Merry Christmas! The Pacers are Kinda Good!

 Victor Oladipo

Last night (12/18/17), the Indiana Pacers played the kind of game that seemed to be a forgone conclusion for the 2017/2018 season, at least from last summer's point of view, which saw Pacers' ex-franchise player Paul George scooting out the door before it hit him in the ass. The game started with the Celtics coming out of the gate leading 12-0 en route to building an 18 point spread in the first quarter. From there, the game was a typical NBA slog, with the Celtics falling asleep, the Pacers making a run, the Celtics waking up, the Pacers getting closer but unable to pull even . . . until the fourth quarter, when the Pacers pulled the ol' "feisty underdog" routine and managed to pull even. And then, in an even feistier underdog fashion, they managed to eke out a five point lead with only 30 seconds left. AND THEN, just to reinforce the "underdog" part of "feisty underdog", they managed to become the first team all year to choke up a five point lead at 30 seconds to lose a game: with under five seconds and a one point lead, the Pacers got the ball into the hands of Bojan Bogdanovic, who manages an 87% stroke from the line. Surrounded by Celtics running at him screaming "I'm fouling him! I'm fouling him!", all Bogdanovic had to do was hold on to the ball, get fouled, and go to the line for two shots leaving three seconds on the clock for the Celtics to score. Even if he missed both free throws, that left a minuscule amount of time for the Celtics to rebound, go the length of the court, and get off a good shot, especially since the clock stoppage would allow the Pacers to set the defense. But no: Bogdanovic decided to softly loft a high-arching pass toward Victor Oladipo at center court, which was picked off and slammed home by Terry Rozier. Ballgame! For your edification, let's take a look at a graphic which describes tragic futility:

That's grabbing defeat from the jaws of victory! So, the Pacers are who we thought they were, right? Well, not so much, as it turns out. It seems that, just maybe, the Pacers are kinda good!

First, let's revisit the Celtics game: the Celts currently own the third best record in the NBA (behind this decade's dynasty, Golden State, and the Houston Rockets, the team to beat this year as Christmas rolls around) and sit on top of the Eastern Conference . . . who, collectively, are currently winning at a 48% clip against the West, undercutting another big off season talking point, namely the extreme unbalance between the conferences . . . which is a long way of saying the Celtics are currently pretty good. Add to that the P were on the second night of a back-to-back, the third game in four days, with the previous night's game on the road in Brooklyn, and you have a game with somewhat diminished expectations, especially from a team that everyone thought was lottery bound anyway. For the season, the Pacers stand at 17-14, 8 games behind the Celtics in the East, good for a fifth seed if the playoffs were today (12/19, that is). Overall they have the 9th best record in the NBA, one game behind preseason darlings the Minnesota Timberwolves, and ahead of such preseason buzz teams as the Milwaukee Bucks, the Washington Wizards, and the Philadelphia 76ers. Indeed, the Pacers are now a part of the in-season buzz, thanks to the unexpected nature of their winning ways.

All of this comes with a king-sized caveat: though the season has been underway since mid-October, it doesn't end until early April. Though the games count from day one, they don't get real until after Christmas, and it's going to be a hell of a lot more difficult to beat the Cavaliers in January (they'll get two chances) than it will have been in November and December (both games the Pacers won). Though it has been a little different this year, perennial contenders like Cleveland and San Antonio generally don't even hit third gear until after the new year, so it's not terribly unusual to see some upstarts steal games before then. The Pacers have had some good wins, but a handful come with asterisks: they took the Spurs without Parker or Leonard, the Knicks without Porzingis, the Nuggets without Milsap and Jokic, and the Cavs before James got off the beach. In the same way that there are no moral victories, there are no qualified wins; but really, we know there are moral victories, and that some wins mean less than others.

As it stands now, the Pacers are the biggest surprise of the adolescent NBA season. After the George for Oladipo/Sabonis trade (for which GM Kevin Pritchard was roundly excoriated), it was assumed from outside Indianapolis that the Pacers were tanking for a lottery pick. Inside Indy, the question was who the Pacers were going to pick up to help them out since, per the Simon ownership group, tanking is not an option. They ended up getting nobody. No less than Zach Lowe (at the top of a very short list of top notch full time basketball writers) chose them as the least watchable team in the league. Everybody who knew anything about the sport predicted their best case scenario to be the eighth playoff spot in a dreadful East: but here we are, with the Pacers at number five in an East that is not nearly as bad as expected.

