In the month of January, the Indiana Pacers are turning the ball over 15.6 times per game. According to NBA.com, this ranks 24th in the league across that span, and the Pacers' lack of ball security was a big problem in their loss to the Philadelphia 76ers on Monday night.
During Monday's game, Indiana committed 24 turnovers to the 76ers' nine. This includes six turnovers from Aaron Nesmith, five from Andrew Nembhard, and four from Pascal Siakam.
After the loss, head coach Rick Carlisle got brutally honest about the Pacers' turnover problem and made it clear that fixing it is going to be a priority moving forward (h/t Dustin Dopirak of IndyStar.com).
"A minus-14 steal differential is, it's impossible to win an NBA game," Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. "We gotta do a better job of taking care of the ball. They had 18 steals, we had four. We're not really a steal team, but we gotta take care of it better. So much of this is possession and we didn't do a good job there."
Turnovers continue to be a problem for the Pacers
In theory, it makes sense that the Pacers are struggling a bit more than usual with taking care of the ball after ranking third and ninth in TOPG in each of the last two seasons: they don't have Tyrese Haliburton.
The Wisconsin native is one of the best guards in the NBA because of his elite facilitation and ability to push the tempo and make plays. On top of that, though, Haliburton is also incredibly efficient with the ball (he has averaged 10.1 assists to just 2.3 turnovers during his time in Indiana), which makes the offense much more dangerous.
With Haliburton out for the season, though, it has become a lot more difficult for the Pacers to work as seamlessly, and it has shown in recent games (they also turned the ball over 25 times in their 43-point loss to the Detroit Pistons on Jan. 18).
Even without their star guard, the Pacers are still (mostly) running the same fast-paced offense fans have become accustomed to seeing. And while Nembhard has mostly done a good job as its starting point guard this season, Indiana is realizing that he is no Haliburton, and the two of them have completely different strengths.
Additionally, with a lot more being asked out of their other players, it's not much of a surprise that many of them are going through their own growing pains.
The Pacers probably aren't going to win a ton more games for the rest of the season, and fans might actually be happy about that. But at the very least, they need to get back to playing their brand of basketball. And it all starts with taking better care of the ball.