EMBRACE THE DARKNESS (of the Indiana Pacers season)

Vegas says the Pacers will finish the season in the low 30s. As much as we’d like to push back against that, the stats aren’t always our ally.

There’s no definitive stat to tell us whether someone is a good basketball player or a positive contributor to a team. There have been many attempts: PER, Real +/-, Value Over Replacement Players (VORP), Wins Over Replacement Player (WORP), Net Rating, on and on.

The Pacers rotation next year should consist of a lot of names, lots of dudes we’ve all heard of who’ve been around. As it looks now, my best guess for the Pacers top 11 (the bigs have yet to shake out) is: Darren Collison, Victor Oladipo, Bojan Bogdanovic, Thad Young, Myles Turner, Cory Joseph, Lance Stephenson, Glenn Robinson III, Domantas Sabonis, Al Jefferson, and possibly rookie T.J. Leaf.

At first glance, that sounds like a reasonable (if not necessarily great) NBA team. With the Pacers over/under set at 31.5 wins, it seems like they could maybe surpass that, given the experience and names on the team. However, those various numbers paint a relatively bleak picture.

PER (Player Efficiency Rating)

More from 8 Points, 9 Seconds

The NBA average PER is 15. PER is not a perfect stat, and it tends to favor bigs, but the Pacers will have just 3 players who were over 15 last year (and Thad Young must be mentioned at a 14.9). Al Jefferson’s PER of 18.9 last year is the highest of this year’s roster.

Those of you that watched last year’s Pacers might recall that Al Jeff wasn’t terribly effective when he played, to the point that both Kevin Seraphin and Lavoy Allen were playing over him. Myles Turner was second at 18.5, and the Pacers are certainly hoping to see that bump up a bit this year. Darren Collison would be third with a 15.3.

Every other member of this year’s squad had a below average PER last year, from Thad (the aforementioned 14.9) down to Domantas Sabonis with a painful to look at 6.9.

Plus-Minus

PER is certainly a useful – but flawed – stat you say? You just wanna know how teams performed when these guys were on the floor? Let’s look at overall +/- numbers for the year!

Half of the Pacers 10 likely rotation guys (T.J. Leaf can’t be counted here because he lacks any NBA stats) were in the black last year. Victor Oladipo (+175) led the pack, followed by Turner (+143), Thad (+63), Cory Joseph (+43), and Domantas Sabonis (+16).

Must Read: No, the Pacers did not give away Paul George

Unfortunately, both the starters (-45) and the bench (-122) are well into the negative overall. These numbers are skewed by Bojan Bogdanovic’s unsightly -292 (Nets gonna Net, and Bojan spent a good portion of the year there), but Darren Collison (-134), Al Jeff (-98), and Glenn Robinson III (-73) also had ugly numbers overall.

WORP

Well, +/- obviously correlates with the team and the lineups the players played for and in, right? Let’s look at how these guys stack up to the average NBA player! For that, we’re going to check out WORP (Wins over replacement player). This estimates how many wins someone will give you over a replacement level average Joe NBA player.

The Pacers had two – count em, two – players who accounted for 2+ wins over replacement player, Myles Turner (a robust 7.6) and Thad Young (5.1). The next highest was Cory Joseph at 1.6.

Conclusions

What all of this boils down to is that the Pacers have maybe three above average NBA players: Myles Turner, Thad Young (who’s apparently available via trade) and the 20 million dollar man Victor Oladipo.

There are several guys who could develop into that role. Cory Joseph is just 26 and might take on the largest role of his career this year. GRIII showed flashes while starting in Paul George’s place last year, and might be in line for a breakout year.