Indiana Pacers: 10 best point guards in franchise history

9. Micheal Williams

Micheal Williams started his career as a journeyman and was finally given some stability when he joined the Pacers.

While Indiana would still be a pit stop of sorts, him only playing with the team for two full seasons, it was longer than Williams had played anywhere else in his career up to that point.

Williams spent his first season with the Detroit Pistons, and in his second season, he played six games with the Phoenix Suns and 22 games with the Charlotte Hornets.

When Williams played for the Pacers in the early 90s, the team was just starting to get back to a competitive level, having made the postseason for the third time in the last decade the season before he arrived. The Pacers would be perennial postseason competitors thereafter, and Williams helped kick that era off.

Though his time with the Pacers was short-lived, he averaged 13.2 points, 3.0 rebounds, and 6.5 assists per game, racking up 14.7 win shares in just two short seasons. Williams was only a part-time starter in his first year with the Pacers but moved into more of a full-time starting role in his second season. The Pacers would trade him for Pooh Richardson the year after.

8. Travis Best

Travis Best is a good example of how you can pave your way as a backup point guard and still have considerable, long-lasting impact with a franchise.

Best played in all 82 games of the 2000 season where the Indiana Pacers went to the NBA Finals but started zero. Still, his impact on the team was important, as he averaged 8.9 points, 1.7 rebounds, and 3.3 assists. He ranked sixth on the team in win shares that season and was second in assists per 36 minutes.

Best served as both a sixth man and a key backup to the likes of Mark Jackson at his best with the Pacers. The ability to lean on a guard as proficient as Best when Jackson needed rest was one of the key reasons the Pacers were so deadly that season.

The Pacers that year had an incredible amount of depth that allowed them to finally get past the Eastern Conference Finals where they had been stopped in the two years prior, teams which Best had also been a part of.

In seven seasons, Best averaged 8.1 points, 1.8 rebounds, and 3.8 assists as a Pacer.

Ultimately, Best would grow discontent with the backup role and would request a trade, but struggled to carve out a role as important as the one he had with the Pacers in the late 90s and early 2000s.