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Pacers Preseason Roundtable: Expectations, hopes, and fears

By William Furr

INDIANAPOLIS - SEPTEMBER 24: Doug McDermott #20, Victor Oladipo #4 and Tyreke Evans #12 of the Indiana Pacers pose for a head shot during the Pacers Media Day on September 24, 2018 in Indianapolis, Indiana. (Photo by Ron Hoskins/NBAE via Getty Images)
INDIANAPOLIS - SEPTEMBER 24: Doug McDermott #20, Victor Oladipo #4 and Tyreke Evans #12 of the Indiana Pacers pose for a head shot during the Pacers Media Day on September 24, 2018 in Indianapolis, Indiana. (Photo by Ron Hoskins/NBAE via Getty Images) /
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CLEVELAND, OH – APRIL 18: Victor Oladipo #4 of the Indiana Pacers, Darren Collison #2 of the Indiana Pacers, and Indiana Pacers look on during the game against the Cleveland Cavaliers in Game Two of Round One during the 2018 NBA Playoffs on April 18, 2018 at Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio. (Photo by David Liam Kyle/NBAE via Getty Images) /

What do you expect to be their biggest weakness?

Aaron Eamer: Over-familiarity. Being too familiar with what you know can bring a sense of complacency and potentially over-reliance on Victor Oladipo‘s heroics of the previous 12 months. If everyone on this roster can continue to realize how they need to keep on working as Victor and Myles have done openly, all off-season then that should hopefully not be a problem.

Ethan Krieger: I think the biggest weakness of this team will be something we saw pop up plenty of times last season as well. For whatever reason, it seemed like the 2017-2018 Pacers would dig themselves into a hole to start games more often than not. The team would have to claw their way back into the contest, and sometimes it would simply be an insurmountable deficit to overcome.

Other times, some late-game heroics from Victor Oladipo wound up winning some of these games for the Pacers, but you can’t rely on that happening every time. If the Pacers don’t figure out how to play a full four quarters every night, some of the 50/50 games that went their way last year might not be so kind this time around.

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Ben Pfeifer: Indiana’s biggest weakness will be their offense. And this isn’t because the Pacers can’t score the basketball but instead because of the spacing. They ranked a pedestrian 17th in points per game last season (105.6) and most importantly they ranked 26th in three-point attempts per game (24.5).

In the modern NBA, you need to be able to shoot threes to win at the highest level. Indiana has the personnel to space the floor consistently; they shot 36.9% from deep last season, ranking ninth in the NBA. The coaching needs to devise more actions, specifically more motion, to get shooters open. The Pacers need to cut back on the long twos and make those short threes.

Will Furr: Rebounding. Of the 5 guys likely to get minutes in the big man rotation (Myles Turner, Thaddeus Young, Domantas Sabonis, T.J. Leaf, and Doug McDermott as a super small ball 4), only Sabonis brings any sort of positive value as a rebounder. As it currently stands, this is a very real area of concern.

There are a few factors that could mitigate this issue for the Indiana Pacers. It would not surprise me to see Kyle O’Quinn get minutes at some point, and that would change this equation, but it seems likely that he’ll be out of the rotation to start the season. If T.J. Leaf (who looked vastly improved on the glass this preseason) or Myles Turner can at least be average on the glass, that would help. But counting on either to be a sure thing would be folly.

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