Frank Vogel: The Indiana Pacers Beacon of Optimism

February was pretty good to Indiana Pacers coach Frank Vogel.

Not only did his once-injury-plagued team finally look like it was rounding into shape, leading the league with a 7-2 record and 47% shooting during the short month, but Vogel was also named Eastern Conference Coach of the Month for his efforts. That’s a far cry from last February, when the team was just starting to slip into The Struggle.

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Vogel’s crowning achievement for the month, though, came with the Pacers’ win against the Cleveland Cavaliers on the last Friday in February. With that victory, Vogel surpassed Larry Brown’s old record of 190 to become the winningest coach in the Indiana Pacers NBA history, which seems pretty crazy considering he was wearing the interim tag just four years ago after replacing Jim O’Brien at midseason.

It seems less crazy when considering what Vogel has accomplished since he took the job.

From his first press conference, Vogel has been adamant and unwavering about his intent to win games, and with the exception of playoff series versus the Miami Heat, that’s pretty much all he has done. Vogel inherited a 17-27 team from O’Brien in 2011, and in the last 38 games, he led the team to a 20-18 record and managed to sneak into the final playoff spot in the East, where they took on the first-seeded Bulls in the first round.

Average NBA fans might not remember that series, but both Indiana and Chicago fans remember it well, despite the fact it lasted just five games.

That year, Derrick Rose was the MVP — really, it wasn’t that long ago — and Vogel tasked Paul George with guarding him as he increasingly shredded Indiana late in games. The first-year small forward had been a victim to O’Brien’s infamous distrust of rookie players earlier in the season, but Vogel showed faith in George, sticking him on Rose and keeping him there even as the Bulls point guard went on to average almost 28 points per game during the series.

Still, it was a formative experience for PG and a tremendous demonstration of trust in a young player by Vogel. This was Pacers’ fans first taste of his unrelenting faith in his own players, which has become the hallmark of his personality as a coach. Later in the series, with Indiana down 3-1 heading into a Game 5 they would eventually lose, Vogel made headlines with the first of what has become many absurd proclamations of confidence in his team, saying, “We feel like if we win this game tonight, we win the series.”

Obviously Vogel and the Pacers lost both Game 5 and the series. But since then, he has been one of the most successful coaches in the game and the stabilizing force of the Pacers. According to Basketball Reference, Vogel ranks 11th among active coaches with a career .589 winning percentage, but even that understates how he has been able to help mold the Indiana franchise.

Pacers Culture

While team president Larry Bird assembled the pieces, Frank Vogel has been the architect behind a selfless, defense-first team built around length. Strategically, Indiana’s defense under Vogel hails from the school of Tom Thibodeau. Vogel aims to prevent 3-point opportunities and plays pick-and-rolls conservatively, sagging back on the driving man rather than trapping aggressively and forcing a pass.

Both measures force teams into taking less-efficient mid-range jump-shots or, better still, into the shot-blocking Roy Hibbert — the 7’2″ rim-protecting dynamo who Jim O’Brien couldn’t develop.

Lots of teams play good defense, but not even Thibodeau’s Bulls have been as good as the Pacers in recent years. /

Given the injuries to Paul George and George Hill and the departure of Lance Stephenson, this year’s team only ranks 9th in the NBA in points per possession allowed. But they were first in each of the past two seasons.

Frank Vogel has also developed two of the best defenders in the league at their respective positions in George and Hibbert, literally changing the latter’s career by helping him develop “his verticality rule,” as LeBron James once called it.

When debating whether to initially keep Vogel four years ago, despite the many unknowns surrounding a coach who was just 38 games old, there was never any doubt whether or not the players enjoyed playing for him. By deciding to retain him, the front office gave him a chance to build on those relationships and foster a culture, and that’s exactly what Vogel has done.

Frank Vogel recently talked to Ethan Skolnick of Bleacher Report about how that culture has helped Indiana’s resilience this season.

"“I think the culture had a lot to do with [the resilience],” Vogel said. “I did have concerns, not so much that I questioned our players’ intent or anything like that, but I just know what losing does at this level. Losing separates you. And we talked about it frequently, that we have a good culture, we have a good system, we have to stay the course and try to work it and continue to try to accomplish the things we accomplished in the past.“We guarded against separating. But it was a concern of mine. And the fact that we didn’t is less of a credit to our culture, and more of a credit to the guys we have in our locker room. We’ve got high-character guys. That’s what we built this around. That’s what Larry Bird went out, even before I became the coach here, to change our identity.”"

David West recently discussed how his coach has been a guiding light for the team during this tough year and how is always-present but never-phony optimism has kept the team fighting.

