Like most small market contenders in the modern NBA, the Indiana Pacers were built through the draft. They grabbed Roy Hibbert in 2008, Paul George and Lance Stephenson in 2010 and flipped their first-round pick in 2011 for George Hill. With their core in place, they made one big splash in free agency - signing David West in 2012.
They've managed to be a contender while staying under the luxury tax line because they've had so many quality young players on cost-controlled deals, but that ends this summer. George and Hibbert have max deals, while West is at $12 million and Hill is at $8 million. If they pay Lance, they are going to be way over the cap without many ways to improve their team.
That's where you need to be able to add more cheap pieces through the draft. Unfortunately for the Pacers, they've lost their touch in recent years. There's no young talent in the pipeline and they don't have a pick in this year's draft. They went all-in on this year's team and the bill from that decision is going to come due this off-season.
2012 - Miles Plumlee (part of the Luis Scola trade)
2013 - Solomon Hill
2014 - Pick dealt for Luis Scola
Plumlee was seen as a reach at the time, but he's proven that he's an NBA-caliber C. Unfortunately for the Pacers, that happened in Phoenix, where he was a dynamic pick-and-roll partner for Eric Bledsoe and Goran Dragic. In Indiana, he couldn't get minutes behind Roy Hibbert and struggled in the Pacers half-court system and was a salary throw-in in the deal for Scola.
Hill has decent size for a small forward (6'7 225) but he isn't a great athlete and he doesn't have great length (6'9 wingspan). He's probably never going to be an great defensive player and he's not an explosive scorer. He could stick in the NBA as a three-point shooter who can move the ball and put it on the floor, but he doesn't have a very high ceiling.
What's really going to kill them is giving up two first-round picks (2012 and 2014) for a guy who isn't that good anyway. Scola was not a difference maker in this year's playoffs and they gave up two potential cheap rotation players from 2015-2017 to get him. Those were both late first-round picks, but this is a franchise that found Lance Stephenson at No. 40.
That's what you have to do to contend in the modern NBA - you have to be able to consistently find talent in the draft. The Pacers have had a good run, but if they want to sustain it over the next 3-5 seasons, they need to keep the pipeline of young talent coming in. The only other option is to spend A LOT of money and they've shown no real interest in doing that.
Friday, May 30, 2014
Spurs-Thunder Game 5
The story of Game 5 was the adjustment Gregg Popovich made to his starting line-up, replacing Tiago Splitter with Matt Bonner. Just as important as Bonner's presence on the floor was the way it staggered the minutes of Splitter and Tim Duncan, so that the Spurs would have only one non three-point shooter on the floor for the entire game. Spreading the floor is the easiest way to ignite an offense.
Oklahoma City took control of the series in Games 3 and 4 with their ability to protect the rim and ignite the fast break. Serge Ibaka returned to the line-up and had the luxury of defending a non-shooter and a non-scorer in Splitter, so he could camp out in the lane and clog up the Spurs offense. Keeping either Bonner or Boris Diaw on the floor forced Ibaka out of the paint and out of his comfort zone.
With Ibaka at the 4 and Kendrick Perkins/Steven Adams at the 5, the Thunder guards could press out on defense and jump the passing lanes. However, with only one big in the paint, the Spurs had more breathing room on offense and more driving lanes to the rim. On the pick-and-roll, OKC's second line of defense was a wing instead of a shot-blocker. The game became a lot easier for San Antonio.
You could see the effects up and down the Spurs rotation. Splitter is far more effective backup center than Aron Baynes, so the move made their second unit better on offense and defense. Splitter is a really good individual defender at the 4, but there isn't a LaMarcus Aldridge or Dirk Nowitzki in this series. The same would hold true in a hypothetical matchup with the Heat in the NBA Finals.
There's no great adjustment for Brooks to make in Game 6. You could try to attack Bonner on defense, but neither Ibaka nor Perkins is a natural shot-creator. Where they could have a big advantage is pounding the offensive glass. They also have to hope that Diaw doesn't bring his three-point shot to OKC. If they can shrink the floor on Diaw, like they did in Games 3 and 4, it negates a lot of the Spurs spacing.
They lost control of the game in the second quarter, when Brooks had Caron Butler and Derek Fisher on the wings next to Reggie Jackson. That line-up just doesn't work because they are making Jackson do everything when Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook are out. Butler and Fisher are very limited players on both sides of the ball - they can't really move their feet and they aren't driving threats.
What's so maddening about that is Jeremy Lamb clearly outplayed both guys in Games 3 and 4 and he still couldn't get minutes over them. These are the kind of coaching moves that drive people bananas when they watch Brooks. Playing Butler over Lamb is questionable but playing Fisher over him is absolutely inexcusable. At a certain point, as a coach, you have to respect the game.
Fisher got in the and promptly turned it over twice and had Ginobili and Patty Mills reign 3's on his head. I wrote this about after Game 3 - I'm not sure you can afford to have a guy like Fisher in the rotation and beat a team as good as San Antonio. The guy is shooting 28% from the field in the playoffs. I'm really not sure what more Brooks has to see. It would be funny if it weren't so sad.
He also needs to take a page out of Erik Spoelstra's book - Miami staggers their rotation so that at least one of Wade or LeBron is in the entire game. Westbrook and Durant are both capable of carrying an offense for stretches, so there's no reason to have big chunks of the game with both in and chunks when they are both out. These are the small rotation adjustments that Brooks is always behind on.
