The Pacers Defense Is Now Forcing a Ton of Turnovers

While the Indiana Pacers have been turning the ball over a lot this year, the less-discussed story has been how much their opponents are coughing the ball up. The Pacers are currently leading the league in steals per game (10.8) while generally forcing a ton of turnovers.

This seems to be part of the plan as they transition to playing smaller and faster, and it goes against the previous defensive systems created by Frank Vogel.

The overall defensive results so far in this early season aren’t encouraging, but what we may be seeing is the coach’s attempt to adapt the team’s schemes to its wing-focused personnel. And if he wants to turn his team from what it was — a formidable force that made teams miss shots — into a turnover-creating machine, then there is a lot to like in the early progress.

The Pacers scored 30 points off 23 turnovers by the Pistons to get their first win of the year on Tuesday, for example. They also forced the Celtics into committing 19 turnovers and made the Raptors cough the ball up 21 times. As of Thursday, they were forcing turnovers on 18.9% of their opposition’s possessions, the third-best rate in the league.

This is new. Frank Vogel’s previous, often-best-in-league defenses were never designed to force turnovers. They were predicated on preventing opponents from (a) getting good shots at the rim, (b) getting good shots behind the arc, and (c) contesting everything.

When the Pacers had the NBA’s best defense in both 2012-13 and 2013-14, they ranked 26th and 22nd, respectively, when it came to forcing turnovers. It was simply never a priority, and the type of gambling and pressure needed to force turnovers went against the disciplined, positional, bend-never-break style of team defense Vogel had intricately crafted.

Obviously, five games is a silly sample size is to draw deep conclusions from. And there is reason to believe that this rate will drop since turnover rates, league-wide, tend to be elevated early in the season as teams try shake the offseason rust and integrate new players.

But there is definitely more ball pressure on the wing. Pacers players are flying around and getting their hands in passing lanes in a way that they have not in years past on a game-long basis. This doesn’t seem to be just a stat fluke.

Guys like George Hill and, especially, Paul George have superior talent for this style of play, and Monta Ellis has been doggedly hounding the ball on the perimeter. No more are the Pacers perimeter defenders acting as if there is a 7’2″ rim protector and a bruiser like David West behind them. They are trying to force the action and it’s working.

Paul George: Defensive Savant

More than anything on a systematic level, Paul George is just amazing. He has started off the year poorly in terms of making shots on the offensive end, but his defense is already back to where it was at his absolute peak during the first half of the 2013-14 season.

I mean, just look at the steal in the clip above. It’s preposterous.

His decision to hedge at Zach Randolph is something Pacers wings have been doing a lot this year as they seek to help the true bigs and C.J. Miles when there is a post threat. Then again, his ability to do that, freeze Z-Bo, then recover to make a Mr. Fantastic-level steal is all PG. But it’s no surprise that Vogel is choosing to unleash the beast that is “Paul George, Defensive Savant” even more this year now that Hibbert is gone.

Here’s more.

On this play, Paul George does everything and singlehandedly forces a steal that gets him 2 free points.

First, he denies Gordon Hayward the ball before lurking at the free-throw line in help position and cutting off any chance Utah has to hit Rudy Gobert rolling to the hoop. Then he damn-near jumps the lane to swipe the swing pass before deciding not to gamble and instead use his otherworldly body control and insane discipline to just come over and square up Hayward. The former Butler Bulldog tries some fancy dribble nonsense, but Paul is having none of it and simply slaps the ball away before leaking out for the layup.

Here’s one more example of PG crushing Hayward’s soul.

That’s the main takeaway here: PG is arguably the best wing defender in the NBA, and when he is making usually-effective screens irrelevant, using his length and quickness to get deflections, and employing inhuman body control to disrupt every move a ball-handler tries, Frank Vogel’s job is a lot easier.

Whatever the system.

Ellis the Menace

Monta Ellis has a reputation of being a bad defender. The Indianapolis Star ran a Gregg Doyel column this Summer called “Why Monta Ellis may drive Pacers fans crazy” that  says “you won’t love the 6-3, 175-pound Ellis’ defense” and included a Larry Bird quote that Monta “is not a great defender.”

