The Indiana Pacers Have Bumped Their Heads On This Season’s Ceiling

Let’s face it: This is likely as good as the Indiana Pacers will be this season.

We all know the drill for Indiana Pacers games this season. They follow a simple pattern, and it really doesn’t matter if it is a good or bad team they’re facing. Indiana will lead early, maybe even hold it throughout most the game, but in the end, they’ll give up the lead and depending on the night, win or lose.

Last night’s loss against the Chicago Bulls was a perfect example.

And this season started off so well…

Sure, we remember the 11-2 run in November. PAUL GEORGE IS BACK! It was fun, but then came a long December and there were reasons to think this year was going to be better than the last, but like a ghost stepping out into the fog in faded away. We knew that the final month of 2015 wouldn’t treat the Pacers kindly, but the thing was, it never got better. Much like expecting Indiana to snap out of The Struggle, it was something we just expected to fix itself, but unlike the death of the Blue Collar, Gold Swagger Era, there were some obvious reasons to expect that the Pacers weren’t the top 5 team they were to start the season.

For starters, this roster was more of a happy accident than a perfect plan. Larry Bird said he wanted the team to get smaller and faster, but it was expected that David West would be a part of that transition. It was Roy Hibbert that Bird was calling out last summer, not the team’s veteran leader. While West opting out and going to the Spurs was somewhat surprising, and Bird probably had a contingency plan, I don’t imagine this was the roster anyone had in mind at the end of last season. Hibbert had to be shipped out, but Indiana only got a 2nd round pick for the former All-Star center. The Pacers picked up Jordan Hill from the Los Angeles Lakers, but he was a reserve, not expected to start.

Ian Mahinmi becoming the Pacers starting center — much less being a good one — was more of a lucky break for the Pacers. If he wouldn’t have evolved into a much more serviceable big man, Indiana would have been running a platoon rotation of him, Jordan Hill, Lavoy Allen, and maybe even Shayne Whittington. Mahinmi worked out, though, and Indiana had some stability at center while the middle of the lineup figured itself out.

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The idea of Paul George, the power forward, was short-lived despite seeming to be the central idea of all of Indiana’s off-season moves. He didn’t want to play there and after getting roughed up early on, we saw C.J. Miles effectively playing that four spot. To his credit, he did well at first in many of the cross-matches, but it could only work for so long. It may have allowed Paul George to take on some of the other teams’ power forwards, but it had its limitations. Maybe it all would have worked out better if Myles Turner didn’t break his thumb, but that whole situation was more of an idea than ever a real thing.

While the power forward and small forward positions were in a state of flux, the backcourt had its own issues to sort out. We had seen what Aggressive George Hill™ was capable of, but the introduction of free agent Monta Ellis was going to be a curve ball for better or for worse. While both George Hill and Monta Ellis have made the situation work, there is a nagging suspicion that each is holding the other back from being a more effective version of themselves. Credit to Ellis for becoming more of a leader and less of a shooter, but there hasn’t been the sort of results one might have hoped for coming into the season.

Throw in the addition of a talented point guard like Ty Lawson after the All-Star Break, and figuring out how to get all this to fit together for the Indiana Pacers gets even harder.

There were a lot of moving parts for Frank Vogel to work with, and ones he wasn’t used to using. Vogel’s schemes, especially on defense, have been predicated having a big man patrol the paint while everyone else funnels shooters either into the maw of the defense or into the no man’s land of midrange. While there are still similar concepts in what Indiana does now, it is more of a credit to Frank Vogel and the players adapting than an expected conclusion.

2015-16 Indiana Pacers Wins/Losses vs. Teams Over/Under .500 | PointAfter

All of this is to say, it was very unlikely that in one season, the season after Paul George missed 76 games, that everything was just going to come together and work out perfectly, much less smoothly. What we saw when Indiana was at its best the past few season was when Vogel and the players had honed in their style of play into a blunt force weapon. That was effectively nerfed and suddenly everyone had to learn how to make things work again.

At this point, Indiana has actually exceeded the 34-39 wins they were expected to have this season depending on the source you had looked at. Our biased opinions hoped for 40+, but this team is doing about as well or slightly better than they were expected to do.

However, this team has also hit its wall for this season. There was little reason to think they would be doing any better and when you factor it in with the disappointments as far as closing games go, the Pacers are right where they should be. That’s not what fans want to hear, but it what we know to be true. This team was going to be lucky to make the playoffs, and that was before the Eastern Conference improved in respectability. They’ve kept up with the field, but this year’s team was going to have limitations, plain and simple.

The team is in a state of flux, and volatility has never equaled stability. The team has shown how good it can be when it beats the Oklahoma City Thunder on the road, outplays the San Antonio Spurs at home, and holds its own against the league’s best. They’ve also shown their limitations by losing to the Brooklyn Nets and other teams that they shouldn’t be struggling to beat.

Pacers Salary Commitments | PointAfter

This team has several parts that will play into their future success — Paul George and Myles Turner in particular — but there are also a lot of questions about what this team is now, and what it will be. Indiana was shopping George Hill before the trade deadline in case you forgot, so it seems pretty clear that this team isn’t a finished project in Larry Bird’s eyes. Whether George Hill or anyone else is part of that finished product is anyone’s guess. Going forward Paul George, Monta Ellis, Rodney Stuckey, C.J. Miles, Lavoy Allen, Myles Turner, Glenn Robinson III, and Joe Young are the only salary commitments for the 2017-18 season. That leaves plenty of room for change in the next few years.

The future is exciting for the Indiana Pacers as Paul George is in the prime of his career and Myles Turner looks to be at minimum a cornerstone of the team’s foundation going forward. The two could be a formidable duo as long as Turner grows as a defender, something to be expected as he’s only 20 years old. However, the present has limits. While missing the playoffs would be seen as a disappointment, there is little reason to expect them to escape the first round especially if they face either the Toronto Raptors or Cleveland Cavaliers.

Next: Indiana Pacers Ground Houston Rockets In 4th Quarter

The Pacers have hit a ceiling, one we expected them to find, but that doesn’t mean it is any less frustrating to watch.