Ranking 10 worst Pacers starters of the Reggie Miller era
By Jack Simone
Ranking 10 worst Pacers starters of the Reggie Miller era: 2. Greg Dreiling
Greg Dreiling spent 10 years in the NBA, most of which was played with the Indiana Pacers. He spent seven seasons with Indiana, two with the Dallas Mavericks, and one with the Cleveland Cavaliers.
At 7-foot-1, Dreiling played the center position for Indiana and was a career bench guy. Not just a bench guy, though, a deep bench guy, as he rarely played real minutes.
Indiana selected him with the second pick in the second round of the 1986 NBA Draft, but in his first season with the team, he only appeared in 24 games with the team, playing 5.3 minutes per contest.
Unfortunately for Dreiling, this trend continued. Through his first four seasons with the team, while his games played numbers went up, his minutes per game did not. He didn’t crack over 10 minutes per game until his fifth year in the league.
That year, he broke through into the regular rotation for the Pacers, but as one might expect from a guy who didn’t get minutes up to that point, it wasn’t the best experiment.
Dreiling appeared in 73 games during the 1990-91 season, starting 42 of them. (He started in 23 games for the Pacers the next year, too.) He averaged 3.5 points sand 3.5 rebounds while shooting 50.5% from the field.
For what he was, Dreiling was fine, but he wasn’t a starter.