The 2016 Indiana Pacers — Two Teams Becoming One
By Tim Donahue
Twenty games into the season, the Indiana Pacers have been — by and large — a pleasant surprise.
Despite losing their last three games, they stand at 12-8 and are in the thick of a surprisingly competitive Eastern Conference. Their play has earned national recognition in the form of Top 10 rankings in the power polls, though Tuesday proved that they clearly aren’t in Golden State’s weight class.
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The headline on Indiana’s success is certainly the outstanding play of Paul George. After staggering out of the gate, PG has averaged 30 points, 8 boards, and 4 dimes a night over his last 15 games and posted an eFG of over 57%. The Pacers are outscoring their opponents by more than 12 points per 100 possessions with Paul on the floor over that stretch.
Not to be lost in the glare of George’s performance, however, is the continuing evolution of style. The conversation at the dawn of the season centered around whether the Pacers would truly become smaller and faster, or whether they would revert to the more familiar smashmouth basketball. Frank Vogel and his team have seemingly decided to do both.
Minutes had been relatively evenly split between Big lineups (those with two or more traditional bigs) and Spread lineups, but they have skewed more towards the Spreads during this five-game run against Western Conference competition. Giving 56% of the floor time to lineups with only one big represents a relatively sizable commitment by Frank Vogel – the former king of smashmouth basketball to the new style. So does this: after playing only 518 minutes in Spread lineups over 360 games since the lockout (both regular season and playoffs), Frank Vogel has put them on the floor 540 minutes in just 20 games this season.
Big lineups remain an integral part of the Pacer DNA. Vogel has deployed two of Ian Mahinmi, Jordan Hill, Lavoy Allen, Myles Turner, and Shayne Whittington for about 44% of the minutes this season. Tuesday night’s game versus the Warriors marked the first time this season no Big lineups were used. Even so, Coach Vogel noted before the game that he would always have the urge to “add some smashmouth elements to the game.”
This is not only OK, it’s actually pretty important to the development of this and future Pacer teams.
The chart above shows the curve for Net Efficiency for the Pacers this season. In other words, the points scored vs. the points allowed for every 100 possessions. Indiana (red line) is scoring about 4 points per hundred more than their opponents. As I write this, only six teams in the NBA have a better Net Efficiency than the Pacers, despite slippage over their current three-game losing streak.
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After their rocky start to the season, it is the blue (collar) line representing Big lineups that spurred Indiana’s recovery. Over a nine-game stretch beginning in Detroit on November 4th, these units played about 248 of the team’s 430 minutes, outscoring opponents by 77 points and posting a ridiculous Net Efficiency of +17.7 per 100. Even if you throw out the game against Philly (+24 in 21 minutes), they were +13.4 per 100. The team won seven of those nine games, with the only losses coming at Cleveland and at Chicago. The Pacers went from a reeling 0-3 to a promising 7-5.
Spread lineups (gold (swagger) line) struggled during that stretch, posting a Net Efficiency of -4.6 per 100, though much of the damage was done during a disastrous outing against Miami on November 6th (-19 in 11 minutes), when C.J. Miles was out. Then, things started to come together. In the five games straddling Thanksgiving (all wins), Spreads outscored opponents by 73 points over 155 minutes. While they were excellent defensively – allowing 96.5/100 – their offense was a devastating 118.5 points per 100 possession.
“We’d like to play a little faster tempo.” – Larry Bird
As the season moves along, what we are seeing is clear differences between how Indiana plays in Spread lineups vs. more traditional Big lineups. Perhaps the most striking difference can be seen in their pace of play.
Larry Bird wanted the Pacers to play faster this year – and they are. Indiana is averaging just over 100 possessions per 48 minutes, up from just under 96 last season. That’s the ninth fastest pace in the NBA. This is almost entirely thanks to the Spread lineups, whose pace of 103 is higher than even the 102 posted by the league-leading Suns.
The Big lineups, meanwhile, play a game much more familiar to those who have followed the Pacers under Frank Vogel. That wasn’t the original plan. After playing the first three games at a pace of over 102, Big lineups have played the rest of the season so far at a relatively smashmouth-friendly 95 possessions per 48 minutes.
“We changed a lot of things with what we were doing with the big lineup,” Frank Vogel said after a win over Minnesota in November. “We were trying to preach ‘randomness’, when we started training camp. Randomness has looked pretty good with the small lineup, but it didn’t look good with the big lineup. At all. So, we quickly added some structure to that, after the 0-3 start. I think our spacing is just a little bit better. It’s kinda the way we played the last couple years.”
That change saw almost immediate dividends – both in terms of the play of the Big lineups and the play of Paul George. George – who had struggled to score 17 points a night on an eFG of just over 37% in the first three games – flourished after the adjustment.
Over the seven games between the change and Vogel’s comments, PG increased his scoring to 27 per night on almost 53% eFG. During this stretch, George played about 61% of his minutes with two bigs on the floor, compared to only 37% over the first three games. Compared to his play in Spread units in those games, he scored almost five more points and grabbed more than three more rebounds for every 36 minutes played, while posting an eFG of 54% vs. 51% in spreads.
Coach Vogel wasn’t surprised by this.
“There’s a comfort level,” he said, going on to acknowledge PG wasn’t the only struggling with the change. “I’ve been comfortable coaching with two bigs for the last five years or so. He’s been comfortable playing with two bigs.”
The offensive scheme change marked the second move made by Frank Vogel away from the idea of a faster, smaller team. Early in the preseason, the coach quietly abandoned the much ballyhooed Paul-George-at-the-4 experiment in favor of using C.J. Miles in that role. However, these moves were not signs of retreat.
