Pacers Season Reviews: Thad Young remains the glue that holds the Pacers together
By Ben Pfeifer
Thaddeus Young’s winning ways
Thad Young makes winning plays. It’s easy to use winning plays as a blanket for the little things, hustling, boxing out, etc. While Young does all of those unnoticed things and more, his hustle plays win games in the most literal sense.
The Thad Young play of the season is also a microcosm of everything he brings to the Indiana Pacers. On Halloween night, the Pacers teetered on their own nightmare, losing to the Knicks on national television. We all remember Victor Oladipo’s game-sealing corner three. Though, we should not forget Oladipo would have never had the chance to hit the shot if it weren’t for Young’s hustle to save the Bogdanovic airball and find Oladipo beyond the arc:
How about this play later in the season, where Young eschews the foul and instead rips Evan Fournier, before dumping the ball off to Wes Matthews, keeping Indiana in the game:
On offense, Thad’s game is the opposite of flashy. Nothing he does on the glamorous end of the floor has any flare. His offensive game consists mostly of posting up, standing in the dunker spot, running pick and pops and shooting corner threes. His three-point shooting in 2018-19 was inconsistent.
In January, Young shot a searing 48 percent from beyond the arc and in November, he shot a chilling 0.7 percent from deep. This inconsistency came from his low volume, only taking 1.8 threes per game. Given his low volume, teams will ignore from deep and this is an issue. We saw Boston execute this strategy, subtracting massive value from Young on offense.
Feeding Young the ball in the post isn’t an optimal strategy, though it was an effective source of offense. He sports decent touch on his lefty hook shot, effectively backing down smaller and weaker opponents:
Out of the post, Thad outsmarts defenses with his passing ability, spraying the rock around to shooters and cutters. In the first play, he notices the Pistons switching on the weak side and finds Bogey in the corner. He has great chemistry with Bogdanovic, finding him on basket cuts all season:
Young is nothing special on offense. It is fair to wonder if Young’s offensive limitations limit the Pacers’ ceiling long term. However, his defense helps the Pacers in so many ways, outweighing any offensive problems Young has.
He’s a legitimate All-defensive forward, with elite versatility, perimeter defense, switchability and team defense. Despite being their power forward, Thad Young is the Pacers’ best perimeter defender (not counting Oladipo). He held his own with all manner of shifty guards and elite shotmakers; one can’t ask him to defend Kyrie Irving any better here, despite the ball going through the net:
Thad Young holds the rare distinction of being one of the league’s best “Giannis stoppers.” Every time he matches up with the Greek Freek, Young gave him troubles. Young’s strength stymied Giannis’ straight-line drives which overwhelm most NBA defender. Bumping him off balance, stripping the ball and drawing offensive fouls, Young guarded Antetokounmpo as well as any player in the NBA:
Just as fantastic as his man defense is his team defense, leading to the statistic defining Young’s season…