Pacers vs Wizards Notes, Carlisle Inks Extension

Can you guess today's theme, class? Speed. Or pace, rather. Something the local tall guys set, pushed, and played with a dizzying amount of against the Wizards.

Maybe I'm simple but I like things wrapped up in a neat little bow. Like a city best known for its motor speedway having a basketball team named after a fast car. And that team, in turn, adopting a style of play reminiscent of an open-wheel race. All gas, no brakes. Lead feet. Pacers in name and in fact.

When things are thematically aligned the words write themselves. The Pacers got the '23-'24 season off to a rolling start. The team lapped the visiting Wizards en route to a 143-120 finish. Ladies and gentlemen start you engines, buckle up, we're in for a wild ride.

Things of Note

After last night's win, we have no shortage of proverbial racing lines to follow but let's start with the obvious: the offense.

Pacers Set a New Track Record

The Pacers offense was on fire. Microscopic sample size notwithstanding, I'm going to bombard you with some stats.

• The Pacers currently lead the league in Offensive Rating, averaging about 129 points over the course of 100 possessions.

What was the Pacers' secret to success? You guessed it. The reason for all the forced racing metaphors: pure, unbridled, pin-ya-to-your-seat speed.

• At a pace of 110.5 (possessions per 48 minutes), our game was by far the fastest in the league, about 3.5 more than the second fastest contest.
• About 43% of our shots came within the first 9 seconds of the shot clock. We shot VERY well on those early looks.
  • 18.1% of our shots came between 22-18 seconds remaining in the shot clock, the highest percentage in the league.

• 21.9% of our shots came between 18-15 seconds remaining on the shot clock, also the highest percentage in the league.

Early shots mean a lot of transition offense right? Yes, but not exclusively.

• 26% of our plays were in transition, which leads the league after a game.
• Even so, we also lead the league half-court offense efficiency at 124.3 points per 100 plays. That's about 10 points better than the second best team.

How do you achieve that level of success against a set defense? Don't wait for the defense to get set.

Another way? Pass the ball...

Playing for Each Other

The Pacers played a remarkably unselfish brand of basketball against the Wizards.

• 68% of the Pacers' made baskets came off an assist.
• 60% of the Pacers' shots came on 1 dribble or less.
• The Pacers' 38 assists from last night leads the league.
• Both Tyrese and Nembhard had double-digit assist totals.
• 8 players scored in double figures.

Across the board, the post-game interviews reflected this "one more pass" mentality. In fact, I've been impressed at how consistent answers have been from player to player in all of the interviews since training camp started. Everyone seems to be reading from the same script. Kudos to the coaching staff for making the lessons clear.

Last night's mantra regarding the offense was simple: The game plan is force the defense to rotate, then make the right play. Everyone can score. Play random and play for each other.

According to Nesmith this mentality is as much a product of the team's bond off the court as it is coaching. He believes that they truly care about each other's success and that shows up in their play.

If any one player is a canary in the coal mine in regard to the team's emphasis on passing, it's Benn Mathurin. Last night he recorded 5 assists and passed out of numerous rim attacks. Though 5 assists isn't impressive in a vacuum, it represents a career high for the 2nd-year guard and is evidence that the player development program is paying off.

Rebounding ➡️ Offense

Speaking of coaching emphases taking root. The Pacers preached "finishing possessions" all through the off-season, a reference to the team's dismal rebounding numbers last year.

After one game, the work appears to have paid off:

• The team was top-10 in second chance shots allowed and top-5 in second chance shot conversion percentage against Washington.

The result? That league leading transition percentage I mentioned earlier (and plenty of easy buckets).

• 47% of the Pacers defensive rebounds last night led to a transition attempt, good enough for 3rd in league.

New Defensive Paradigm

Another off-season emphasis that appeared to work against the Wizards is the new defense.

I won't blame you if you just heard a deafening record scratch. The DEFENSE!?!? Did we watch the same game? We gave up 120 points!

