Ian Mahinmi Catches Behind-the-Back Pass from Paul George, Dunks on Serge Ibaka

Including this Ian Mahinmi dunk over Serge Ibaka, the Indiana Pacers center tied a career-high with 19 points in a win over the Thunder.

Ian Mahinmi usually doesn’t score much. But tonight in the Indiana Pacers best win of the year — a comeback victory in Oklahoma City over the feared Thunder — he did work.

The big man matched his career high with 19 points and added 11 boards in 35 minutes. He also had a few monster dunks, including a beauty in Serge Ibaka’s grill after snagging a Paul George behind-the-back pass in transition.

Just look at this Ian Mahinmi dunk.

When I say he “snagged” it, I really do mean it.

That was what stood out as much as the ferocious, leaning, kiss-the-rim throwdown. Because this pass from Paul George was not good. It was over-thought and forced, with PG leaving it well behind the sprinting 7-footer.

But it didn’t matter.

And that is remarkable.

I mean, just look at where he grabbed this ball even while running at full speed towards the rim. He has to reach back after his right leg is already ahead of his left, doing a sort of back-torquing grapevine step in a sprint as he tries to one-hand-Odell Beckman a ball behind him.

This wasn’t a one-time thing. Not tonight — he snared another ball and then finished a reverse layup — nor this season.

Now, catching passes might sound rudimentary for an NBA player. But that has never been the case for Ian Mahinmi during his tenure with the Pacers.

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He has become notorious for blowing all sorts of nice dump-off passes and fumbling should-be dunks out of bounds. It was a running joke on Pacers Twitter, and it was this seemingly unfixable hand-eye-coordination issue, along with Mahinmi’s lack of shooting, that kept him from being a starter-level player.

If you look at the numbers, he has generally always protected the rim (albeit against reverses mostly) as well as Roy Hibbert did. Players have trouble converting layups when he is around, plus he didn’t have the mobility issues that Hibbert did, so he was more versatile coming out to defend the pick-and-roll in various ways.

But there were always the hands problems. Without that issue compounding things, lacking a jumper wouldn’t have mattered. He is huge, athletic, quick, knows where to be on the court, and can leap. He could never consistently catch the ball though, taking away any chance he had to be a poor man’s DeAndre Jordan finishing lobs and slamming dump-off passes.

I have no idea how he changed. But he did.

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A guy his age should not be able to fix such an issue this late in his career. Not this type of problem anyway. It just doesn’t happen.

But it has with Ian Mahinmi and he has seemingly undertaken some reverse Chuck Knoblach syndrome.

Maybe there was a Scott Hatteberg-in-Moneyball-like campaign all summer long where coaches and teammates gave him confidence by yelling “Ian the Picking Machine” every time he caught a pass.

Whatever the case, the transformation has been borderline miraculous.

Ian Mahinmi now catches everything.

And as Serge Ibaka found out here, Ian Mahinmi dunks can be vicious when he gets the ball around the rim with space to lift off.