Pacers PSA: Whatever you do, don’t sign Terry Rozier

For the love of God and everything holy, I implore the Indiana Pacers to please avoid signing Terry Rozier of the Boston Celtics.

As the Indiana Pacers are no longer part of the playoff festivities, the front office and fans naturally turn to the future. The NBA runs 24/7/365 and free agency is arguably the grandest event of the year aside from the NBA finals.

Even if they were healthy, the Pacers are in the second tier of NBA teams. With their current roster, the Pacers aren’t contending for a title. As such, they’ll look to the market to add a real difference maker to move the needle.

In a market like Indiana, reeling in the biggest of names is no easy task. The history of top free agents heading to the Hoosier State is a short one, so fans tend to look for the next tier of free agents. Indiana is a few pieces away, with one of their biggest holes being another creator and a dynamic point guard.

Many fans who don’t keep up with the rest of the NBA and some deeply incompetent front offices have tabbed Terry Rozier as a potential target.

On the surface, Rozier makes some sense for Indiana. He’s a young, scoring point guard who played well in the 2018 playoffs (well not really) and had a down year on what was often dysfunctional Celtics team. He put up 16.5 points, 5.7 assists and 5.3 rebounds per game in the 2018 playoffs. What’s not to like?

As it happens, an absolute f- (Editor’s note: WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE YOUNG MAN).

The good, bad, and ugly with Terry Rozier

Fans and writers have floated around cap numbers for Rozier, with potential AAV in the $10m+ range. Now, this may sound hyperbolic, but I am dead serious: I would not pay Terry Rozier the minimum.

I’d rather bring Joe Young back from China to let him sit on the bench and post videos on Instagram hyping himself up. Rozier is that destructive of a player.

Many casual observers will be floored by the above statement. Before you click off and yell at me on Twitter, let me present my case.

The one thing Terry Rozier can do is score the basketball. With a solid handle and some shooting chops, Rozier can put the ball in the bucket. When he’s in rhythm, he can be effective as a pick and roll ball handler, creating off of the bounce.

(Big thanks to my good friend Max Carlin for the visual evidence. If you need a Celtics based opinion on Rozier, hit him up on twitter @maxacarlin.)

Rozier doesn’t turn the ball over much (though technically, he does, more on this later) and his on-ball defense is passable when he’s engaged. For Rozier, this is where the praise ends.

I’ll start with Rozier’s defense, which looks solid on the surface. He has his moments at the point of attack and his 0.2 Defensive Player Impact Plus Minus is solid.

However, anyone who follows Boston closely will tell you about the trainwreck named Terry Rozier on defense for the majority of his minutes. On the ball, Rozier’s wildly inconsistent effort and technique lead to fully inept isolation and PNR defense.

Leaning over too far, Tomas Satoransky dispatches Rozier with ease:

Off of the ball, Rozier typically hinges towards disaster. His focus is poor and his IQ and instincts are incredibly lacking. Playing on a defense loaded with elite stoppers helped him look better than he was, but his off-ball warts shone through far too often.

Rozier’s slow processing here leads to a wide open Gallinari three, failing to read the Kyrie stunt:

Watch as Rozier spaces on his defensive coverage, leaving his man on the switch, who happens to be one of the greatest players ever:

Rozier’s defense, as poor as it is, isn’t his biggest issue. Far from it, in fact. His fatal flaw, turning him into an unplayable dumpster fire for many minutes, is his inexplicable habit of hijacking the offense and taking awful shots.

Basketball is a game of decisions. Decision making is one of if not the most important skills for a basketball player can possess. Terry Rozier might be the worst decision maker in the entire NBA. His Offensive PIPM of -2.2 is quite generous.

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This decision making leads to Rozier being horribly inefficient. Efficiency directly correlates to winning basketball and adding Rozier drags down the efficiency of the entire team. His true shooting percentage of 50.1 is quite poor and his playoff mark of 43.9 percent is horrid.

Even in the 2018 playoffs, where Terry is so often lauded for his performance, his inefficiency hurt Boston, notably, in the Eastern Conference Finals. In their series against Cleveland, Rozier put up 13.6 points on a harmful 46.4 true shooting percentage.

In the 2019 playoffs, Rozier’s offense hit all-time garbage levels. Sporting an anemic true shooting percentage of 43.9, the Celtics posted a high school level 93.1 offensive rating with Rozier on the floor.

For comparison, the Knicks held the title of worst regular season offensive rating at a towering 104 when compared to the Rozier-led Celtics.

Excuse the belaboring to come, but I need to hammer this point as hard as I can into the brains of every single reader. Terry Rozier might be the worst offensive guard in the NBA. Remember the caveat I made regarding Rozier’s low turnovers?

Well, Rozier’s shot selection is so bad he wastes as many possessions as if he had a -10 AST/TO.  Despite playing alongside capable on-ball players Kyrie Irving, Gordon Hayward, Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown and even Marcus Smart and Al Horford, Rozier isolated like his name was Harden with regularity.

With time on the shot clock, this stagnant iso leads to a horrible fade away and a wasted possession:

Instead of passing to the wide open Irving on the corner, Rozier thinks charging into the NBA’s best shot blocker would be a good idea. With many moons left on the shot clock, he heaves this ball towards Turner, missing badly:

Again, Rozier commands the offensive himself early in the shot clock, not even considering passing before barfing up this terrible floater:

One surefire way to get a good sense of a player’s true value is to look at smart fans’ and writers’ opinions on the players.

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I can guarantee if you ask almost any smart Celtics’ fan about Terry Rozier, they’ll tell you they want him playing for the NBA’s expansion team on the sun. It is how Pacers fans view Tyreke, only ten times worse.

Signing Terry Rozier to a deal even close to what he will command is nonsensical. He’s an awful NBA player and would provide negative value on any contract he signed.

Horrible decisions and a usually bad defense is not a winning recipe.

Signing Rozier is like baking a pie with blood, urine, and death itself. Rozier is a destructive NBA player and I doubt he ever contributes to winning at a high level, barring some massive alterations of his game.

I don’t care about his counting stats. I care he takes wins off of the table.

Sign Tomas Satoransky. Sign Tyus Jones. Keep around the three better point guards already on the roster. Even max D’Angelo Russell before you sign Rozier (if you know me, you know how difficult that was to say).

If you’re reading this Kevin Pritchard (and I know you read us occasionally!), please, for the love of Indianapolis, don’t let Terry Rozier set foot in the state of Indiana.