Though the Indiana Pacers haven’t found many legends at the one slot, they have had some iconic and memorable point guards over the years
A team’s point guard is the floor general, the quarterback equivalent within the game of basketball. It’s almost without a doubt the hardest position in the game of basketball to play at a high level, and the Indiana Pacers aren’t one of the first teams to come to mind when one thinks of the best point guards of all-time.
Their best player of all-time, Reggie Miller, played the two. In recent eras, it’s been Paul George at the three and Victor Oladipo at the two.
With decades of history to pull from, though, there are some notable point guards that have graced the box scores for the blue and gold.
While the list of the top 10 for Indiana doesn’t look like a legendary listing of point guards, it tells an interesting story about one team’s struggles with the position over the years and provides a snapshot as to how one position has perpetually looked for a singular team, no matter the era.
Let’s dive in, starting with three honorable mentions.
Honorable mention — Darren Collison
Traded to the Indiana Pacers in 2010, Collison’s first run with the Pacers was two years in length as the team was starting to ascend toward greatness in the Eastern Conference under their newfound star in Paul George.
Collison would be the first starting point guard George would play with, although his time with George would be short-lived, as George Hill took over the starting point guard duties shortly after.
Collison would return to the Pacers for the final two years of his career from 2017-19, leading the NBA in 3-point percentage in the 2017 season with a 46.8 percent shooting mark.
Over the course of his four-year Pacers tenure split across two different stints, Collison averaged 11.9 points, 2.9 rebounds, and 5.3 assists. He shot an impressive 40.3 percent beyond the arc.
Honorable mention — T.J. Ford
There were some lofty expectations for Ford, given that the Pacers had just acquired him as part of the deal where they sent out franchise star Jermaine O’Neal.
Ford had a propensity to rattle off points in volume, but was relatively inconsistent on the offensive end. Playing in the years just prior to the Paul George era, Ford didn’t see much success with the Pacers.
In his three years with the team, Ford averaged 11.2 points, 3.0 rebounds, and 4.4 assists per game.
Honorable mention — Jerry Sichting
Drafted and waived by the Warriors without ever playing a game, Jerry Sichting’s NBA aspirations felt destitute when he started his professional career in the CBA.
Eventually, the Pacers would give him a shot, and Sichting would do quite well once he proved he was worthy of an increased role. His first two seasons were defined by bench minutes, only playing 9.7 and 15.6 minutes per game in those seasons.
The following three seasons, though, Sichting would play 29.6 minutes per game and prove he belonged in the NBA, averaging 10.6 points, 1.9 rebounds, 5.1 assists, and 1.1 steals per game from 1983-85.
Sichting would go on to play five more years with the Boston Celtics, Portland Trail Blazers, Charlotte Hornets, and Milwaukee Bucks.
10. Ricky Sobers
Ricky Sobers had an 11-year career that peaked early, with him playing his best two years with the Indiana Pacers in seasons three and four of his career.
As a Pacer, Sobers averaged 17.8 points, 3.9 rebounds, and 6.5 assists per game.
Traded by the Suns to Indiana in exchange for Don Buse, Sobers played nearly 39 minutes in his first year with the Pacers and appeared in almost all 82 games in both seasons he played with the Pacers. Sobers benefitted from a key role on a poorly performing Pacers team that was having a tough transition to the NBA.
The Pacers had sold off many of its stars in recent years to keep the lights on and to cover the introductory NBA fees from when the ABA and NBA merged.
Sobers would go on to play for a few more teams in the NBA, but never received a role as large as the Pacers were willing to afford him, thus limiting his statistical output.
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.
7. Bill Keller
Bill Keller, a Hoosier since high school, stood at just 5-10 but found a way to make an impact on the most successful Pacers teams of all time.
Keller, a point guard during all three of the team’s ABA Championships, averaged 11.8 points, 2.4 rebounds, and 3.6 assists per game, collecting 30.1 win shares over the course of his career.
Though he was drafted by an NBA team, Keller decided to play for his hometown team in Indiana and brought solid shooting to the roster, a skill he needed in order to provide value given his small stature.
Keller would rival the ABA’s most accurate shooters during his time in the league, closing his career with a 33.8 percent 3-point shooting mark and an 87.2 percent mark from the charity stripe. In the 1972-73 season, Keller was the ABA’s most accurate free-throw shooter.
His best season by far came in his last one, where he averaged the most minutes he’d been given over the course of a single season and made the most of the greater opportunity. Keller, in that 1975-76 season, averaged 14.2 points, 2.9 rebounds, and 3.9 assists, hitting 40.6 percent of his field-goal attempts to close out his career.
While it was Keller’s last season, it was also Indiana’s final year in the ABA, as they would merge with the NBA the following year. Keller went on to be an assistant coach at Purdue, his alma mater.
6. Johnny Davis
Johnny Davis’s career started on a hot note with him being a part of a Finals winning team in his rookie season with the Portland Trail Blazers.
Davis was acquired by Indiana through a trade in which the Pacers swapped first-round draft picks with the Blazers and also received Davis.
Though he only played for them for four seasons, he provided a sense of stability in the backcourt as the Pacers moved on from their longtime coach in Slick Leonard to a new era with Jack McKinney in the 80s.
For a decade from 1976-86, the Pacers only made the playoffs in one season (1981) and Davis ranked first in assists per game and third in win shares that season behind Billy Knight and James Edwards.
The Pacers teams Davis played on generally weren’t good, but he was able to stand out with averages of 16.4 points, 2.4 rebounds, and 5.4 assists per game. Statistically, the best years of Davis’s career were spent in Indiana.
