2015-16 NBA Preview: Indiana Pacers

INDIANA PACERS

As smallball fever spreads across the NBA world, Indiana decided to dismantle their defensive juggernaut and embrace a new ideology. A new season will be the testing grounds for this change, but most things in basketball come down to talent. The Pacers have Paul George back for a full season after a scary broken leg injury, but there are no other stars around him and little in the way of young talent. In the east, you can still make the playoffs like this, but it could be a while before the Pacers challenge LeBron again in the playoffs.

2015 in review:

With George on the sidelines for months, the Pacers weren’t throwing in the towel and gamely fought on among a myriad of injuries and odd lineups. The minutes leader for the season was Solomon Hill, which is never a good sign for a team — no offense to Solomon Hill. No one else played over 2000 minutes. George Hill had some of his best basketball of his career, but he logged only 43 games. Indiana lost little of its identify, however, as they still had a fine defense, defending shots well and controlling the boards, but their offense was well below average and they ended the season with 38 wins. However, since they just barely outscored their opponents on average, they had the strength of a 42 win team, per basketball-reference, so Pacers basketball didn’t really fail — they mostly just missed Paul George.

Rotation players in: Monta Ellis, Jordan Hill, Myles Turner, Chase Budinger.

Rotation players out: Roy Hibbert, David West, Luis Scola, C.J. Watson.

In remaking the Pacers for the databall era, Monta Ellis was the big move, oddly enough. Jordan Hill was brought in after a stint with the Lakers for frontcourt depth. He’s not a great defender, but few places are better to learn than Indiana. Myles Turner is an intiguing draft pick and emblematic of their change — he’s a two-part combination of two of the biggest terms in the NBA right now with rim protection and spacing. Budinger hasn’t been the same since a knee injury, but he at least gives them another shooter. And of course, Indiana cleaned house after David West signed with the Spurs. Hibbert left, and they lost two pieces of their bench in Scola and Watson.

2016 Projected

While a major philosophical change is admirable, ultimately great teams need to maximize the strengths of their best players. Paul George was one of the best wing defenders in the league, and his allure was nearly as high as Kawhi Leonard’s is now. With his size and mobility, he could drape over smaller players and bottle them up. He was becoming a talented scorer and was an improved ballhandler too.

Moving Paul George to power forward is a bit strange because he’s at his best defending wing players and there are still a number of larger power forwards out there George shouldn’t cover. More specifically, George will have to deal with larger players crashing the glass on both ends of the court, and he’s had little time in the past at the position. When he does log time at power forward, he’ll probably cross-match pretty frequently and will act effectively like a wing player. Thankfully, Indiana is no longer committed to turning him into a power forward, but it’s something to watch.

During Paul’s recovery, another George took over, and it’s still a wholly under-appreciated season. George Hill expanded his offensive role without ill effect, playing well across the boards from efficiency to passing to defense. Perhaps Lance Stephenson was holding him back, but now Monta Ellis will be the primary creator for the team, and it’ll likely submarine Hill’s numbers, which in turn is not ideal for the team. Ellis isn’t a liability when used correctly, but he can’t guard big perimeter players well[5. Some of Ellis’ defensive numbers look okay, but that’s purely from turnover creation where he picks up a lot of steals and draws a few offensive fouls.] and he’s best with the ball in his own hands. While Ellis has the more famous name, Hill had by most objective measures a better season in 2015. Shooting guard isn’t a deep position, but there are better options out there and bringing in Ellis out of a fear you won’t get anyone else isn’t a good long-term solution either.

If their lead scorers mesh well, Indiana could still have problems with their defense. There are a lot of new parts, and Roy Hibbert could be missed. Mahinmi is a fine defender and the Pacers at time did just as well with him on the court, but there’s no one else of comparable strength behind him and depending on a rookie, Turner, for winning NBA games rarely works out well in the modern era.

But for the future, Myles Turner is mesmerizing. He has guard-like skills and most draft models like him. Outside shooting and blocking shots don’t usually go together — there’s Serge Ibaka, Raef LaFrentz, and not much else. If Pero Antic can amass large plus/minus values without even shooting well, then a multi-faceted player like Myles Turner, at his best, could be a devastating player. There’s no guarantee, which is why he didn’t go first, but it’s Indiana’s best bet for fighting to the top of the conference again.

Outside of a few key players, there’s not much else on the roster now — it’s bare. One reason why I assume Indiana wanted to use Paul George at power forward is that they had few options and with Mahinmi’s offensive skillset they probably didn’t want another weak shooter clogging up the spacing they’d have, since that’s an emphasis for them this season. Rodney Stuckey is something like a cut rate version of Ellis, C.J. Miles is a capable shooter with some defense, and Lavoy Allen will provide them with some competent big man minutes. But their defense will likely regress, and if injuries hit the team again they could hit a win total in the low 30’s. Paul George’s recovery is their key to the playoffs — they need him to play major minutes.

Quick statistic/graph

Monta Ellis is not a “pure” point guard and he’s not a dominating scorer, but he’s a slashing, pick and roll master who’s able to create a large amount of shots near the rim or pulling-up in the midrange area. Using data from SportVU, players with at least 7 team points per game in a minimum 40 games were graphed below against pull-up midrange shots. Being able to pull-up for a shot or drive inside makes it tougher for teams to defend you because the defense has to guard against more options. Ellis is one of the best at combining both forms, though his efficiency isn’t great. But he’s on the bleeding edge of the cluster below with only a season each from Wade, DeRozan, and Westbrook significantly above him. With Indiana’s poor offense, Monta’s shot creation will be a boon and chucking tendencies will be mitigated by the fact that few others on the team can generate better shots on their own.

Summary

The NBA is a net zero sum game, and there will always be losers. Remodeling a team is seen as a way to circumvent this process, looking for loopholes on a fast track to NBA greatness. But you need the right personnel, and the Pacers don’t yet have a full spacing and 3PT theater team yet. It should still be a good defensive team, thanks to coach Frank Vogel, Paul George, and a couple others, but the days of Indiana shooting for the best defense in the league are over. But basketball’s heartland is following the lead of the rest of the NBA, over the hills and into the future of databall and three-point bombing.

PBP-Metric[2. This is the initial version of my own metric, which uses a full range of stats collected from play-by-play logs and tested extensively to avoid overfitting.]: 37.0

PT-PM: 42

Nick‘s[3. For a short description, the predictions use regression models and neural networks to apply various stats like BPM, RAPM, and Win Shares to 10,000 simulations of the season game-by-game to select the “best” result.]: 36

Nathan Walker:  38