3 Burning Questions for the Indiana Pacers: Bench Edition

The Indiana Pacers have revamped their roster to get smaller and faster — but how will the bench fit in to the overall plan?

With all the moving parts this offseason, the Indiana Pacers have questions upon questions. The 2016-17 season appears to be one in which home-court advantage in the first round is certainly up for grabs. Some would even call it an expectation.

On the other hand, there are real questions about how the roster fits together and whether it can play any defense. Will it all gel as the talent suggests it should or is Indiana in store for some real growing pains?

In the first of a three-part series, we’ll look at three burning questions for the Pacers bench coming into the new season.

Question #1: Can Aaron Brooks hold his own backing up Jeff Teague?

Last year, the Indiana Pacers had a mixture of Joe Young, Rodney Stuckey, and Monta Ellis playing lead guard with the second unit. As was a staple during Frank Vogel’s Tenure, the Pacers bench often times forgot that the round ball was supposed to go through the basket hoop as often as possible.

Aaron Brooks is a legitimate NBA vet who has averaged 10.7 points per game over his eight-year career while hitting 37% of his 3-points attempts. If Brooks can be an actual scoring threat off the bench and run the point in a manner that resembles an NBA player, the Pacers will have a better floor general on their bench than they’ve had in years.

Question #2: Can Al Jefferson stay healthy enough be a consistent scoring threat?

Al Jefferson is one of the preeminent low-post scorers of his generation. Big Al averaged almost 22 points per game as recently as the 2013-14 season (the same year the Pacers secured the #1 seed in the East, for reference), and he has a career average of 16.7 points over his 12-year career.

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12 years is a long time for a big man to play though, and Jefferson’s injury history has been growing.

He played only 47 games last year, the least of his career, and 65 the year before amidst knee and calf injuries. Jefferson has already spoken about how healthy he feels this offseason, and said that he should’ve had this knee surgery two years ago.

If the Pacers can effectively manage his minutes off the bench and keep him healthy, he’ll provide one of the better second-unit safety outlets in the NBA. If he’s hurt or ineffective, the lack of quality depth at both big men positions will manifest itself quickly.

Question #3: Who gets the backup minutes at power forward?

The Pacers top five reserves, as it stands now, are Aaron Brooks, Rodney Stuckey, C.J. Miles, Lavoy Allen, and Al Jefferson. If paired, Allen and Jefferson would form a very low mobility front court, lacking in foot speed on defense and the break, as well as being completely devoid of 3-point range to keep the defense honest.

Allen appeared to be a fulcrum of success for the Pacers last year in terms of plus/minus, but he likely benefitted from the Pacers’ basic comfort of playing big. Him getting heavy minutes was a sign of the Pacers playing a traditional front court, not to mention his familiarity with the offense and defensive schemes given his incumbent status.

With Larry Bird’s continued commitment to playing small — and a new coach in Nate McMillan calling the shots — it would seem possible that some combination of C.J. Miles and the resurgent (at the expense of Summer Leaguers) Glenn Robinson III could soak up the 15-20 minutes per game that Thad Young will rest per night.

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They are both really too small for the assignment, especially Lil Dog, who struggles to even guard guys at his position. And Miles showed last year that he’s not built to handle big minutes as a small-ball power forward.

But if he and GRIII can share some duties (and thus the punishment) of shifting down, the Pacers second unit instantly becomes a much different animal on offense. If GRIII’s shooting sticks, the group of Brooks/Stuckey/Robinson III/Miles/Jefferson becomes a unit with the potential to tear off runs against overmatched backups and provide the starters with quality rest, especially if the opposition has no true bigs to play at the 4 spot either.