Nate McMillan Puts Focus on Defense as Indiana Pacers Open Camp

Nate McMillan opened up the Indiana Pacers training camp with a focus on defense.

Nate McMillan wanted to send a message on the first day of the Indiana Pacers training camp.

His calling card as a coach is offense, but he chose to focus on the other side of the ball in Indiana’s opening practice. According to the Indy Star’s Nate Taylor, McMillan saw prioritizing defense as the best way to get things started.

"With several new and established players, McMillan ultimately felt the trust between the coaching staff and players should not be developed by focusing on putting the ball through the basket. No. These Pacers, remolded this summer by team President Larry Bird, were going to start on defense.Tuesday’s practice, which lasted two hours, was centered on how McMillan wanted his team to defend together. How to stop dribble penetration. How to rotate on the weak side. How to secure a rebound with proper technique.McMillan’s message throughout the practice was simple. You cannot run — and score points in the Pacers’ preferred up-tempo offense — without playing some defense.“We were one of the top defensive teams last year and we want to make sure we bring that to the floor this season,” McMillan said. “You’ve got to make sure you guard.”"

While a hard-nosed defense was the Pacers calling card in the past (ranked 1st, 1st, 7th, and 3rd over the past four seasons in defensive rating), there are plenty of reasons to worry about it this season. Dan Burke is still around, but pretty much everything else is different.

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On top of all the personal changes and lack of size in the starting front court, McMillan only coached one top 10 defense in his career, so if you are betting on a weak point for the Pacers, that’s an area of concern.

At least they are making it a priority early on, but so was playing faster last season and Indiana ended up ranking 11th in pace by the season’s end.

In a way, it is funny to think Indiana is assuming the offense is going to be just fine after it has ranked in the bottom 10 the last four seasons at 20th, 23rd, 23rd, 25th in offensive rating. But with all the changes this offseason, it isn’t preposterous to think the offense will improve with more reliable scorers joining the rotation.

The Pacers shifted their focus to their offense this season and promoted McMillan to oversee those changes. His resume makes him the right man for the task as he’s coached five top 10 offenses in his career, and two more that ranked in the top half of the NBA.

Pace may be a concern too as McMillan’s past teams were some of the NBA’s slowest, but it has been five years since he ran a team, and the league evolved since then and hopefully he has too. Don’t forget he was an assistant these past few years, so it isn’t like he’s out of the loop when in concerns the NBA’s trends.

Setting defense as a priority is a nice gesture, but we’ll have proof of how important it really is for this Pacers team once the season begins.

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The Pacers want to be a more offensive, faster paced team this season and they’ve added some of the right parts and said the right things. We’ll know a month or two from now whether the team and coach have truly evolved or if they’re less than the sum of their parts.