We are still waiting for the regression. The Pacers are shooting hot from all over the court, being led by a fifth year player scoring eight full points over his career average. The defense, instead of being horrendous, is merely mediocre. Everybody on the team right now seems to be the absolute best version of themselves . . . how can this go on? The answer is that it probably won't, but that doesn't change the fact that the team has a whole new level of expectation: instead of the the eight playoff spot being their stretch goal, the sixth seed seems much more reasonable than them missing the playoffs altogether. This Pacers team is not who we thought they were . . . turns out that that they are much better. Maybe even good.

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Thaddeus Young

The Pacers have been outliers for a while now. Their last big run, under the eye of Frank Vogel and centered around Roy Hibbard, David West, Lance Stephenson, and George Hill (as well as Paul George) saw them playing the role of the defenders when everyone else was focusing on offense. This year, after a failed effort to create an offensive juggernaut in George's last year, the offense has finally arrived; but even so, the Pacers remain outliers in many ways. Now, it is the Kerr/Golden State by-way-of Popovich/San Antonio model of floor spacing, positionless basketball that is all the rage, mercifully taking the place of the hero-ball "trio of superstars" model that succeeded the Michael Jordan era. Hero ball still exists in some places - Houston's reliance on James Hardin as the centerpiece of their new-world ultimate realization of D'Antoni's system, and of course the Cavaliers can count on LeBron James to take over a game when necessary, because who's stopping him? - but, by and large, the league has gone to a sabermetrics-friendly offensive game that eschews all shots but three pointers and dunks because, as the statistics guys tell us, mid-range contested two point shots are the least efficient shots in the game. What this ends up looking like, in practice, is guys running at the rim and kicking it back out to teammates arranged around the three point arc if they run into the least resistance. Big guys underneath are spending less time working for shots, and more time standing around waiting for offensive rebounds and maybe, if they've been really good, an inside outlet from a driver who draws the post defender. All of this has led to some very, very pretty basketball: it's hard to deny the art behind the game when you are watching the Warriors anywhere close to their best.

The Pacers offense relies on pace-and-space, but they run pick and rolls at an extremely high rate. Further, unlike the old hero ball pick and rolls, they will run the pick and rolls with a wide variety of triggers: Oladipo, obviously, is the favorite, but Darren Collison will run it as well, and of course Lance Stephenson and Domantas Sabonis make a great pick and roll team for the second unit. In the case of both units, the Oladipo/Collison or Stephenson/Joseph guard pair finds the point (Collison or Joseph) triggering the offense, but then setting the table for the two guard (Oladipo or Stephenson) to run the pick and roll, leaving the point out at the arc as a three point shooter. On both units, the guard play is very fluid, leaving whoever has the hot hand room to operate. This usually means that, on the first unit, Oladipo and Collison share the trigger about evenly, though you usually end up seeing a lot of Victor in the first and fourth quarters, as well as if the team seems to be moribund. On the second unit . . . well, Lance is Lance, so the ball's gonna be in his hands, and Cory will do whatever is needed, including taking the ball out of Lance's hands when too much Bad Lance makes an appearance. Modern pick and roll isn't exactly hero ball, and it does rely on spacing as much as the Golden State offense, but the screening and passing function is slightly different between the two systems.

New offensive philosophies breed new defensive strategies to counter them, and the top keeps spinning. Current Timberwolves coach Tom Thibodeau is a defensive strategist who wrote the blueprint for ending the 90's iso-ball offenses (hero ball: give your superstar the ball, clear his side of the court, and let him work) when he was with the Celtics in the early aughts. Against the new defenses, the common strategy became to have more than one superstar to operate, a strategy pioneered when the Celtics picked up Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen in 2007 and won an NBA championship powered by their three triplets (Garnett, Allen, and incumbent Paul Pierce). The "three superstar" rule, as vulgarized in popular imagination, became the rule of the day, leading to James's "The Decision" in the summer of 2010 to create his own dynasty in Miami with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. James spent four years in Miami and won two championships, which in retrospect looks less like an endorsement of the "triplets" scheme and more like the force of James's own will. It is telling that popular opinion feels that Miami unperformed in the James era, when in fact two titles in four years will look very good as history provides context. It is also interesting to look at the two teams who beat them: the Dallas Mavericks, driven by incisive in-game coaching by Rick Carlisle and an unconscious performance by Dirk Nowitzki; and the San Antonio Spurs arriving with a fully articulated version of the offense now dominating the NBA.