“We could have just said, ‘This is gonna be a wasted year,'” said West. “But he never let that creep in. He never lets whatever’s going on — whether it’s in a game, after a game — he never lets negatives linger. He doesn’t let ’em. He addresses them. He knows how to just galvanize a group together.”

This isn’t some facade that Vogel put on in a trying season. It has been present since West joined the team, and he believes that it was Vogel’s demeanor and positivity that got the team through its roughest stretches last year.

“One thing that I’ve learned from him,” said West, “is this — I don’t even know what to call it — is like this unwavering optimism and belief … I don’t know how to really describe it, other than to say that he has a way of just pulling guys up, just constantly. Just pulling you up, pulling you up. Building you up. I said this last year, but he’s probably the only coach that coulda got us through what we went through last year, because of that. You’ve got guys not playing well, not performing well. I think part of human nature is to say, ‘Yeah, you’re not playin’ well — even as a group. He doesn’t do that.”

Externally, this is something Vogel started to take flak for last season.

The team’s collapse started in earnest around the All-Star break. Rumors surfaced of a locker-room divide centered around Lance Stephenson. Indiana went 10-13 during their final 23 games. They stumbled into their first-round series against the Hawks, and came a little more than 3 minutes from elimination in Game 6.

But Vogel continued to stand by the players who had brought the team that far, to the point that his optimism began to sound like PR work. He wasn’t entirely wrong, though, as the Pacers did beat the Hawks in seven games, then the Wizards in six before that whole series with those guys on the Heat.

At the time, Vogel’s penchant for positivity made him an easy target for criticism, especially while the team continued to flail.

George Hill and David West spoke on the topic to Mark Montieth of Pacers.com for his three-part story about Vogel:

"“To say he doesn’t hold us accountable is absurd,” George Hill said. “But he balances it. He talks to us like human beings. He has everyone’s respect in this locker room.”Sometimes a softer touch is needed, though. Last season, the Pacers finished poorly and backed into the No. 1 seed in the East. They faced an Atlanta team that posed difficult matchups for them in the first round, and lost Game 1 in Indianapolis. It was a doomsayer’s delight, reprising all the negative conversation that had followed the team through the final six weeks of the season.One of the network television commentators that night said Vogel needed to jump down his players’ throats to get them going again.“He told us he wasn’t going to do that,” West said. “He wouldn’t pile on; he just wouldn’t buy into that.“He’s honest and real, but he gives you true optimism. When you’re not playing well, some coaches will pile on or just say ‘these guys aren’t responding to me.’ He never did that.”"

Guiding the Team Forward

Even when Frank Vogel was awarded with a contract extension before the season, questions were raised about his role during Indiana’s collapse. Now, one year after The Struggle began, the influence of Vogel has become more clear.

While Stephenson drags down the Hornets in Charlotte, the guys replacing him — C.J. Miles and Rodney Stuckey — have been seamless additions to the team. Stuckey has been especially great of late. The bulldog guard is putting up the most efficient shooting numbers of his career under Vogel, and despite a me-first on-court reputation, Stuckey has been helping the Pacers in multiple ways every night.

More importantly, Frank Vogel has this mish-mash team staring down a playoff berth. That’s a remarkable feat, given everything this group has endured just since the summer, and Vogel himself would be the first to downplay his role in that success.

“Coach of the Month is always a team award,” said Vogel after taking home February honors. “It’s indicative of team success. It’s nice recognition for our players who didn’t quit through a lot of adversity. We still have a lot of work to do, but I’m looking forward to seeing what this group can accomplish.”

This is typical coach talk and especially fitting from Vogel, the type of guy who ends his postseason press conference by genuinely wishing media members “good luck with your deadlines.”

But the truth is, the politics of coaching in the NBA can be pretty thorny, as evidenced with the hirings and firings of coaches like Mike Malone and Mark Jackson in the last few years alone. The Pacers themselves know this well.

The front office also, then, knows how lucky it is to have found Vogel. The have a coach who is not only on the exact same page as the rest of the franchise, but also capable of coaching teams in many different scenarios. He turned his early up-and-coming Indiana teams into the would-be contenders of last year and now is keeping that core on life support while they try to recover from 12 months where each blow seems worse than the last.

With the playoffs (and Paul George’s return, maybe) in sight, hopefully the team will be able to ride the same wave as Man in the Tan Suit is currently.

Frank Vogel deserves consideration for Coach of the Year, but for right now, February coach of the month will have to do.

Next: Nuggets Fire Brian Shaw, David West Calls It 'Bulls***'

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Frank Vogel: The Pacers Beacon of Unwavering Optimism

By Adam Lukach | Mar 4, 2015

Pacers Culture

Guiding the Team Forward

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