The Book is better: What has Trevor Booker shown us?

We have now seen three games of Trevor Booker as an Indiana Pacer. What can we gather about him so far?

Albeit an unappealing signing, Trevor Booker was the final addition to the Pacers puzzle. The 10th man in the rotation, the backup power forward, the guy who brings them that last bit of lineup flexibility for the playoffs. Even though he probably won’t ever crack more than 15 minutes in a meaningful game, Booker’s signing is important.

Through three games, we have seen him bring to the table exactly what we expected.

As discussed right after the power forward was inked to his contract, Booker is a burlesque, ground-bound big man. Most of his skills can be found in the paint; rebounding, boxing out, post-ups, just being a big body.

He’s shown us some of that, mostly on the offensive end. Probably the biggest skill Booker brings to the Pacers is his offensive rebounding. T-Book’s career offensive rebound percentage is 10.6 percent, meaning he grabs 10.6 percent of his own teams misses. Throughout his career, he has had a percentage over ten in this statistic every season but one.

With the Pacers, we are seeing that impact already. He’s grabbed four offensive rebounds in his three games with the team so far, already propelling his offensive rebound rate on Indiana to second on the team.

He’s a fighter who won’t give up until the ball is his. You have to give the Hawks credit for trying here, but Booker was not going to be denied:

Effort plays. Fans love em’. Coaches love em’. I love em’.

Booker makes them. He should continue to be the second best Pacer on the offensive glass going forward, sans Domantas Sabonis. Something to monitor is the minutes those two guys share the floor. The offense stagnates a bit since neither of them is particularly bouncy or threatening outside of the paint, shown by the Pacers being outscored by 10 points in their shared minutes. However, in those 39 minutes, the team has an offensive rebounding percentage of 28.6, an insanely good number. Maybe the offense will be slightly worse on an individual possession basis, but Booker and Sabonis will give the team more total chances to score, and that could help the second unit.

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What was harder to predict about Trevor Booker was what kind of impact he would have scoring the ball. He’s mostly a post player, but Nate McMillan doesn’t run a ton of actions that end in the post outside of the standard pick and roll.

Combine the small amount of post touches with the fact that Trevor Booker is a career 31.5 percent three-point shooter, and his role became even harder to predict.

It is still relatively unclear what Booker will bring to the scoring realm. He’s only made six of his 15 shots in a blue and gold jersey, and two of those makes were flukey threes, something that has not historically been good at.

The Pacers are good at getting the most out of players in terms of shooting the three ball accurately this season, so maybe his makes weren’t a fluke. They were both from the slot on the left side, basically in identical locations, and one was off of a Pacers go-to action, the pick-and-pop:

Maybe Nate McMillan can channel Booker’s outside shooting and turn him into a serviceable shooter from deep. I’m skeptical, but he made two more than I thought he would already.

Inside the arc, Booker has shot 4/12. Woof. The team really struggles, in general, to put the ball in the hoop when he is out there, as evidenced by their shot chart:

Booker himself thinks he is a better shooter than he actually is. He’s a career 41.5 percent finisher from 3-10 feet away, a rough percentage. Yet he still attempts shots like this, off balance and from a tough angle:

Booker is going to be a worse three point shooter going forward and probably a little better inside the arc. If he can improve his shot selection, that balance will be okay. If not, he may hemorrhage a point or two every night.

Defensively it’s a mixed bag. The good: Blocks! The bad: Staying in front of guys.

His slow nature of play means that he can’t recover or stop any play where he is a disadvantageous situation. Jones Jerebko should never be faster than you or push you backward, yet he does both here:

You have got to be better, or at least harder to move, in that instance. Booker just went straight back the whole time.

The blocks have been nice, though, and show that he does have the anticipation skills to keep up with the game and be useful enough on the defensive end. In fact, all three of his blocks have been the perfect display of anticipation skills and help defense. On all three, he exploded off of the weakside block to slide over and swat a shot from an attacker who beat their matchup:

Those are awesome and important plays. They show that Booker can keep up with the Pacers defensive scheme, and they display his ability to play solid help/off-ball defense.

Next: 3 Reasons the Pacers are leading the Central

One week of time with the team isn’t enough to make any full judgments on Trevor Booker. But we can see what kind of skills he may bring to the table through the home stretch of the season. He has some obvious strengths and weaknesses, but he should become more helpful as he gels with his new teammates. Let’s just hope he keeps making two out of every three deep balls.