Monta himself added some wood to the fire by claiming that “only a handful of guys in this NBA that play defense. You can name five of them, and one of them is on my team.” While Doyel took this to mean that Ellis doesn’t care about defense, I interpreted more as Monta saying, I’m just as capable as all these wings who aren’t Paul George, Kawhi, Tony Allen, Iguodala, LeBron, or Jimmy Butler. And I get to suit up with PG now, so don’t worry about me.

Indeed, Monta is not any of those guys by any stretch of any imagination, and it’s easy to argue that his defensive performance is regularly below average. But I’ve always thought that was more about attitude than his ability: He doesn’t put his all into it when the team isn’t that great or he disengages from the game. Obviously, that’s not an ideal characteristic, but his early Pacers tenure has already shown that he absolutely has high-level defensive chops when he’s locked in.

Monta has been maybe the most aggressive player in terms ball pressure this year

Especially in the first quarter, he has been an absolute menace, forcing turnover after turnover, and this seems to be a combination of his complete engagement as well as a directive from his coach. If he can keep this up all year (and Rodney Stuckey has been replicating this with the bench squad as a part of his overall Poor Man’s Monta Ellis repertoire), then there is reason to think Indiana might lead the league in steals all season.

Welcome to Sisqó’s Disco

George Hill’s vast wingspan belies his NBA-relative short statue, and his ability to be a disruptor is well documented. He has been tremendous in this regard early in the season, pairing with PG and Monta to make life stressful for opposing wings.

Between his quick hands batting so many balls out of the sky and his near-50% (14-for-30) shooting from long-range, he has been the Pacers MVP so far this year. Hill has always been the fulcrum at the top of Vogel’s top-level defense, and now it seems as if he is being instructed to take even more chances and play up on ball-handlers even closer. From here, he has been able to get a ton of deflections.

We’ve seen in the past that quick guards — like Jeff Teague and John Wall in critical playoff games — have been able to beat Hill off the bounce. With Hibbert and Co. behind him, that wasn’t usually a fatal flaw. But it will be interesting to see if Hill can be this aggressive while also staying in front of top-end point guards.

So far, though, he has been stellar in balancing those responsibilities.

Frank Vogel Goes Aggressive

Many coaches — even really good coaches — have a singular philosophy and system. They can do their thing well, but aren’t adept at adapting.  To me, this is why Gregg Popovich is the greatest coach in history. He started as a defense-and-rebounding-only militaristic leader but has evolved into a guru of offensive creativity and ball movement.

Frank Vogel is no Pop. That’s not a slight, it’s the truth. Nobody is.

But Vogel has been one of the best defensive minds on the planet for the past half decade. He crafted an incredibly effective system to make the opponent miss.

Now, he appears to be changing tact and is for the first time in his head-coaching life starting to prioritize turnover creation. Given his roots in the Rick Pitino coaching tree, it would not be surprising to see him transition seamlessly from a play-it-straight-up style to a bring-the-fight-to-them defense.

But for all the discussion of how small ball will affect scoring and whether or not Paul George want to play the 4 spot, it’s important to note that it isn’t just the offense that is changing. Just a few games in, it looks clear that this team will be much more aggressive on defense.

The Pacers used to sit back and say, “I dare you to shoot that.”

Now, it’s more like, “GIMME THAT.”

The overall defense has not been good so far this year, coming it at 17th best in the league. Everyone expected the team to fall back on this end of the floor, however, and the main question coming into the season was whether improved scoring could offset the drop-off in defense from “absolutely elite” to “pretty good.”

But if this can really be a top-tier turnover-creating system, the Vogel Defense 2.0 might not backslide as far as many thought it would. The Golden State Warriors, for example, had the league’s best defense last year while forcing turnovers and Erik Spoelstra’s formidable squads always ranked first, or near the top, in this category. Forcing turnovers can be a great way to keep the opposition from scoring efficiently.

So if Vogel can make the Pacers elite in this respect and combine that with a clearly better offense, perhaps this year of transition may not be as bad as many feared. And at the very least, it will certainly be more fast-paced and exciting than the old smashmouth style.