Basketball is a beautiful balance. It is a waltz, a dance done hand in hand to the tune of the squeaks of the court. Playing fast enables some things; playing slow enables others. The tempo drifts in and out, forever in rhythm as the ball begins to bounce.
Pardon the soliloquy, but even when said poetically, the truth is your basketball team needs to be able to create in a handful of different ways. The full-court fast break and the half-court set-up are the obvious styles, but the minutiae are far more important.
Basketball teams largely pursue building in one of two ways. Either they become fully invested in one strength – be it shooting, defense, pace, post play, whatever it is – and add supplementary skills, while others are all-around types who do a bit of everything.
The Indiana Pacers are pretty obviously in the second camp right now. They have an incredibly prototypical lineup in terms of size, role, and playstyle and a roster that balances shooting, rebounding, playmaking, scoring, and defense well.
However, their team is starting to shift away from that identity. With the signing of Kelly Oubre Jr., it's clear that the Pacers want to do one thing at a very elite level.
They want to get into the paint and hit the rim constantly.
However, while that specialty could lead to a new evolution of Pacers basketball, it cannot come at the expense of their carefully crafted balance. That conversation between roster and system will define the team as much as anything but Tyrese Haliburton's return from injury.
Maybe they can be two in the same.
A change in progress over many months
Maybe it was the scoring and attacking the Pacers lost when they moved on from Bennedict Mathurin that precipitated the signing of the comparable, yet far more willing to be boxed in Oubre. Maybe Mathurin was just never going to be who Indiana needed, and vice versa. Maybe this has been planned for years.
Whatever the reason, Indiana spent much of last season struggling to get to the basket without Tyrese Haliburton spurring on constant drive and kick shenanigans.
To fix that, Indiana made a few separate moves. They brought in Oubre, a terror going downhill and a decent enough shooter to not be shot down by some dangerous spacing issues; they resigned Jalen Slawson to a two-way deal, who showed in the G-League and in Summer League that he can be a player similar to Oubre at a fraction of the cost; and they empowered Obi Toppin for a larger role.
While the obvious answer to alleviate Haliburton's responsibility upon his return is to give him as much space to operate as possible, having constant slashing will make his job far less dangerous by never forcing him into the paint unless he chooses to be there. As such, they'll protect him from those hits.
Haliburton obviously can't be kept in bubble wrap, but instead of making him do more with more space, Indiana is asking him to do less with more help. When he is ready to scale up, he will.
Until then, the Pacers will keep punishing the rim.
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