It is still early but the preseason has not brought great results for the Indiana Pacers as a shooting team. Through three exhibitions, the Pacers have shot just 32-of-108 from deep, good for 29.6 percent. That has to improve over the course of the regular season if they stand any chance of competing in the East.
Indiana has a handful of talented shooters but consistency has always been a bit of a problem. Myles Turner and Domantas Sabonis both like to step out and shoot the long ball but have not done it at a high enough clip to justify the number of attempts they take.
The Indiana Pacers need to improve their three-point shooting
With some of the players on the roster, the Pacers should be good enough to make some noise in the East and put up a ton of points each night. Of course, struggling to connect from deep is going to make that a lot tougher, especially when they do not have two of their best scorers due to injury.
Until T.J. Warren and Caris LeVert return to the lineup, scoring is going to be a little harder to come by. Finding success from beyond the arc will change the outcome of the early portion of this season so hopefully, Chris Duarte, Myles Turner, and others can get hot.
The Pacers increased their shooting attempts last season under Nate Bjorkgren and appear to be ready to take perimeter shots once again this season with Rick Carlisle leading the way. They have several pieces that can make it work and their bigs are capable of contributing from outside as well.
Just for reference, if Indiana continued to shoot below 30 percent from three-point range, they would rank last in the NBA by a wide margin. Last season, the Cavaliers were the least successful team from the outside, converting on 33.6 percent of their attempts.
Even to be a bad shooting team, the Pacers have a lot to clean up from the preseason, although we cannot take too much into account from exhibitions. If this trend continues well into the regular season, then there should definitely be some panic. For now, this is a statistic that needs some work but should not scare fans away just yet.
The first few weeks of the season will tell us a lot about how good this team will be in 2021-22. Can they get over the shooting slump and challenge the top dogs in the Eastern Conference?