The biggest thing the Indiana Pacers need to do better

The Indiana Pacers are struggling out of the gate, starting out 1-4. They had an embarrassing effort against the Bulls on Wednesday night, losing 124-109. The fact that they are losing games isn’t a surprise. We expected this team to be one of the worst in the league.

What is a surprise to me is how bad their perimeter defense is. I knew they’d be bad, but I didn’t expect it to be the single biggest issue plaguing this team. The Pacers give up a whopping 122 points per game, which is the third-worst mark in the league.

The reason why they give up so many threes is a function of their poor perimeter defense. In the first four games of the year, they didn’t have Myles Turner so I expected the defense to suffer. He was out there against the Bulls and didn’t make much of a difference.

The Indiana Pacers defend the three worse than any team in the league.

Indiana simply isn’t defending the three-point line. Like..at all. They are allowing opponents to shoot a ridiculous 45.8% from beyond the arc. That’s by far the worst in the league. It’s a full three (!) percentage points worse than the next team, which is the Bulls. (All stats are courtesy of ESPN)

Not only do they allow them to shoot a ridiculous percentage, but almost all of them are wide-open looks. It looks like the Pacers are just crashing the paint when they get beat off the dribble and helping off wide-open guys and letting them shoot easy threes.

It doesn’t help that they don’t have any true wings on this team. The small forward position is a disaster. Aaron Nesmith is a starter for God’s sake. He’s at best a bench guy. Bennedict Mathurin should eventually take that starting spot, but his defense isn’t that great right now either.

I think the biggest issue is that it looks like it’s a philosophical thing that the Pacers are doing. They look like they are playing a style that is telling them to crash the paint and leave shooters open on the perimeter. I understand that style when you don’t have Turner out there, who’s one of the best shot-blockers in the league.

But that doesn’t excuse what happened Wednesday night. Turner was out there and they still crashed the lane to help on defense and left guys wide open behind the three-point line. They allowed the Bulls to shoot 53% from beyond the arc.

I know I should be rooting for things like this to happen so the Pacers can get Wembanyama. But it’s still frustrating to see so many mental errors add up. If they fix this, they might actually have a chance to win some games.