The Indiana Pacers Aren’t Playing MoreyBall
By Ben Gibson
The Indiana Pacers were expected to embrace a modern style of play — following innovators like the Golden State Warriors and Houston Rockets — but so far they’ve been anything but a MoreyBall team.
As soon as the offseason began Larry Bird said the Indiana Pacers would be a faster and smaller team. Gone were David West, Roy Hibbert, and Luis Scola, in came Monta Ellis, Chase Budinger, and Glenn Robinson III. Paul George would see time at the power forward position and embark on a new style greatness. Even the big man they drafted — Myles Turner — was known for his shooting ability away from the basket, and can possibly hit 3’s in the NBA.
Well, only part of that happened — and that was Paul George greatness. The whole small ball, 3-point shooting, Golden State Warriors inspired revolution hasn’t come to Indiana for the most part.
In Houston their general manager Daryl Morey has pushed the idea of the most efficient brand of basketball, something we’ll call MoreyBall, in which a team tries to take the majority of its shots from 3-point range or close to the rim. The idea being that 3-pointers are simply worth more despite the difficulty of making them, and any shot from inside the arc should be as close as possible, and more likely to go in on average. Our formula for calculating the percent of shots that fall within those areas is as follows: Total FGA/(3P FGA+Shots Within 5 Feet of the Rim) = MoreyBall.
The Pacers were suppose to be something like Golden State (66.8% MoreyBall shots) and Houston (78.2%) to help their smaller lineup be a faster and more efficient unit.
The results are mixed, to say the least. The Pacers only shoot 57.4% of their shots from those areas, ranking 24th in the league in that regard. Part of the reason for this is the team’s most active shooters (PG, Monta, Jordan Hill) are shooting plenty from midrange.
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C.J. Miles and George Hill are the two starters that best represent MoreyBall, with respective 84.3% and 79.3% MoreyBall percentages. C.J. has been the Indiana Pacers kickout man, playing the role perfectly as he’s made 40% of his 3-point attempts. We saw last night against Washington how valuable that can be to the Pacers.
George Hill has been shooting 45.3% from beyond the arc and also showing us the Aggressive George Hill™ we saw last season as he attacks the basket often as well.
Just watching them it is clear that they fit perfectly into that MoreyBall model.
However the franchise player Paul George only scores 54.8% in MoreyBall. As he loudly and proudly stated not too long ago, he isn’t a big fan of analytics, at least as a end-all solution.
Of course, there lies the area where Charles Barkley some seem to get hung up on the whole idea of analytics. Sure, normally you don’t want to settle and take too many midrange shots, but when you are knocking down 46% of your shots from that range, you can shoot there all you want. He shoots nearly a quarter of his shots from the 16 feet to 3-point range and makes nearly half of them. There are questions about how long he can keep that up, but at the moment he’s making those shots. If he starts to struggle from midrange, he may want to consider attacking the basket more.
Just like how David West was deadly from the top of the key, if it is a shot you can take and make consistently, it isn’t an issue. Paul George is playing at a top-10-player level right now and averaging 24.8 points a game. Plus even though he doesn’t attack the basket as regularly as you’d imagine — about 16% of his shots come from within 10-feet of the basket — he’s been shooting from beyond the arc at a pace and efficiency we’ve not seen from him before.
Paul George may not be playing MoreyBall, but taking plenty of 3s, and making them, is part of the idea. And as long as he’s making his shots, Frank Vogel and Larry Bird won’t give a damn where he’s shooting from.
The same can be said for Monta Ellis. A few weeks ago I wrote about how
Ellis was finding his groove running the pick and roll with Jordan Hill
. Both love to take midrange shots out of that situation in particular, and Ellis is making 45.7% of his shots while Jordan Hill makes 43.1%.
Hill likes to take shots every now and then after setting the pick
, while Monta likes finding a seem for his pull-up jumper.
It has been working well over the last 10 games, plus you have to consider neither are particularly active 3-point shooters, hurting their MoreyBall rating. But as long as they’re scoring and making their shots, you aren’t going to worry.
And another thing to note with these midrange shooters is they’re at least taking one page from MoreyBall. PG let’s it rain from beyond the arc with good precision while Monta Ellis attacks the basket often, and more importantly, successfully.
This isn’t to discount MoreyBall by any means. It is smart to take shots from as close as possible or to take 3-pointers to maximize the points potential on a possession.
But if you are making your shots, then it really doesn’t matter where you shoot from.