With Paul George gone, Indiana had several rebuilding paths in front of them. They opted to add some useful, albeit limited, veterans on flexible deals, not quite tearing the roster down to the studs.
There seems to be a huge range of possibilities for the Pacers this season, from bottoming out in the lottery to actually landing a playoff spot in a weakened Eastern Conference. A lot of those outcomes are going to come down to Indiana’s shooting and how closely this new roster can match up with the way they say they’d like to play.
The Pacers lost several of their best catch-and-shoot 3-point-shooters from last season — C.J. Miles (42.6 percent), Paul George (42.0), Jeff Teague (37.6), Aaron Brooks (37.3). But they’ve also replaced them with some capable catch-and-shoot guys — Darren Collison (47.0), Cory Joseph (39.4), Bojan Bogdanovic (38.0), Victor Oladipo (37.1). That doesn’t even include rookie T.J. Leaf and the presumed outside development of Myles Turner.
Accuracy from the outside shouldn’t be a problem for the Pacers this season. The questions is whether they have the pieces to create enough open perimeter looks for it to matter to their offensive bottom line.
Last season, the Pacers were one of the most accurate teams in the league on catch-and-shoot 3-pointers. The problem was that they didn’t create very many of them — ranking 25th in the league in catch-and-shoot 3-point attempts per game. Without an elite offensive star, the team’s offense will likely need to scaffold the development of Myles Turner with as much outside shooting as possible. The challenge will be creating the outside looks.
The Pacers ranked 18th in the league in drives per game last season, and Lance Stephenson (5.3) and Thad Young (1.2) will be the only returning players who averaged more than one drive per game. The new Collison, Oladipo, and Joseph trio are all capable but none has shown the potential to be a top-level offensive creator. Turner is not yet much of a threat in the post and his gravity on the low-block probably isn’t enough to single-handedly force rotations and bend the defense.
That mean creating open looks is going to depend a lot on which Stephenson shows up, the pick-and-roll chemistry between Turner and the Pacers’ ball-handlers and the team’s ability to push the pace and get open looks in transition. Indiana has talked about playing faster but they didn’t show much effectiveness last season in getting out on the break or converting transition possessions.
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Somewhere in this mishmash of pieces, shooters and experienced ball-handlers, there is an efficient offense. They just need something — a leap from Turner or Oladipo, a Lance-splosion, a mid-season trade — to bind it all together.