The arrival of the "triplets" scheme also coincided with the dawn of a primary pace and space principle: the inefficiency of the mid-range jumper. It is about this time when teams started the "run to the rim, kick out for three" strategy that currently dominates offenses. Against this, a defensive strategy evolved which was primarily embodied by the "Blue Collar Gold Swagger" Pacers of a few years back. The idea is fairly simple: get a huge shot-blocking post presence to handle any and all traffic that comes to the rim, and match them with long, rangy, athletic wings to run shooters off the three point line. The Pacers had the perfect starting five for this defense: George Hill was big enough and quick enough to cause serious problems for most point guards trying to trigger offenses; Stephenson and George were big, athletic wings who ran at anybody on the three point line; when the wings oversold on the jump shot and the offense put the ball on the floor, they would meet the great wall of Roy Hibbert at the hoop. Add David West at the four to stop interior passing and clean up rebounds, and you had a defense that was very adept at shutting down the offenses of the day . . . or at least they were until the San Antonio/Golden State model turned "drive and kick" into an intricate, beautiful display of passing and motion.

But as the defense taketh away, so the defense giveth. That ten-to-twenty foot jumper that offenses and defenses alike ignore because it is inefficient? It starts to look a lot more efficient when it is barely contested. And while the current iteration of the Pacers are pretty good both at the rim and on the three point line, it is their mid-range offense which makes them look different than most of the league, and makes their spacing better across the whole court. While the team lacks any true superstars (Victor Oladipo is trying to put the lie to that, but we'll get to that in a minute), it has a lot of decent players who do some things pretty well. Thaddeus Young, for instance, is a player virtually forgotten by the league because his mid-range bump and grind offense is so out of style; but he shows up every night, puts up 13 and 6, and does the little things your team needs to have to be good. Turner and Sabonis both have deadly midrange games: both have the skill and footwork to get their own shots, as well as find open shooters when they draw the double. Both are nightmares to defend in the pick and roll, since both can shoot and drive with equal skill. Oladipo and Collison both can get mid-range space with their quickness and ability to pull up on a dime and get a shot off. Lance still has that old-school playground game, and has the ability to muscle the defenders he can't beat. You're not calling any of these guys superstars, but they are getting the job done . . . and even if some regression shows up in the shooting percentages, it is now clear that are 100% legit on the offensive end.

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Domantas Sabonis

It was no secret that the over riding purpose of the 2016-2017 Indiana Pacers was to convince their franchise player, Paul George, to sign a new contract and stay in Indiana. To that end, Pacers president Larry Bird dumped Frank Vogel and the remnants of Blue Collar Gold Swagger, and tried to re-invent the Pacers as an electric offensive force. It was a miserable failure; at the end of the season, Paul George bailed, followed by Jeff Teague and C. J. Miles, and Bird essentially fired himself, turning control over to Kevin Pritchard. George managed to further deflate his trade value by letting the press know he was leaving at about the same time the team knew. Cleveland desperately wanted George to help them challenge Golden State, but they were unwilling to pay the price Pritchard was asking: George for Kyrie Irving. Ironically, Irving demanded a trade not long after the George trade to OKC was complete, and Cleveland got less value for him. Indiana, for their part, settled for Domantas Sabonis and Victor Oladipo, a deal that had almost every basketball writer wondering aloud if that really was the best they could have done (the general bewildered consensus: uh, no?). Most thought that they were taking on one ex-lottery pick on a bad contract, and one young player with "decent role player" as his upside. Turns out that the haul was much better than anyone - perhaps even Pritchard himself - expected it to be.

Both Oladipo and Sabonis suffered in the oxygen-poor atmosphere of an offense run by Russell Westbrook, but no one knew exactly how much. Sabonis stepped up immediately when projected new franchise Myles Turner suffered a concussion in the first game and ended up missing several after that. When Turner came back, there was some serious discussion as to whether he should go to the bench if he could not co-exist with Sabonis. Sabonis, for his part, is starting to show that he is not too far off of being a really good role player, the kind of "glue guy" essential to any good team.

As big a surprise as Sabonis has provided thus far, it has been Oladipo that has been the real revelation. As mentioned above, Victor is scoring eight points above his career average, and has eagerly accepted the role as the face of the franchise . . . a role that, before this year, there was no indication whatsoever that Vic could fill.