“I love the versatility we have.” – Frank Vogel
“I think there’s more room for [Paul] to get to the basket in a spread lineup,” Vogel reiterated that Friday night. “I still think [the struggles in spread lineups are] just a matter of this being an adjustment period.”
He’s spent the time since the Minnesota win demonstrating his belief.
Over the 10 games since, Vogel has used Spread lineups almost twice as much as Big lineups (319 vs. 168). Paul George, meanwhile, has played almost three times as many minutes in Spreads (270 vs. 94). The improved performance of spreads overall was noted above, but Paul has clearly become more comfortable playing without having the 2-Big security blanket. In his 270 minutes playing next to C.J. Miles, Paul has been scoring almost 31 points per 36 minutes while posting an eFG of over 57%.
Vogel didn’t back away from playing faster and smaller, when we went big for a few games. He stabilized his team and, then, doubled down on it. The coach’s comments before the Milwaukee game on November 18th go a long way towards explaining why.:
“I love the versatility we have,” Vogel said. “We’ve been saying since day one, you know, we’re not gonna be beat by having less speed than our opponents out there and less three point shooting than our opponents, the way we have in the past.
‘That’s kinda how I’m gauging when to be big and when to be small,” he continued. “If a team plays with two bigs, where we feel like we need some muscle inside, then we’ll go with two bigs.”
The result of all of this is a Pacer team with two distinct personalities.
The table above list some stats that can be used to reflect style. Where a team exists along the spectrum for any of these is often reflective of how a team is trying to play. We’ve already discussed Pace, but there are a few other metrics that vary wildly based on the lineup configuration.
When the Pacers play in their spread, they are fast and shoot a lot of threes. The 27.5 three point attempts every 48 minutes – almost one third of their total attempts – represents frequency and splits very similar to Atlanta (26.4/32%), Cleveland (27.4/34%), and Dallas (26.7/32%). Only Golden State (20.9) and Washington (18.2) score more fastbreak points on a 48-minute basis, and their ability to turn teams over and convert them to points is as good or better than anyone’s the Association.
Big lineups, naturally, are below-average-to-bad in most of those categories, but are excellent in others. Big lineups control the glass – grabbing almost 53% of the rebound chances. They are as good or better than any team in the league at scoring in second chance opportunities and at making teams miss shots.
These factors drive where these units excel – and where they struggle.
Spread lineups score almost 106 points per 100 possessions, because they shoot a lot of threes (successfully at 38.4%) and generate a lot of easy points through transition and turning the other team over. They allow almost 104 points per 100 possessions, because they allow opponents to shoot at too high of a percentage and rebound very poorly.
Big lineups are continuing the Pacer tradition of stifling defense (less than 94 points per 100 allowed) because they make teams miss shots – and they get the rebounds. They struggle to score more than a point per possession, because they’re slow, predictable, and generally operate against established defenses.
This affects how Vogel views these disparate configurations, and what he sees this team becoming.
“I think we’ll have the ability, defensively, to match up with the big teams,” he said. “Getting comfortable, offensively, with the spread offense, will allow us to play guards on all these spread 4s, which I think is gonna make us better, defensively. I do have a good feel for what we can be – and what we’re gonna be – this year, and I’m excited about it.”
“We’ve got the baseline. Now, we just need to add. Piece by piece by piece.” – C.J. Miles
They’re not there, yet, though.
Both configurations have struggled during their three-game losing streak – Net Efficiencies of -9.9 for Spreads, -22.7 for Bigs. Minute distribution has skewed heavily towards Spread lineups – playing only 20% of the minutes with two Bigs on the court during this time. Both the coach and the players still have to learn how to meld the strengths of the “Two Pacers” into one identity.
C.J. Miles says this is just all part of the process.
“We just gotta continue to keep working at it,” Miles said after the loss to Golden State. “There’s too much talent in our locker room. Too many guys willing to give up parts of themselves to do the right thing. Too much toughness here for us to continue to have a losing streak.”
He knows that will require adjustments and growth. “[At] the beginning of the year, we had the 0-3 [start],” Miles explained, “and we said ‘Oh, we gotta figure it out.’ Then we went on the winning streak. There are going to be other times like that, because everything is gonna be different, because everything is new.”
Further complicating matters is the fact that – while the Pacers try to learn to be something new – they face an opponent each night whose job it is to make them fail.
“Once you figure out one thing, and you play well with that one thing, and another team decides, ‘All right, we’re gonna take that away.” he continued. “It’s like, ‘All right, now how do we play well within that system with this gone?’ It’s about figuring out how to step up, and knowing counters and knowing ways to play within a system, and that’s the point we’re getting to now.”
And this is probably the most encouraging thing about how this team is approaching this challenge. A season that looked like it could devolve into a mini-soap opera being played out between Paul George, Larry Bird, and Frank Vogel has proven – so far, at least – to be almost the polar opposite. Frank Vogel has managed to adapt and adjust the tactics without losing sight of the goal. Players have accepted the change, sacrificed, and stepped up. Paul George is playing at an other-wordly level. Larry Bird has allowed his people the freedom to meet his requirements in the way they feel best.
There is no guarantee that this experiment will end successfully, but they certainly seem ahead of schedule. The Pacers have a good offensive team, and the Pacers have a good defensive team. They now have to become one team that is simply good.
“We’ve got the baseline,” C.J. said. “Now we just need to add. Piece by piece by piece.”
Next: Paul George vs Steph Curry: The Game We Didn't Know We Wanted
Stats courtesy NBA.com