Wesley Matthews provides much-needed boost to the Indiana Pacers

Wesley Matthews only needed a few games to show exactly why the Indiana Pacers signed him for the remainder of the season.

Why did the Indiana Pacers sign Wesley Matthews? To get buckets, of course.

The newest Pacer made his biggest impact on Friday during the third quarter when he rained down a quartet of 3-pointers and added another the old fashioned way with a trio of free throws. That outburst of 15 points got the Pacers back into the game — and along with his total of 24 on the night — was enough to get Indiana past the New Orleans Pelicans.

Matthews’ sharpshooting took a few games to recalibrate once he joined the Pacers, but last night’s barrage helped push his 3-point percentage up to 42.9 percent with the Pacers.

Indiana is one of the more reluctant teams in taking 3-point attempts — 28th in the league in attempts, 5th in 3-point percentage — but Matthews is already boosting both of those numbers.

Matthews is taking 70 percent of his shots so far from beyond the arc, working most of the above the break areas that he used earlier in the season to achieve a 37.8 percent mark from deep. The only thing we haven’t seen too much of his Wesley camping out in the left corner. But with only three games under his belt in Indiana, there’s little value in obsessing over specifics just yet.

Regardless of where and how Matthews gets his baskets, he is a much-needed boost to the Pacers.

There’s only one possible downside to all of this.

Are the Indiana Pacers sacrificing development for wins now?

Do you know who we haven’t seen much of lately? Edmond Sumner and Aaron Holiday. Indiana’s sophomore and rookie guards are M.I.A. since signing Matthews three games ago. Despite both showing signs of growth — and assumed being the future of the team — the signing of Matthews all but assured this.

So, there’s a drawback to Matthews, but the question for the Pacers is what the value more at the current moment: Player development or winning this year.

Unfortunately, there’s not a playbook for when the team’s best player goes down right before the trade deadline and you’ve got one of the best records in the NBA.

With as many wins as they had at the trade deadline, tanking clearly wasn’t an option. They needed a player to replace some of the offense that was lost once Victor Oladipo was hurt. Holiday and Sumner got but a few chances, but it was clear they weren’t quite ready to take over.

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They’re getting there, particularly Holiday, but for a team that at best could tank their way to a very late lottery pick, it’s tough to completely forsake the current version of the team in hopes of creating a better team in the future.

Matthews taking their minutes does affect that but at the same time, how much would 20 some games change the future of the franchise? Is Holiday or Sumner’s ceiling drastically altered by them not getting minutes now? Personally I see more value in what players do over the summer in this case, but if there was more of the season left, I might feel differently as well.

There is an effect, yes, but it feels seasonally nihilistic to tell veterans like Thaddeus Young and Bojan Bogdanovic that they should just lay down for the rest of this year. Indiana may just be playing spoiler at this point, but it’s hard to sell the current team on player development when several of them could be gone this summer.

It’s hard to know which way they should go unless you ultimately value one over the other. With Wesley on the team, however, it’s clear Indiana saw more value in winning now.

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If Wesley Matthews keeps hitting 3-pointers like this, then the Indiana Pacers just might hold on to their home court advantage.

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