Darren Collison’s surprising second act with the Indiana Pacers

Darren Collison’s second act with the Indiana Pacers is off to a surprisingly good start and he is making the entire team better in the process.

Darren Collison’s first act with the Indiana Pacers ended on July 12, 2012, when he was sent to the Dallas Mavericks (along with Dahntay Jones) for Ian Mahinmi.

The Pacers concluded Collison wasn’t the point guard they needed as George Hill was suitable for the task. After the trade, Indiana nearly made the NBA Finals two seasons in a row while Collison bounced from Dallas to the Los Angeles Clippers before settling in for a three-year stint with the Sacramento Kings.

Considering Collison only saw the playoffs once in that span while the Pacers were a contender in the East, it was clear Indiana had made the right choice. Collison got his numbers but wasn’t a player that the casual NBA fan knew much about.

But fate brought the two back together in 2017.

After things running their course in Sacramento, Collison was a free agent. The Pacers were forced into their rebuilding plan with the Paul George trade and needed a point guard to at least hold things down for the next two seasons.

Collison’s signing wasn’t one that was well received in Indiana. Between his domestic violence incident and reputation as a scorer more than a distributor — as well as general pessimism around the Pacers at the time — fans weren’t excited for the return familiar face.

But then the season began.

Darren Collison: The Distributor

Eleven games does not a season make, but it is an interesting opening chapter to the new era of the Indiana Pacers.

Collison is shooting the same amount of shots, but with the Pacers fast pace, that means he isn’t shooting at the same rate he did in the past. So what’s he doing more of now? Passing, and more importantly, making the right passes.

Collison is giving up the ball more than ever and at least through 11 games, is averaging a career-high 7.2 assists a game. Those stats a buoyed by a 16-assist game against the Timberwolves, but even when you adjust for pace, that idea that Collison is now sharing more still holds up. On top of this, his 1.6 turnovers a game are the lowest of his career.

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Collison tended to keep the ball on pick and rolls last season after DeMarcus Cousins was traded but even before then he certainly didn’t mind taking shots.

This season he is getting the most out of the pick and roll as far as scoring while also finding teammates. Collison has been most active passers in the league before, but this season Collison finds his teammates in places where they can score or potentially score from. The faster pace helps bring his numbers up, that doesn’t change the fact he is more willing to pass the ball than we’ve seen in the past.

Another benefit in this — selfishly for Collison — is he forces defenders to help off of him more or consider him less of a shooting risk. In turn, his field goal percentage is the highest of his career at 41.7%

And that’s the thing: Collison hasn’t so much reinvented himself as he is tweaking his game to play the role Kevin Pritchard and the Pacers asked of him. Perhaps his reputation as a scorer over a distributor was overblown, but Collison looks more like the latter in Indiana.

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There are times when the Pacers call on him to shoot more, but his first job on this team is to get the ball into the hands of his teammates. So far, he is doing that better than ever.