I watched Oladipo at Indiana, and he was a rough-edged player of breathtaking potential. After three years at IU, he went second overall in 2013 (behind Anthony Bennett, who is now out of the league) in a draft whose only real superstar to this day is Giannis Antetokounmpo. Oladipo, for his part, had spent four years in the league, and had yet to transcend the "potential" tag, to the point that is was a serious question as to whether he would ever become a player worthy of his draft position. The trade that brought him to Oklahoma City was supposed to be a move that helped Westbrook by surrounding him with more firepower . . . but Vic only managed a 16 point average last season. In his one season in OKC, his inability to take his game up a level and live up to his potential was becoming his story.

I remember very clearly what his game was at the college level: blindingly fast, ridiculously athletic, shaky handle, hot and cold jumper, good defense that saw him occasionally get burned by over committing. I've not seen much of his previous four seasons in the league, but what little I did see showed minor improvement, not the step up that everyone was looking for. Last year in OKC, he looked better, but still raw. And lost. But that, again, that may be almost as much due to sharing the court with Westbrook as it does his own shortcomings.

Everyone is talking about the jump in the numbers Vic has put up this year, but there's more to it than that. Beyond the numbers, he looks to finally have taken that step that he was expected to take in year two or three. There has been talk about his new physical regimen, about how he has transformed his body. No doubt this has helped, and no doubt starting to be this uncompromising about his body will help in the future, but Vic's physicality has never been his problem. He has always been fast, strong, and athletic, and beyond the added endurance, I think the mental boost this regimen has given him is its most important benefit. But, while the national TV audience for the OKC game was enthralled by Vic's new six-pack, I was noticing a lot of other differences from the days he was in Bloomington: first, dude finally has a handle. Back in the IU days, his kamikaze dives at the rack were almost as likely to end up with Vic dribbling off his foot as they were with him slamming it home . . . but now, though he's not exactly Kyrie Irving in traffic, he still manages to control his drives just fine; and given his speed, that's quite enough.

This transformation goes beyond his control, body or handle. Victor has always seemed like a bit of a slow learner; but watching him lately it seems that he has finally absorbed the offensive side of the game in a way that he never has before. There is an oft repeated clip of Vic breaking Kevin Love's ankles to hit a dagger three to end the Cavalier's win streak, but the part that really impressed me is how he ran the play by waving off Bogdanovic's pick (Bojan was guarded by James, it would have defeated the purpose to run J. R. Smith through a pick just to have James switch onto him) and calling Young up to get Love on the switch. And there's more, a lot more: he's getting ridiculous with his caroms off the backboard on his drives, which allows shots from all different angles when he's driving, and also helps him complete the shot through contact. His decision making is much better than before, when his choices to drive, shoot, or pass seemed (seemed? probably were) completely arbitrary. And while his outside stroke seems to be better than it was, that's almost secondary; he actually seems to be building an arsenal of shots that he can use even when his stroke temporarily deserts him. I'm convinced that, even if Victor's shot encounters some turbulence, he's finally made the step up. The All Star team is a very real prospect for him this year, as is the Most Improved Player at the end of the year. But beyond that, Oladipo is ready to be the face of the franchise, if that is what is called for. Or, if another face of the franchise shows up, he's willing to step aside and play the role he has been given. And what's more, he has a rare temperament which will allow him to function in whatever role is necessary for winning, as well has the wisdom to finally understand how he may contribute to that ultimate goal. In short, Victor Oladipo has become a franchise player, even if he is not the franchise player.

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Bojan Bogdanovic

There's more to this team - Myles Turner leads the league in blocks, Darrin Collison has shown an uncanny ability to manipulate game tempo to the Pacers advantage, Lance Stephenson rebounds his position like a maniac (well, he does everything like a maniac) - but it's time to bail with one last note: chemistry.

"Chemistry" in team sports is a nebulous concept: you can observe it, but you can't quantify it. It often becomes one of those mystical bullshit shibboleths that old timers will throw out contra sabermetrics, and one of those unfortunate points of statistical noise that the numbers folk ignore because they can't plot it. Chemistry became a big thing during the whole "triplets" era: Boston immediately had great chemistry between Garnett, Allen, and Pierce, so much so that everyone pretty much assumed that getting stars was all you had to do, when of course you have to figure out how the stars fit together. The LeBron Heat teams did well, but they didn't automatically win, which is why some thought them a failure. Right now, OKC has the reigning MVP (Westbrook), one of the two best two way players in the league (George), and the best pure scorer in the league (Anthony); yet, as of this writing, they are .500 for the year. They are starting to figure things out, but it's not something that always happens right away . . . there's this weird qualitative thing we call "chemistry" that always pops up in most unpredictable ways.

