Groundhog’s Day: Nate McMillan is back to his old habits

The month of January was quite the successful one for the Indiana Pacers. Head coach Nate McMillan reverted to some old habits, though.

To say January was a good month for this Pacers squad would be an understatement. The team went 10-5, which pins January as their first 10-win month since November of 2015. There were some ups, some downs, and Victor Oladipo and Domantas Sabonis punched in tickets to All-Star Weekend. The Pacers are now 29-23, and more importantly a mere two games from the 3-seed.

This all sounds great, and at the surface level it certainly is. It’s hard to be critical of a team that’s currently sitting at around the number of wins that most experts predicted they’d grab all season. Nevertheless, a certain trend emerged in January that may or may not be troubling.

It’s not their regressed three-point shooting. It’s not their oftentimes inability to grab rebounds. It actually has little to do with the players at all.

In the spirit of Groundhog’s Day, this trend is an oldie but goodie- a recurring theme from Nate McMillan that we’ve all seen before: the Pacers are playing really slow.

Back when the season goals for this team were to basically “have fun and see who’s good for the future”, Oladipo and company were charging up and down the court. Everyone saw the potential in the pre-season, and that style was sustained throughout the early parts of the year- the Pacers were 10th in the NBA in pace in October and November.

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Can you guess where they ranked in January? 29th. Only the Spurs are playing slower than the Pacers right now. In December, they were 20th. Slowly but surely, they’ve surely gotten slow (say that five times fast) as the season has gone on.

This was a commonly noted point of contention when McMillan took over the head coaching job last year. Sure, his shtick worked in the mid-2000s, but an effective modern offense can’t run at a snail-like pace, right? It’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks, though, and McMillan’s team finished 18th in pace last year.

The thought of Teague-Miles-George-Young-Turner playing at breakneck speed is still a salivating though and one that despite the opportunity never really transpired. And all in all, last season was a total bust, with the double failure of not winning a single playoff game and essentially writing Paul George’s letter of resignation.

So why is McMillan reverting to this style? That answer is probably a little hazy, but the simplest conjecture is that it’s likely the best (or only) way he knows how to comfortably coach a winning team. Earlier in the year when there weren’t really any expectations of success for the squad, McMillan seemed to feel much more comfortable letting the team run wild. Now, at 29-23, the Pacers have built up a possibility that they can hang in the Eastern Conference playoffs. As such, McMillan has started to pump the brakes to focus on building a winning offense and defense.

The more important question (not to mention one that isn’t just a guessing game) is “how is this style going to affect the team going forward?”. Looking at how things went in January, there are a few clues as to how things might look in the months ahead.

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First of all, it’s important to mention that while their pace dropped considerably, they slightly increased their PPG total by .4 to 105.4 from December to January. Why is that important? Their defensive numbers behaved the way one would expect them to when fewer possessions are being played- they gave up 5 less PPG, 100.9, in January in comparison to the previous month.

You don’t buy it? You’ve transcended past using basic, logical statistics that can clearly connect with the eye test to analyze a team’s performance? Fine. They were 7th in offensive rating and 6th in defensive rating in January. Their possessions on both ends of the court were efficient and effective. Are you happy now?

It may be easy to write that success off as a product of an easy schedule, but recall that January wasn’t quite as forgiving as its final homestand made it look. The Pacers finished a west-coast road trip with a positive record and put up wins against the Cavaliers, Bucks and Spurs during the month. While the grass is still considerably less green ahead, it would be dishonest to say that the Pacers’ start to 2018 was a cakewalk.

Besides, there is some season-long evidence that points to the Pacers being able to thrive without a fast-paced offense. Consider that pace doesn’t necessarily have to equate to anything when it comes to transition offense. And in the Pacers case, it doesn’t. On the year, they rank third in points off of fast-breaks and fifth in points off of turnovers. In January, those rankings were fourth and third, respectively.

That’s some great news. Despite the slow-down in half-court offense, the Pacers are able to keep an emphasis on transition offense as a means of staying ahead of their opponents. Look at this clip from Wednesday’s game against the Grizzlies:

This doesn’t look like an offense that wants to slow it down. Thaddeus Young doesn’t think twice about pushing forward, even though his playmakers are behind him and the Grizzlies defenders are in front of him. His burst of speed rendered those defenders useless, though, and Bojan Bogdanovic sprinted into the correct lane to receive the easy three-point bucket.

Another example isn’t really needed to illustrate this point, but man this is a fun sequence to watch. The Pacers are definitely quick-witted when they need to be:

On the other end of the coin, when the Pacers aren’t in transition, they seem to be comfortable with taking their time. This is where the pace has slowed since the start of the year. They have no problem resetting the offense and finding second and third options when their initial pick and roll falls flat.

To point out a specific example, a lot of Darren Collison’s points and offensive success this year have come from this patience, as you can see here:

When Oladipo can’t break past the perimeter, the Pacers have been able to find ways to sustain possessions and get buckets. While they’ve slowed down a bit in this process, it seems to be working.

With the ability to seamlessly be aggressive in transition yet methodical in the half-court, the Pacers have themselves an offensive arsenal that could potentially be dangerous in the final few months of the year.

This effect isn’t lost on defense either, as the fewer possessions and fewer turnovers lead to fewer opportunities for the opposition to run up the score. Let’s not forget that a healthy Myles Turner is now back in that mix, as well as soon-to-be back Glenn Robinson III, the perimeter defender this team has desperately needed.

So yeah, McMillan might be back to his old ways. But if it works, nobody’s complaining. Luckily for him, it’s worked so far, and there appears to be evidence that it may continue to work with this squad. And perhaps more importantly, this team is still quite fun to watch. Many fans may have not even noticed the change in pace. The team still clicks together and has tons of explosive power in transition. For now, everything is right in the world.

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Do you, Nate McMillan. Don’t let the world change ya. Well, unless the Pacers start losing again.