All true. I won't argue that the defense was good. I will, however, argue that the defense more or less worked as intended last night. At the end of last season, Pritchard stated that the goal for this year was to get the defense closer to the middle of the pack. In his view, that would be enough of a boost from a net rating perspective to win the team a handful more games and, thereby, compete for home court advantage in the first round of the playoffs.

Once Nored left and Boylen was hired as a full time Assistant Coach, we heard rumors about the new defensive philosophy being implemented to attain that middle of the pack status. In addition to finishing possessions (see above), the goal was to limit opponents' three-point attempts by relying more on individual defense and less on help/rotation.

So, what happened last night?

• The Pacers only gave up 24 total three-point attempts, second fewest in the the league (Detroit gave up 22).
  • Last year we gave up about 33 threes per game. The stingiest three-point defense was Cleveland, who allowed about 30 attempts.
• The Wizards only made 9 threes, tied for fourth fewest.

In his post-game interview, Nesmith mentioned something interesting. As evidence that the team did well defensively after the first quarter, he mentioned that Wizards didn't break 30 points in any of the final three frames. My initial reaction was "30 points? That's the goal? Seems like a low bar." But it prompted me to look up how many points our opponents averaged last year and how far off the league average we were.

• Our opponents: 119.5 ppg.
• League average: about 114 ppg.

Accordingly, if we want to surrender 114 ppg on average, we need to limit our opponents to 28.5 points-per-quarter. In other words, just under 30.

Of course, looking at raw totals can be misleading. I've already beat you to death with quips about pace. A game that has 110 possessions is naturally going to be higher scoring than a game with 90. Therefore, while surrendering 120 points like the Pacers did last night is an undeniably ugly total, the team was right near the middle of the league in Defensive Rating and Defensive EFG%. As I said at the start of this section, last night was a success based on the team's stated goals.

All of this is to say that we, as fans, might have to adjust the way we judge defensive performances. I hesitate to guess the average age of this site but I'm fairly certain it's not what anyone would label as young. Most of us grew up on a brand of basketball that has simply gone extinct.

The Pacers play at a pace that makes traditional "good defense" impossible and we have to get used to the idea that giving up 114 points is a win. At the end of the day, the "net" is what matters and if, everything holds up, we should score quite a bit more than a paltry 114 on a typical night.

Areas for Defensive Improvement

With that "it wasn't as bad as it looked" spiel out of the way, I did notice areas where the Pacers can get better defensively, regardless of pace and fancy stats.

Fouling

A recurring theme throughout the pre-season, the Pacers were once again too foul-prone in the opener against the Wizards. Myles Turner, specifically, got into foul trouble early, which prevented him from ever finding a rhythm. Though his backup Jalen Smith played a great game, even he had to be spelled by Isaiah Jackson for a stretch to avoid fouling out.

It wasn't just the bigs. The whole team is handsy and needs to use better discipline. I think part of it is the emphasis on "guarding your yard." Like a cornerback without safety help, Pacers players seem to get a bit grabby when they feel like they've been beaten so as not to give up an easy bucket.

The 23 team fouls were tied for 3rd worst in the league.

Shots at the Rim

Though the Pacers did an excellent job of running the Wizards off of the three-point line, the team did a poor job of preventing shots at the rim.

• 56.6% of the Wizards shots came within 4 feet of the hoop, by far the highest in the league after 1 game.

The Pacers need to do a better job of stranding opponents in the midrange when they drive.

Turnovers

Turnovers might not belong in the room for improvement section given that the team actually did a pretty good job taking care of the ball on the whole. Even so, it was a tale of two halves, with the team committing nine in the first two quarters and only three after the break.

As Infinity noted during the game, the defense picked up when the Pacers stopped giving the ball away. Keeping that number low will be an easy way to stay in the middle of the pack defensively.

Transition Defense

The Pacers didn't give up a crazy amount of transition opportunities due to how efficiently the team scored (and the lack of 2nd half turnovers). However, when Washington did get out on the break, the Wizards scored far too easily.

