Candace Buckner

IndyStar

Suns at Pacers, 7 p.m. Tuesday, FSI

HOUSTON – The Indiana Pacers closed their four-game trip the way they opened it – disappointed in overtime.

It's why Paul George was looking big picture and, once again, didn't like the view.

"We could easily get back eight or nine games that we should’ve won," George said after the Pacers' 107-103 overtime loss to the Houston Rockets in which they led by 13 points entering the fourth quarter.

"No way," George continued, "we shouldn’t almost be reaching 30 wins this year right now at this point."

After many of the tougher losses this year, George has brought up the "same old story" line while deliberating the team's struggles to finish off opponents. It happened Dec. 23 against the Sacramento Kings, when Indiana went up by two in the final 2 minutes but lost by that same margin. It reoccurred Jan. 4 in Miami, the game that set the tone for this trip, as the Pacers held an 18-point advantage but stumbled into overtime for the 103-100 loss.

The inability to put the finishing touches on a tight game has lingered, but taking these losses isn't getting any easier.

"We have to figure out how to close out these games," Pacers coach Frank Vogel said.

Vogel offered these words during a postgame news conference, having to focus on this flaw instead of the things the Pacers did right Sunday: creating 33 assists on 43 field goals, scoring 38 points off 23 Houston turnovers and holding the NBA's second-leading scorer, James Harden, to an inefficient 21 points on 20 shots.

• BOX SCORE: Rockets 107, Pacers 103

But this one goes on the wrong side of the overall record. So after those glowing stats, the 'L' matters most.

"There is no consolation prize for losing close games," Vogel said. "We have to figure out ways on how to finish."

Forgetting how strong defensively they played through three quarters, the Pacers – now 21-16 and nowhere near the 30-win team that George imagined – made plenty errors down the stretch and into overtime.

In spite of the Pacers’ 77-64 lead entering the fourth quarter, the Rockets made a 12-1 run to get to within one point and finally pulled even as Trevor Ariza knocked down a 3 near the top of the key with 17.1 seconds remaining. From the fourth quarter into overtime, the Pacers' once stout 3-point defense faltered as five of the Rockets' last seven field goals came from the deep range.

"We missed and they got out and started going. It’s like they got life again," George said. "I thought we took it away from them in the third quarter and had we really came out in the fourth and made our mark, this game would’ve been over with."

In the fourth quarter, the Pacers scored only 16 points and missed all six attempts from the 3-point arc.

"If the game is real close then we kind of get a little shaky, kind of frustrated," Jordan Hill observed. "Just trying to make every shot (but) things happen. You’re not going to make them all."

However judging by the way they started overtime, the Pacers recovered from any fourth-quarter frustration. Indiana couldn't have asked for a better opening, scoring six straight points with the offense heavily tilting towards Monta Ellis.

Ellis zipped a beautiful pass to George Hill under the rim at the start of overtime, then found George cutting to the basket for a layup. He turned aggressive and got into the paint to score twice. However, with the Pacers down 105-103 in the final 40 seconds, Ellis drove and missed a pair of close-range floaters after timeouts.

Ellis finished with 11 points and 13 assists, his highest assist total since Jan. 31, 2015, when he was with the Dallas Mavericks. But the individual stats mattered little as his mood matched the Pacers' sullen and silent postgame locker room.

"It has nothing to do with (being) a new team," Ellis said. "We’ve been playing together long enough to understand one another. We just got to close games out, point blank, period."

Follow Star reporter Candace Buckner on Twitter: @CandaceDBuckner.

Suns at Pacers, 7 p.m. Tuesday, FSI