Power Forward Thurdays: Alex Poythress’ perplexing playing time

The Pacers signed Alex Poythress to an NBA contract earlier in the month. Despite this, they appear to be uninterested in giving him much playing time.

Alex Poythress‘ success story is fascinating and unusual. After going to the University of Kentucky for more than just one year (rarer than a solar eclipse), he spent almost the entirety of his first professional season in the G League. At the end of his 2016-17′ G League tenure, the Philadelphia 76ers threw him a lifeboat and gave him a 10-day contract, which he made good on by scoring 10.7 points per game over six games. Despite his decent play, he was not resigned to any sort of contract in Philly.

Enter the Pacers. The front office watched Poythress closely in his 2016-17’ G League stint because he played for the Fort Wayne Mad Ants. When he was still a free agent late in August of last year, the front office used the newly invented two-way contract to pull Poythress back into the Indiana organization. He made 11 appearances on his two-way deal and he impressed the front office enough that they determined the best move was to give Poythress an NBA contract for the rest of this NBA season.

The exciting journey has stopped there.

In the nine games since Poythress was signed, he only played in six of them. There is an explanation for some of his lack of playing time in some games. He is out of the rotation, meaning it is hard for him to get playing time unless there is an injury or the Pacers are blowing out their opponent.

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Strangely, even with two injuries and many recent blowouts, Poythress still hasn’t been playing, almost to a point where it is weird. It wasn’t a trend to monitor until the Utah win, but that game was the tipping point.

The Pacers dominated the Jazz from the tip onward. They were up 20 at the end of the third quarter and held an 18 point lead with 2:30 to go.

Poythress only played in one minute in this game, to the frustration of many Pacers fans.

I share sentiments with Caitlin. But taking it a step further, why even sign the guy if you aren’t going to use him in the most practical time to do so?

In the dominant win over the Utah Jazz, he played just 1:05. The previous night, against the Phoenix Suns, he only played 4:50. The Pacers had a back to back and won the games by a combined 38 points and Poythress didn’t even get six total minutes of playing time.

Such has been the story for Poythress since signing his NBA contract. The Pacers beat the Chicago Bulls by 39 points. Poythress played under five minutes. The Pacers were beating the Milwaukee Bucks by 23 points heading into the fourth quarter. He didn’t even touch the court.

It is understood that he is out of the rotation, but this is borderline ridiculous. He’s not even playing poorly! He is shooting 42.9 percent on three-pointers and gets a crazy amount of steals in his limited minutes, but the team seems uninterested in developing him at all.

Look at Alex Poythress cut up the Pistons and throw one down here:

And look here as he shows off his stifling defense, and it leads to easy points in transition:

That is the type of player you want to give more minutes, regardless of your future plans or his standing in the rotation.

Next: Small Forward Wednesdays: Boy, could Damien Wilkins defend

It is a challenge to get everyone minutes when you have a young team that needs to be developed. But Poythress’ playing time has been very puzzling given both the promise he has shown and the contract he received. There is a lot of season left, let’s hope Alex Poythress gets more chances to hoop.