Quietly, and under the nose of everyone but our astute Tony East, the Indiana Pacers have climbed to fourth in the East. Indy’s taken advantage of Orlando’s coalescing, Miami’s chaos, and Milwaukee’s pre-All-Star Break slump to put themselves firmly in the tailwinds of the top big three.
Barring any major slippage, the Cavs, Celtics and Knicks aren’t going to slow down but it doesn’t matter for the Pacers. If the team can keep this momentum up while solving some of their nagging issues, they’re looking at as good an opportunity as they’ve had in years for a deep postseason run.
So how’d the Pacers get here?
Having a starting lineup that boasts the second-best net rating of any five-man unit in the NBA (with a minimum of 200 minutes playing time together) certainly helps. Of the teams at the top of the offensive heap this season — the Thunder, Knicks, Rockets and Nuggets — the Pacers have a more efficient handle on things. At least when Tyrese Haliburton, Andrew Nembhard, Bennedict Mathurin, Pascal Siakam and Myles Turner are on the floor.
It shouldn’t be that surprising, considering last season’s Pacers were the most effective shooting team with a mark of 57.8% (for context, this season’s Cavs have taken the cake there, at 59.0%). For all intents and purposes, the current active rotational roster for Indiana is the same one as last season, though mostly all of their offensive contributions have taken a big jump.
Pascal Siakam is averaging 20.5 points per game via a true shooting percentage of 61.6%. That’s the best and most consistent he’s been since his title season with the Raptors. His 3-point shooting is inching toward career-best levels, with 40.3% on threes made and a total of 83 tallied so far this season. While Siakam can still be a threat around the rim, the construction of the Pacers, mainly with Turner’s size and offensive skills, make it so Siakam can hunt shots at the perimeter while still keeping an eye on open lanes to dash and spin into.
Where Haliburton has been having trouble is not with his shot’s accuracy, but his shooting volume. He’s taking less shots overall, and particularly from the mid-range, than he did in the last two seasons. In games the Pacers have wound up winning despite Haliburton’s offensive absence, he’s contributed in other ways, but his average assists are also down this season — dropping to 8.5 per game versus 10.9 last season. In the Pacers worst performances this season, like their latest loss against Portland, Haliburton tends to vanish. No great for your would-be star, especially one who is so adept at shot creation when he’s in the groove.
Where the Pacers are losing may be their silver lining. Indiana has fared poorly against the most poorly performing teams in the league all season, with a record of 10-7 against teams at least five games below .500 — that’s the worst record against the worst teams.
Clearly, this is a group that enjoys paying up. That’s great for the postseason but where teams like the Pacers, that have taken advantage of slippery standings and the existential turmoil of the East, get into trouble is the habit of only turning it on when the competition demands it. To a degree, the Celtics are in the same sort of slump now.
Coming back from the February break, momentum counts. However the league shakes out once the trade deadline is (thankfully) behind us, the landscape will have changed. They’ll be new iteration contenders and second-look teams, and the Pacers have to figure out how to play — and win — against all of them.