Indiana Pacers fans know about chemistry. When Frank Vogel took over for the fired Jim O'Brien in 2011, the Pacers had been mired in mediocrity since the implosion of the Malice at the Palace Pacers. Vogel managed to elevate the Pacers to the level of feisty underdogs almost immediately, and showed steady improvement from there. In the 2012-2013 season, those feisty underdogs made it to the Eastern Conference finals to give the hated Heat everything they could ask for. The 2013-2014 Pacers managed to get the first seed in the playoffs, but not before an ugly confrontation with chemistry.

That year, the young Pacers thought they had everything pretty much lined up. They had chemistry: George Hill frequently took Paul George and Roy Hibbert out fishing on Geist, and somewhere, there is a brilliant picture of the team at Disneyland. There may have been an offensive revolution in progress, but the Pacers had the defense to solve the problem. But, as good as the P were on defense, they could never generate consistent offense . . . that was the chink in the armor.

Larry Bird was never a fan of "good enough". And, as a hard-assed Hoosier individualist, he had a dour view of mystical concepts like "chemistry". On February 21st, 2014, Bird traded Danny Granger, Paul George's mentor and the only bright light from the previous Pacer era, for Evan Turner and Lavoy Allen. Granger, in spite of his status as a team hero, was diminished by knee and lower leg injuries, and by that point was a rather expensive bench/situational player. Bird decided that he needed more offense of the bench, and he thought Turner was a good answer. On paper, he may have been, but the callous offloading of a player that had been the emotional and spiritual core of the team had an effect. There were rumors of off-court friction between the players, and many reports that Turner caused friction on the court as well. This nebulous thing called chemistry asserted itself in a very concrete way: before the trade, the Pacers were 41-13; after, they were 15-13. When Bird decided to dismantle the Blue Collar Gold Swagger Pacers, he managed to poison the well by making it clear to Roy Hibbert that the team did not want him has a way of getting Hibbert to refuse his player option. That poison carried into last season . . . and frankly, George had every reason to leave an organization which was becoming dysfunctional.

But, upon the exit of Bird and George, a funny thing happened: the team found chemistry again. It may be the freedom of lower expectations, it may be the "new day" vibe, and with it a chance for a bunch of players who labored in the shadows to prove themselves. That considered, it certainly has a lot to do with the personalities of the players: a humble two guard who never had the ego to match his raw talents, a big pivot with a preternatural positive outlook on life, a prodigal son who returned to find that Indianapolis would not only tolerate his eccentricity, but revel in it. As it stands now, this team plays together as well as any that has ever been here . . . Oladipo is the big shot guy now, and everyone looks for him when the game is on the line, but Vic knows that, if he draws the defense, he can pass it off to anyone, and they will know what to do. Right now it is trust that is driving this team, and it shows. Oladipo may lead the team, but there are five other players that average double figures, and everyone on the team can count on getting the ball if he is open. There is an openness and optimism to this team that is catching the fans in Banker's Life Fieldhouse, and it's getting noticed around the league.

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Darren Collison

That's about a wrap for this screed; but before I go, where is the team really?

Right now, the upside goal is a four seed in the Eastern Conference, minimum expectation would have to be a seven. Six seems realistic to me.

If they can get to a five seed or above, we should expect them to win a playoff series. Six, seven, or eight would have them facing the Celtics, Raptors, or Cavaliers, and I would expect any of those series to be a competitive loss.

At the end of the day, this will be a very good season for the Pacers. They are already playing with house money since they were expected to be a lottery team . . . they have the freedom of low expectations. And while the expectations have already advanced due to the early season performance, they still have plenty of slack on their side.

Things will get tougher for the Pacers. Their opponents no longer see them as a lottery team, and will adjust accordingly. Some of those numbers will regress to the mean somewhat. But, through all that, there is enough going for this team that they should be able to maintain their pace, whatever obstacles may arrive. They may be surpassing expectations, and they may be catching teams off guard, but there also is plenty of room to get even better than they are now. This team is clearly better than anyone thought it would be.

The next step, as the previous iteration of the team found out the hard way, is the hard one. In the meantime, enjoy this season, 'cause it will be a fun one.