It was pretty quiet, but TJ Leaf just performed solidly for all of January. It was his best month in an Indiana Pacers uniform.
Some of the people in the Indiana Pacers fandom don’t want to see TJ Leaf play another minute in an Indiana uniform. He just hasn’t shown enough for many people to determine that he deserves a chance to play.
I personally was between a rock and a hard place with Leaf for a long time. On one hand, I like to give first-round picks 3 years in the league. 3 years, to me, is the appropriate amount of time to see if a guy is coachable, a good fit in your organization, and of course, to see how talented of a basketball player he can become.
On the other hand, though, woof. Leaf was bad his rookie year. Bad isn’t strong enough diction. He got played off the court by everyone. If he didn’t nail his 3-pointers during his first season, he would have shown 0 skills that he was good at. He looked miserable.
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These confounding factors made it hard for me to decide what I wanted with TJ Leaf. He had a bad summer league, then a great preseason, and then he got hurt. All of that new information offered me nothing in terms of “I now have a refined opinion on the guy”. Leaf wasn’t playing and the Indiana Pacers were winning games, so Leaf wasn’t really a guy I thought about much.
Then Myles Turner hurt his elbow and missed 4 games, which gave Leaf a stint in the rotation (though he was only in the rotation for 3 of those 4 games). He finally had a chance, and I thought he made the most of it. He didn’t blow me away or anything, but my expectations for him were so low that seeing him contribute at all was something I considered a positive.
If you are purely a results-oriented person, or simply a box score observer, you probably weren’t impressed. In the 3 games, Leaf averaged 7.7 points and 3.3 rebounds per game in 15.5 minutes. In a vacuum, pretty blah numbers. But A) for a 9th man in the rotation and B) for a guy who was bad in the rest of his NBA minutes, these numbers were a welcome surprise. Not to mention, he did it while showing off some skill improvement, which is the important part.
He was dribbling around the floor without looking horribly awkward. He had a handful of defensive possessions where he held his own in the post. He showed nice touch, making 76.9 percent of his shots without making a three-pointer. Compared to what we knew Leaf to be, this was a fantastic run of play.
It was solid enough to keep Leaf in the rotation for the remainder of January. Outside of the infamous Toronto game, the one where the injury happened and everything was off and weird, Leaf played in every game the rest of the month. And he held his own.
Leaf’s per 36 minutes stats in the month were, like, good!. He played 124.5 minutes in the 31 day time period his per-36 figures were 16.8 points, 8.1 rebounds (2 of which were offensive), 2.6 assists, and 1.2 blocks. Not too shabby at all. Throw in 67 percent shooting from the field and you’ve got yourself an effective player, albeit a limited one.
Leaf’s defense is still not great, but he held his own numerous times playing post defense throughout the month. He will have to work on his lateral foot speed and team defense, but Leaf being not completely useless in one area of defense is a huge step up from his play last year, where opposing teams would target him basically every trip down the floor. Being a non-0 is important for Leaf and the Pacers.
Especially when he has shown off some impressive skill on the offensive end:
Look, man, I get why some of yall are done with Leaf. I was for a long time. But I'm really into some of the stuff he is showing recently: pic.twitter.com/HL4Z4j5WGz
— Tony East (@TonyREast) January 29, 2019
This run of play from Leaf has at least given me hope. He has been successful as more than just a spot-up shooter and offensive rebounder, proof that he has undergone some much-needed skill development. The fact that he did it over a whole month makes it hard to call it just a flash in the pan. Leaf is improving.
Granted – that improvement took TJ Leaf from “unplayable” to just “kinda bad”. But, baby steps. Now he’s back into the “give him 3 years to develop” territory for me. The Indiana Pacers are always patient with young guys, and it may pay off for them in the form of the Leafster.