• The team allowed 158.3 points per 100 transition plays, third worst in the league.

2nd Unit Boon

According to Rick Carlisle, the Pacers were out of rhythm and thinking too much in first quarter. He credited the second unit with picking the team up. The bench unit was ready to play and immediately took control of the game upon entering.

Prior to foul trouble and garbage time, it appeared Carlisle was going to run with a nine-man rotation. As such, the bench unit mainly consisted of Nembhard, Hield, Brown, Nesmith, and Smith – but because at least one starter was with the "bench" at all times, the designation isn't an exact science.

An interesting rotation wrinkle that Carlisle mentioned in his post-game presser is that even though he planned to play Nembhard as the full time back-up point guard (more on that later), he wanted to substitute Andrew in as a wing next to Haliburton for his first few minutes. Carlisle felt this was a good way to get Nembhard into the flow of the game before turning the offense over to him.

Before the final pre-season game, I speculated that Carlisle would play an 11-man rotation early in the year and that he might give Walker minutes at the four in order to keep Nembhard as a one. I was half right. Walker doesn't appear to be anywhere near the rotation right now, so the backup power forward minutes are falling to Nesmith.

As a result, the bench unit is deploying a fairly interesting defensive trio of Nembhard, Brown, and Nesmith. Those three can all lock down perimeter players and are skilled enough offensively to take advantage of mismatches. Especially surrounded by Buddy's and (don't look now) Jalen Smith's resurgent shooting (4/7 since the start of preseason), that is a lineup that should cause a lot of problems for opposing benches. It certainly did last night.

Haliburton's Smarts

Tyrese struggled a bit in the first half of the game but came out guns blazing in the third quarter. According to Carlisle, he thought the difference was Tyrese figuring out where the openings were.

That quote reminded me of the games against Miami last year. In the first matchup the Heat totally flummoxed Haliburton with Adebayo's aggressive trapping. In the second matchup, Tyrese tore them a new one.

The connection? Tyrese is too smart to fool twice. Once he sees something he banks it and adjusts. Given enough time, he's going to kill his opponent. That might be the strongest argument for getting Tyrese into the playoffs ASAP. It may take him a few runs to figure out playing into the summer, but once he does, he's going to be a pain to stop.

Look Good, Feel Good, Play Good

Bruce Brown was not only the player of the game – hitting a career high 6/7 threes – but he was the best dressed pregame.

Carlisle wasn't surprised that Bruce looked better last night than he did during the pre-season. According to the coach, for a guy like Bruce who was playing in mid-June, the pre-season is a feeling out stage. Bruce's goal was to be ready for game one and he was. He simply did what he was assigned to do as a "no frills veteran competitor." Brown is in the gym earlier than Rick every day, so what we saw last night is just the result of hard work paying off.

Hard Decisions

By far the most interesting part of the post-game press conferences was Carlisle's comments about TJ McConnell. He said that he was nearly in tears telling the veteran point guard that he'd be out of the rotation for the time being. Later he described the essence of being an NBA head coach as making "a bunch of fucking hard decisions."

On whether TJ would be out of the rotation permanently, Carlisle wouldn't say exactly. He doesn't want to devise a rotation based on a set number of players. Instead, he has to do what's right for the team and play whoever gives them the best chance at winning. Having said that, everyone will get an opportunity this year at some point and he knows TJ will be ready when that time comes.

Both Rick and Jalen Smith mentioned how TJ is a big brother to Nembhard. Even at the risk of being supplanted in the lineup, TJ has been in Drew's ear, teaching him everything he knows. That's one of the reasons Carlisle considers TJ a luxury the team doesn't want to give up (even if McConnell's agent doesn't feel the same way).

As hard as it is to sit McConnell, Rick sees the the point guard position as a strength of the team right now and hopes that every position group will have the same problem one day.

Carlisle Will Stick Around

The veteran coach signed a contract extension today that will see him through the next phase of the team's rebuild. Hard not to be excited about this move considering the direction of the franchise. Roy Hibbert certainly is.