In 1982, the Pacers would trade Davis to the Hawks for just a second-round draft pick.
5. Jamaal Tinsley
Only 19 players in NBA history have recorded a five-by-five game, and Jamaal Tinsley is one of them. He recorded such a well-rounded performance in 2001 with Indiana, putting up 12 points, 9 rebounds, 15 assists, 5 blocks, and 6 assists. He’s the shortest player to ever record such a game.
Beyond this single-game accomplishment, Tinsley played for the Pacers for 7 seasons, making the All-Rookie team in 2002 with averages of 9.4 points, 3.7 rebounds, and 8.1 assists per game. Over the course of his career with Indiana, he would average 10.4 points, 3.4 rebounds, and 7.0 assists per game.
A key cog of competitive Pacers teams in the early 2000s, Tinsley was a regular starter in the backcourt for Indiana. His tenure with the Pacers would come to an end in large part due to injuries, and the team eventually waived him.
While Tinsley wasn’t right in the foreground when the Pacers went to the Eastern Conference Finals in 2004, he ranked sixth in win shares that year, and fifth in playoff win shares.
While Tinsley is bested statistically by some players that rank higher than him on this list, his influence on teams that competed deep in the playoffs ranks him higher all-time.
4. Vern Fleming
Vern Fleming is one of the best Pacers point guards in terms of longevity and counting stats, but struggled to lead the team to much success despite getting a bulk of the team’s backcourt starts in the mid-to-late 80s.
Fleming was better suited for a backup point guard role, where he excelled behind the likes of Mark Jackson on the tail-end of his career as the Pacers started to get competitive. The furthest Fleming would go in the playoffs with the Pacers was the Conference Finals.
At his peak, Fleming averaged 13.9 points and 7.1 assists in the 1988 season.
In his prime, Fleming was good for about 14 points and 7 assists. Fleming had virtually no outside shot which severely limited his game, though he played in an era in which that shot wasn’t valued much by team strategy.
Prior to being drafted by the Pacers in 1984, Fleming won a Gold Medal with the United States Olympic basketball team.
3. George Hill
The Indiana Pacers secured the point guard they desired to pair next to Paul George in George Hill during the 2011 NBA Draft, surrendering the pick the San Antonio Spurs used to add Kawhi Leonard to their roster.
Ironically, with San Antonio, Leonard would win a Finals MVP over LeBron James and the Miami Heat, the team the Pacers struggled mightily to get past while Hill was on the team.
It’s unfair to stack up Hill’s production to that of Leonard, as not many saw Leonard as a viable immediate option coming out of San Diego State University, and because the Pacers had different needs at the time of Leonard’s availability.
In his five seasons with the Pacers, Hill contributed at a high level to some of the most competitive teams the Pacers have rolled out in the NBA, averaging 12.3 points, 3.7 rebounds, and 3.9 assists per game.
He amassed 33.1 win shares while with the team, 5.4 win shares in the playoffs. His win shares per 48 minutes rate is seventh in franchise history.
While he would be an effective facilitator, he didn’t take up the floor general role as most point guards do. The Pacers had plenty of players who were comfortable with the ball in their hands, and Hill’s shooting is where he made the greatest impact.
Sitting at fifth in franchise history in made 3-pointers, George really helped the Pacers space the floor and provided space on the interior for players like Roy Hibbert.
2. Don Buse
Don Buse grew up in Indiana, becoming a high school All-Star in 1968. His tenure with the Pacers is somewhat confusing.
Ultimately, Buse played 7 years with the Pacers. The first four were with the ABA team (where he was a part of the most recent franchise championship in 1973), then he played one year with the Pacers in their first year in the NBA. He played three seasons for the Phoenix Suns after that but returned to the Pacers for two more seasons following his tenure in Phoenix.
Buse was a role player in the days just following the team’s title-winning years. Buse’s peak was in the final ABA season and debut NBA season, in which he led the league in steals and assists per game both years.
In Indiana’s first year in the NBA, Buse averaged 8.0 points, 3.3 rebounds, 8.5 assists, and 3.5 steals per game. Though his outside shot would wane in and out, Buse would max at 38.6 percent shooting beyond the arc in the 1982 season with the Pacers.
Making his way in the league with strong defense, Buse ended up playing on two All-Star teams and was named to six All-Defensive teams, as well.
Ultimately, Buse would be traded for two weeks of contract work from an opposing team’s marketing guru.
Buse was high-class, though, and a great talent that stood out. Had he been surrounded by more talented teammates, he could have helped the Pacers excel in the 80s.
1. Mark Jackson
Mark Jackson is the only starting point guard to see NBA Finals minutes, which gives him quite the boost up this list.
Jackson started in all 23 Pacers playoff games in the 2000 Finals run, scoring 18 points in Game 1 of the Finals and hitting the double-digit assist mark six times that postseason.
Beyond that, though, he was a great facilitator in his time with Indiana and gave the team an incredible offensive push alongside Reggie Miller.
Playing with the team for six seasons, averaging 8.4 points, 3.8 rebounds, and 8.1 assists, Jackson was a bit past his prime with the Pacers but still managed to contribute at a high level and carve out a distinguished role with the team.
Indiana would trade Jackson for Jalen Rose in the 1996-97 season, but the trade didn’t go well and the Pacers traded back for Jackson the following year.
Following the visit to the Finals in 2000, Jackson signed with the Toronto Raptors and would finish his career with them, the Knicks, the Jazz, and the Rockets. Jackson’s time with the Pacers wasn’t legendary and is a good signal of how sorely the team has struggled to be led by a point guard over the years.
Mark Jackson is their very best point guard in terms of longevity, success, and statistics.