By the Numbers: Pacers Starting to Fall Behind

One week in, here’s another installment of the By The Numbers series for the 2014-15 Indiana Pacers season

529

The Indiana Pacers honored their newest Hall-of-Famer Slick Leonard on opening night by updating his 529-win banner and giving him a Cadillac Escalade.

1-4

After picking up an opening night win over the here-for-reasons-other-than-trying-to-win-games Philadelphia 76ers, the Pacers have dropped all four games in the two sets of back-to-backs played over the last week. None of the games were wire-to-wire disaster, but all were illustrations of the kind of futility we may come to expect this season. Thus far, they have been not quite good enough to hang with their opponents. On the bright side, the overtime loss at Washington two days ago was probably Indiana’s best performance to date.

62, -45

The Pacers’ current starting lineup  — Donald Sloan, C.J. Miles, Solomon Hill, Luis Scola, Roy Hibbert — has been outscored by 45 points in their 62 minutes together this year. This figure is disturbing, considering the Pacers have only been outscored by 14 points overall. Further, they have posted negative +/-‘s in all five games and in eight of their 10 first- and third-quarter rotations.

The advanced numbers aren’t any kinder. This unit is allowing 37.4 more points per 100 possessions than it is scoring (109.7 allowed vs. 72.2 scored). Almost any combination of five Pacers that breaks up this group has performed better. At 19.2%, Indiana currently has the fourth-worst turnover percentage (TOV%) in the Association. These five guys on the floor together turn it over 22.6% of the time. They allow .544 eFG% while turning in a .397 mark of their own. Frank Vogel — the coiner of the term “Smashmouth Basketball” — is starting a unit that has been outscored in the paint 62 to 24.

When this group is broken up in virtually any way, the Pacers fare better. In those 183 minutes, the offense puts up 104 points per 100, while the defense allows only 96. They protect the ball better, as the TOV% drops to 15.0%. Their eFG% is a more respectable .493, while they’re holding opponents to .442. Finally, they get more “Smashmouth-y,”  collecting over 31% of the offensive rebound chances and almost 79% of the defensive rebounding chances, and outscoring their opponents 130-124 in the paint.

Some of this is matchups. It’s fair to assume that this unit is spending most of their time against the other teams’ starters. Still, they are getting beaten like a rented mule.

74, +28

Opposing starting lineups have scored 28 more points than the Pacers in their 74 minutes. It gets worse if you exclude Philly, jumping to +39 in 65 minutes of game play. Over the last four games, the other teams’ starters have scored 111 per 100, while the Pacers could only manage 80 per 100 in that time. Not all of this is hay made while the Pacer starters are out there, but a lot of it is.

Perhaps most telling about these teams’ coaches view these units is usage in the 4th Quarter and Overtime. Through five games, the starting units for opposing teams have played 19 of the 65 minutes – a number depressed by the Courtney Lee injury causing him to miss the second half for the Grizzlies. The Pacer starting lineup has only seen one minute of 4th quarter play, and that was on opening night against Philly.

73%

The Indiana Pacers have played 245 minutes this year. They’ve trailed for 178 of these minutes, or 73% of game clock time. They’ve trailed for 45 of their 60 first quarter minutes, 35 of 60 second quarter minutes, and 47 of 60 in each of the third and fourth quarters.

Throw out the Sixer game, and it gets outright depressing. Indy has trailed for 157 of the 197 minutes over the last four games (80%). They’ve been looking up at the other team for 93 of the 101 minutes after halftime in those games.

In the 53 total fourth quarter and overtime minutes of their four-game losing streak, they have led for a grand total of 9 seconds, and been tied only four times totaling just under 2 minutes of clock time.

For perspective, last year’s team trailed only about 42% of the time, and just over 35% of their fourth quarter minutes.

+24.1 per 100, -27.0 per 100

So far this season, the Pacers have enjoyed their greatest Net Efficiency (points scored per 100 possession minus points allowed per 100) in the 53 minutes that Rodney Stuckey has been on the floor – +24.1 per 100. They’ve taken the greatest beating in Luis Scola’s 112 minutes, allowing 27 more points per hundred than they score.

The following chart shows how the Pacers perform, when each player is on the floor. The up-down axis is points scored per 100, and left-right is points allowed. The size of the player’s bubble indicates how many minutes he’s played. The axes cross at the team average. Up and to the right is where you want to be, while down and to the left is bad news. The other two quadrants? Well…it depends on how far down or how far to the left you are.

 29.4, 6th, but…19.2, 4th & 12.2, 2nd, and 104 to 51

In the last By the Numbers, I referenced a tweet by John Schumann of NBA.com that showed the Pacers had been the worst offensive rebounding team in the NBA during the preseason. Despite noting that preseason stats are meaningless – as a rule – I felt it was important in relation to the identity of the Frank Vogel-coached Pacers.

Well, five games in, the Pacers are grabbing 29.4% of the chances of their offensive glass, better than all but three teams. They’re even better on the defensive glass, where their 79.1% defensive rebounding rate is second only to Charlotte.

However, after being better than average at taking care of the ball during the preseason, Indiana is turning the ball over 19.2% of the time, while their opponents are only doing it 12.2% of the time. Those are, respectively, the fourth and second worst marks in the league. Worse, they’ve given up 104 points off of those miscues, but generated only 51 points of the opposing team’s screw ups. That’s 10.6 points on a per game basis, and nobody in the NBA is worse at this.

So, yeah, that’s a big reason why the Pacers are 1-4 – and why preseason stats are largely garbage.