admitted, “Our game isn’t going to look exactly the way it’s looked in recent months and years.”
The Pacers can score with anybody. Indiana’s offense ranks ninth in efficiency, and Sunday it hung 136 on Brooklyn while going 21-of-43 from deep. Tyrese Haliburton is averaging 9.7 assists, and Pascal Siakam is scoring 24.7 a night. Milwaukee’s one defensive positive is that opponents are shooting only 31.6 percent from three against it. I expect that to even out, and Haliburton is a good bet to help it along.
There’s a familiar face in the middle, too. Myles Turner faces his old team after going scoreless on 0-of-4 shooting with four fouls in Philadelphia. If foul trouble sends him to the bench again, the rim is open for business.
What keeps me up at night. This is Indiana’s first back-to-back of the season, and tired legs can mean flat shooting in the second half. Carlisle has 10 healthy standard-contract players if Zubac sits, so he may slow it down to save his rotation. Indiana also scored only 105 against Dallas at home on Friday, so the Pacers’ offense has already had one dud. The Over is only about 3.5 points off the Bucks’ slowest-scoring game so far, too. If either team goes cold from three for a quarter, the margin vanishes.
Still, it’s the league’s third-fastest team, a bottom-five defense and a visitor without its starting center. I’d play it up to 241.
How I see it ending: Pacers 125, Bucks 118
The Pick: Over 239.5 (-110)
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