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No. 9: Indiana Pacers
Last Season: 38-44
9th place in East; missed playoffs
For 3 ½ years, the Indiana Pacers have done it Frank Vogel's way: rugged halfcourt defense, methodical pace and powerful post-driven offense. The formula has been good for a .587 winning percentage, three top-10 finishes in defensive rating and two trips to the Eastern Conference finals. Nevertheless, after last season's injury-fueled slide out of the postseason, it's now Larry Bird's turn.
This won't be the Indiana team you're used to. The Pacers are revving things up. Little guys will take center stage, and the plodding lineups of the past few years will be few and far between. Vogel's clubs have excelled by running counter to the league trends of pacing and spacing. But Bird, Vogel's boss, has decided to swim with the current. And who is to argue with Larry Legend, especially in Indiana?
While we watch the Pacers to see whether Vogel can keep his team's defensive rating lofty with the quicker pace, Indiana should see a considerable boost by getting star forward Paul George fully back from the broken leg that limited him to six games a season ago. As it turns out, George is coming back to a very different roster than the one he was part of when the Pacers lost to Miami in the East finals just two years ago. How will Bird's plan come together?
The season started in ignominious fashion two months before opening night, when George crumpled against a basket support in Las Vegas with a shattered leg while playing for Team USA. The injury interrupted George's annual upward climb up the league ranks, an ascension that made him one of the NBA's top two-way players. In 2013-14, he'd improved his shot-making ability and upped his scoring average to more than 20 points while becoming an MVP candidate. When he went down, so too did Indiana's hopes for another deep playoff run.
With George on the sidelines but not quite declared out for the season, Vogel's hope was his post-fueled offense and stingy defense could squeeze into the tepid Eastern playoff field. Then, if George could get back, perhaps the Pacers would hit their stride at just the right time and become dangerous. George did get back, albeit under a minutes restriction, but the Pacers did not finish in the top eight of the East.
It was a roller-coaster season of the highest order. Indiana started the season 15-30, then won 15 of 19 to get back in the hunt. The season seemed to be torpedoed with a six-game losing streak in mid-March. But then Indiana reeled off six straight wins and welcomed George back. That set up a must-win season finale at Memphis, but the Pacers lost and thus joined Miami -- their opponents in the 2014 conference finals -- on the sidelines as the playoffs commenced.
Vogel was tasked with working around George's injury, but that was only part of his challenge. He also had to replace departed shooting guard Lance Stephenson who, at the very least, was a member of an Indiana starting five that had been one of the league's top units for two years. Point guard George Hill was never better but was also limited by injury. When he played, the Pacers won at the rate of a 49-win team. David West was slowed by injury and his performance showed it. And Roy Hibbert never got out of the offensive funk he'd slipped into the season before.
Despite all that and another finish in the bottom third of the league on the offensive end, the Pacers ranked eighth on the defensive end, won 38 games, and if they had fallen on the right side of the playoff bubble, would have been a troublesome opponent for the Cavaliers in last year's first round. Nevertheless, as soon as the season was over, Bird announced he was changing course and followed through on the plans with fervor.
The Pacers' summer was as notable for their departures as for their additions. The aforementioned power-post offense? The two main components of that approach are now elsewhere. Hibbert had worn out his welcome and was ultimately unloaded on the Lakers. His longtime frontcourt partner, West, opted out of his deal and ultimately signed an extremely team-friendly deal to try and win a ring in San Antonio. Given the postseason remarks about Hibbert from Bird and Vogel, his departure was all but certain, provided Indiana could find a taker. And even if they hadn't, Hibbert might have been slotted for the bench in favor of Lavoy Allen and Ian Mahinmi. The loss of West was not planned, however, and Bird later told reporters that most of his offseason moves stemmed from West's decision to leave. Along with the big men, the Pacers also lost two key components of their bench from last season through free agency in Luis Scola and C.J. Watson.
Indiana started to fill those open spots on draft night by taking raw, talented big man Myles Turner out of Texas. Turner fits Bird's new philosophy -- he's athletic and has the potential to become a legitimate stretch center as a face-up big. But he can also block shots and in time could provide the hard-to-find combination of floor spacing on one end and paint protection on the other. Later in the draft, Bird added explosive Oregon guard Joseph Young. Young has a tweener body type but has the scoring acumen to develop into an instant offense threat.
Bird's biggest splash in free agency was signing Monta Ellis to a four-year, $44 million contract. The mercurial Ellis fits the mold as far as Bird's designs on playing faster. Whether he can hold the fort for Vogel defensively is an open question, but he competes on that end for the most part and is dangerous in the passing lanes. On offense, Ellis can fill it up and burn possessions. He provides more of a scoring threat to support George than would have existed if Bird had held pat on his roster. Whether that's a good thing remains to be seen. It's possible Ellis emerges as Indiana's top option on offense because generally when Ellis is on the floor, he ends up with the ball in his hands the majority of the time. But George is the franchise player in Indiana.
Also, Ellis' arrival almost certainly pushed Hill back into the role of a complementary player. Hill has been that for most of his career, and he's as efficient a guard as you'll find. During the Pacers' injury-marred 2014-15 season, when Hill was healthy, he took on a larger offensive role than ever before and did so without losing any efficiency at all. Perhaps that was a small sample issue or an aberration. Or maybe the Pacers will now replace a lot of Hill's efficient usage with the inefficient ways of Ellis. And they'll do so without the high-powered offensive rebounding of the recent Pacers teams that could have fed off Ellis' ability to attract defensive attention.
