Nate McMillan deserves credit for the Indiana Pacers success

Nate McMillan rightly deserved criticism for his coaching with the Indiana Pacers, but he also deserves credit for this season’s success.

Nate McMillan deserves as much credit for the Indiana Pacers success as he does blame for their failures over the past the past two seasons.

A crazy hot take, I know, but while the current narrative is shifting to giving him praise, it’s worth examining why the calls for firing him existed in the first place, as well as why they’re currently quieting.

It’s easy to forget McMillan’s had success in his career, and that last season’s team arguably was as good as it could have been. McMillan is 27th all-time in wins with 536. He’s had some good and bad teams in his time as an NBA coach, putting him 90th all-time in winning percentage at 51.5%, but ultimately he’s proven a winner.

McMillan had an uphill battle for respect from the moment he took the job. After Larry Bird talked about needing to change things, he promoted McMillan from his assistant role to head coach. A promotion isn’t exciting, but Bird didn’t do Nate any favors by prefacing Frank Vogel’s firing with talks of shaking things up. McMillan wasn’t on anyone’s radar, leading to more questions about whether he really was the right guy.

Note of that helped the Pacers as the stuggled to finish the regular season with a 42-40 record, followed by a first round exit.

McMillan took the blame for many of last season’s problems, but not all of them belong squarely on his plate. Did he stick with Monta Ellis for way too long? Yes. The eye test and the numbers put Monta as a Sixth Man, not the starter. That wasn’t the only lineup move worth questioning over the past two seasons, but it was the biggest.

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He often waits too long to call time outs when opponents begin runs, too, and that was true last season as well as now.

But while last season’s inconsistencies partially fall on his shoulders, the roster played a role as well.

Last season the Pacers were supposedly going to play fast, but ended the season 18th in pace. Outside of the Monta as Sixth Man issues, there was a limit option for how he could fix the team. Paul George didn’t want to play power forward, and Jeff Teague and Ellis were never going to defend well in a shared backcourt.

Larry Bird build one of the best Pacers teams since the Malice in the Palace, but he also build a team destined for mediocrity in the last few years. That doesn’t forgive all if McMillan’s mistakes, but it’s worth considering before you put all of the issues the Pacers had and have on the coach.

A fresh start for Nate McMillan and the Indiana Pacers

But this year looks and feels different. The team looks nothing like last year’s, with only two starters returning and much of the bench being made over as well. More importantly than the look are the results, though.

The Pacers put together several winning streaks and after an 8-8 start, they’ve consistently played above .500-level basketball after shaking off the stops and starts of the early season. They’ve beat good teams along the way, and are 8-4 since the last time they touched .500.

While Larry Bird always said he was hands off when the season started, one could argue Kevin Pritchard put McMillan in a better position to make decisions and allow for flexibility. And for all the talk of playing more modern basketball, Indiana finally are embracing certain aspects. They’re 10th in pace and second in 3-point percentage (but 22nd in attempts). They still take an unhealthy among of mid-range shots, but they also make them.

But what most impressed me recently was how he ran the Pacers through Lance Stephenson and Victor Oladipo as the primary ball-handlers. McMillan rode the hot hand in those games and the Pacers beat the Chicago Bulls and the Denver Nuggets. Those could easily be losses had he not went with his gut, and not the depth chart.

Indiana’s record — and beating expectations — puts McMillan in early talk for coach of the year, and rightly so.

Same coach, different roster, different result.

That might be the lesson to take from this. A team needs the right roster for the coach to allow him to win games, and McMillan is getting more out of less talent this season. The parts fit together better than last season’s squad, allowing McMillan flexibility.

That’s a salute to Pritchard, but McMillan deserves the credit for the record on the court. McMillan is making the right moves with the players on the roster. The team’s chemistry improved for many reasons, and McMillan appears to be finding the best ways to use his player.

There were questions if Bojan Bogdanovic deserved to start over Glenn Robinson III before his injury, but with his 14.6 points a game, Bogdanovic shows McMillan’s early decision was the correct one.

It’s easy to have 20/20 hindsight when things go wrong, but McMillan saw something in Bojan that told him that the shooting guard was worthy of the starting job. It’s a decision that gets lost after GR3’s injury forced his hand, but it was the right choice to make.

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As long as the Pacers keep winning, then people will stop questioning those choices to start with.