Why the Indiana Pacers Had to Overhaul Their Roster
By Ben Gibson
When the Indiana Pacers’ offseason began, Larry Bird said he wanted the team to play faster. There was one big problem with that and last year’s roster: Each extra possession for the Pacers last year cut their chances of winning by almost 1%. Ouch.
More simply put, the Pacers roster hadn’t shown the ability to be effective as a smaller, faster team. When the speed of the game picked up the Pacers often found themselves on the wrong side of the scoreboard.
Was it perception or was it real?
I had my friend Michael Beverage run of the data and the results may not be surprising, but they didn’t fit will with Bird’s vision for the team.
The Pacers had a season-long average of 95.5 possessions per game in 2014-15. When their pace was over that mark they were 11-26. When they played fast, they lost more.
Looking at last year’s games, there was a -0.194 correlation between the Pacers pace and their offensive rating. When the game went faster, Indiana’s offense got worse — much worse. While the defense actually was slightly better (a +0.029 correlation), Indiana’s offense wasn’t comfortable with the added possessions. As he explained it to me, for each added possession, the Pacers had almost a 1% less chance of winning the game.
In more easy-to-process terms, the Pacers had a season-long average of 95.5 possessions per game in 2014-15. When their pace was over that mark they were 11-26. When they played fast, they lost more.
It also isn’t too surprising that the Pacers were 9-24 when opponents scored over 100 points. Although they were 25-10 in games in which they themselves scored over 100, so perhaps Bird is right to want more points.
All this serves as a counter, or at least an explanation for why Larry Bird went so extreme. Matt More of CBS feels like the team, or at least Larry Bird, has gone too far in trying to adjust the roster to fix that problem.
"Can the Pacers pull off this transition to smallball? I’m all for staying ahead of the curve, and adapting to the new realities of the league. But that’s if you’re a team with no real future, not a team that was so close to a title it hurts, and the team that beat you no longer exists in that form.Larry Bird went to extremes this offseason. Maybe David West was always gone, and maybe if that hadn’t happened, he would have reconsidered trading Roy Hibbert. To go to the lengths he did to reshape this team, as quickly as he did, looks pretty extreme, though. Still, the damage is done and the Pacers are going to this smallball approach no matter what.The biggest change will see Paul George move to smallball four, at least part of the time. It’s an idea that George isn’t exactly thrilled about, and that Bird says just isn’t that big of a deal. In 2014, George posted up just five percent of the time. Obviously, George will be used as a stretch four as the Pacers look to go four or five out. But there’s just no real evidence to know how George will function as a rebounder, defending true bigs or even as a primary screener.Bird has said the move is designed with the intent of taking the stress off George’s injured leg by not making him chase small forwards. The problem, of course, is that it doesn’t cover the issue of him having to defend bigger, stronger players, and to attack them on the glass. There’s a tradeoff."
That trade off looks to be working in the preseason, but we’ll see what happens in real game action soon enough.
No matter if it was a plan Larry Bird had all along of merely adjusting to the situation, it was obvious the Pacers roster as constructed, with big men like Hibbert and West, wasn’t going to play at a faster pace and be a better team. The Pacers had to overhaul their roster in one way or another if they were serious about playing small ball.
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Replacing their big men wasn’t a priority after that. Bird drafted Turner with the 11th pick but that’s where he was expected to go even before Roy and David left. Indiana picked a guard in Joe Young in the 2nd round and then spent the rest of the summer picking up smaller and faster players in the form of Monta Ellis, Chase Budinger, Glenn Robinson III, and Rakeem Christmas. They picked up Jordan Hill as an insurance policy and to corner the market on the NBA’s Hills.
Of course starting tonight against the Raptors we’ll find out if this plan will actually work. PG complained early in preseason about playing the four though that chatter slowed when he had strong performances. If the Pacers hit a rough patch will he get vocal again on his role with the team? We don’t know. We don’t know if any of these moves are really going to work. Much of the media isn’t convinced this will work either and said as much by making the Pacers a fringe playoff contender. Even our own 8 Points, 9 Seconds staff isn’t convinced this is going to work either.
Tonight begins what will either be Larry Bird’s most clever move or his biggest mistake.