Bird added former Laker Jordan Hill on a one-year deal, completing a virtual swap for Hibbert. If this Hill returns to the lower-usage offensive rebounder that he was before last season, he can help recover a lot of those lost offensive rebounds. If he shoots the ball better than last season, he can also be a pick-and-pop partner for Ellis. But when Hill is on the floor, the Pacers lose the rim protection that Mahinmi can provide. But when Mahinmi is in the game, he will be a drag on the hopefully high-octane new offense. The ideal outcome for the Pacers would be for Turner to be a quick study and take over in the middle, but that's asking a lot for a one-and-done player. With George slotted to play more power forward -- reluctantly as it turns out -- that makes production on the wing that much more imperative in the Pacers' new pecking order. That job will come down to a mix of newly acquired forward Chase Budinger, C.J. Miles and Solomon Hill.
The biggest adjustment of all could be occurring in the mind of Vogel. To say Vogel can coach only one way would be a bad assumption. Good coaches can coach different styles, and Vogel has established himself as one of the game's brightest minds. Yes, he did well with that power style but then again, it was a style dictated by the Pacers' personnel. Now we could see Vogel get his due as an all-around coaching star. But the concern is that Bird is imposing a style of play Vogel doesn't like, and if that's the case it could be a problem.
We all understand what the Pacers' overall initiative is: Play smaller and faster. The success or failure of the entire plan largely hinges on how George fares at power forward. Or, perhaps more importantly, if he's even willing to play power forward on a full-time basis.
Here's just a snippet of some of the dialogue that reporters have generated from Indy since the end of last season:
George in mid-July: "It's not going to be logging 30 minutes at the power forward. Whatever needs to be done. If I've got to play a couple of minutes at the power forward, I'm fine with it."
Bird in mid-July: "He don't make the decisions around here."
George in late September: "It's not really the concern for one game. It's the concern just over the course of a season just how my body would take it."
George in early October: "I don't know if I'm cut out for a 4 spot. Defensively, it's rough."
Finally, late in preseason Vogel suggested that starting George at 4 will be more situational than anything, depending on who Indiana plays on a given night. Of course, a primary aim of playing pace-and-space is to make opponents adjust to you, not vice versa. This will be an ongoing saga for the Pacers.
Meanwhile, whether George likes power forward or not, the bottom line is that through five preseason games, George was averaging better than 30 points per 36 minutes. He could come to like the position after all.
Projected Real Plus-Minus for starters
George Hill, PG: +2.0
Monta Ellis, SG: +2.3
C.J. Miles, SF: -0.8
Paul George, PF: -1.9
Ian Mahinmi, C: +1.7
Scouting reports on every player on the Pacers
Using shot data from 2014-15 and projected starters, Grantland's Kirk Goldsberry ranks each team's offensive efficiency based on square footage.
Paul George can shoot from 3 (career 36.1 percent). That much we know. What the Pacers need, however, is George attacking the rim too. In 2013-14, his last full season, he was tied for 42nd in the league in total drives and shot a mediocre 44.8 percent (35th among those who went to the basket 300 or more times that season).
Ellis shot an abysmal 28.5 percent from long range last season. What to do? Take a few steps in! Ellis took more shots from the right elbow (135 attempts and shot 45.9 percent) than from the right-wing 3 (92, at 23.9 percent).
All about the space: 10th (436 square feet of above-average offense)
To identify players who stretch offenses the most, ESPN Stats & Information created the Kyle Korver Effect -- a metric on a 1-100 scale, factoring in 3PT%, 3-point attempt rate (percentage of total shots that come from 3-point range) and influence on teammate FG%.
Korver Effect: SCHOENE says C.J. Miles (83.4) will shoot 35.2 percent from 3 this season -- just slightly above average. But for the Pacers, who project to be the league's third worst (33.5 percent) from distance in 2015-16, "slightly above average" is plenty good for now.
The consensus on the Pacers is that for all the changes, they remain a borderline playoff team. According to real plus-minus, Indiana projects to win in the low 40s and safely get into the playoffs. That would represent an on-paper improvement, but it remains to be seen whether Indiana has the ceiling of those recent teams that went so far and, really, would be one LeBron James injury away from slipping into the Finals.
But Bird looked around and saw the way basketball is being played around the league these days. Teams like Golden State, Atlanta and San Antonio were winning by playing a starkly contrasting style to what the Pacers were doing on offense, but they were more than holding up on the defensive end as well. The problem is that a lot of teams are trying to make this shift. The Warriors do pace-and-space, but they also have Steph Curry. San Antonio was out in front of everyone on this and they've got Gregg Popovich. The Hawks were put together by Danny Ferry and Mike Budenholzer, who learned at the feet of Popovich. Other teams trying to adapt to this style run the risk of becoming a copy of a copy of a copy.
And the Pacers, with Ellis as a key component, might not have the quantity of outside shooting to make small ball work. What they do have, once again, is George. If Vogel can again engineer an elite defense, even with this roster, and the system boosts an offense that had grown stale with its big-body approach, the Pacers could be onto something.
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