I still think OKC is in decent shape - they should play much better defense at home in Game 6 and the Spurs shooters aren't likely to be as locked in. However, they are still going to have to steal a game on the road and staggering Splitter and Duncan made the Spurs a much tougher match-up. The margin for error is very thin and the Thunder can't afford for Brooks to ignore the numbers and play his friends.
Oklahoma City took control of the series in Games 3 and 4 with their ability to protect the rim and ignite the fast break. Serge Ibaka returned to the line-up and had the luxury of defending a non-shooter and a non-scorer in Splitter, so he could camp out in the lane and clog up the Spurs offense. Keeping either Bonner or Boris Diaw on the floor forced Ibaka out of the paint and out of his comfort zone.
With Ibaka at the 4 and Kendrick Perkins/Steven Adams at the 5, the Thunder guards could press out on defense and jump the passing lanes. However, with only one big in the paint, the Spurs had more breathing room on offense and more driving lanes to the rim. On the pick-and-roll, OKC's second line of defense was a wing instead of a shot-blocker. The game became a lot easier for San Antonio.
You could see the effects up and down the Spurs rotation. Splitter is far more effective backup center than Aron Baynes, so the move made their second unit better on offense and defense. Splitter is a really good individual defender at the 4, but there isn't a LaMarcus Aldridge or Dirk Nowitzki in this series. The same would hold true in a hypothetical matchup with the Heat in the NBA Finals.
There's no great adjustment for Brooks to make in Game 6. You could try to attack Bonner on defense, but neither Ibaka nor Perkins is a natural shot-creator. Where they could have a big advantage is pounding the offensive glass. They also have to hope that Diaw doesn't bring his three-point shot to OKC. If they can shrink the floor on Diaw, like they did in Games 3 and 4, it negates a lot of the Spurs spacing.
They lost control of the game in the second quarter, when Brooks had Caron Butler and Derek Fisher on the wings next to Reggie Jackson. That line-up just doesn't work because they are making Jackson do everything when Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook are out. Butler and Fisher are very limited players on both sides of the ball - they can't really move their feet and they aren't driving threats.
What's so maddening about that is Jeremy Lamb clearly outplayed both guys in Games 3 and 4 and he still couldn't get minutes over them. These are the kind of coaching moves that drive people bananas when they watch Brooks. Playing Butler over Lamb is questionable but playing Fisher over him is absolutely inexcusable. At a certain point, as a coach, you have to respect the game.
Fisher got in the and promptly turned it over twice and had Ginobili and Patty Mills reign 3's on his head. I wrote this about after Game 3 - I'm not sure you can afford to have a guy like Fisher in the rotation and beat a team as good as San Antonio. The guy is shooting 28% from the field in the playoffs. I'm really not sure what more Brooks has to see. It would be funny if it weren't so sad.
He also needs to take a page out of Erik Spoelstra's book - Miami staggers their rotation so that at least one of Wade or LeBron is in the entire game. Westbrook and Durant are both capable of carrying an offense for stretches, so there's no reason to have big chunks of the game with both in and chunks when they are both out. These are the small rotation adjustments that Brooks is always behind on.
I still think OKC is in decent shape - they should play much better defense at home in Game 6 and the Spurs shooters aren't likely to be as locked in. However, they are still going to have to steal a game on the road and staggering Splitter and Duncan made the Spurs a much tougher match-up. The margin for error is very thin and the Thunder can't afford for Brooks to ignore the numbers and play his friends.
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
The Gospel of Length
At RealGM, a look at the cheat code the Thunder use to find players in the draft.
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
The Derek Fisher Problem
At RealGM, a look at what Fisher's minutes reveal about the deeper problem in OKC.
Saturday, May 24, 2014
Thursday, May 22, 2014
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
The PJ3 Solution
Their first game without Serge Ibaka did not go well for the Oklahoma City Thunder, as they were run out of the gym by the San Antonio Spurs in Game 1. As many predicted, Ibaka's combination of shot-blocking ability and interior defense on one end and ability to stretch the floor on the other proved impossible to replace. Scott Brooks was never able to find a balance between a line-up which could stop the Spurs and one that could score on them.
He tried a number of different combinations, starting the game with Nick Collison and then going small with Kevin Durant at the 4 and super-small with KD at the 5. Not all of them worked, but it was a refreshing change of pace for a coach who was always been afraid to alter his line-ups and make adjustments over the course of a seven-game series. However, with the Spurs offense clicking on all cylinders, Brooks doesn't have too much time to find the right answers.
We will see whether he will continue to experiment in Game 2 or return to his usual pattern of stubbornly refusing to confront reality. He needs Kendrick Perkins to counter Tim Duncan, but the other three veterans he has stuck with to the very end - Derek Fisher, Caron Butler and Thabo Sefolosha - are once again offering very little and dragging the Thunder down. If there's an answer in OKC besides the obvious (play Reggie Jackson and Jeremy Lamb more), it comes from another young player who has never really earned Brooks trust - Perry Jones 3.
PJ3 is the closest approximation of Ibaka's skill-set on their roster - he's 6'11 235 with a 7'2 wingspan, extremely athletic and he can knock down corner 3's. He fell out of the rotation over the course of the season, but he played 62 games in the regular season and was a huge factor in both their games against the Miami Heat this season. He's the best of both worlds for Brooks line-up dilemma - he spreads the floor on offense and gives them size on defense.
Part of the problems with the small-ball line-ups with KD at the 4 or the 5 is that Brooks is sacrificing any gains in athleticism by putting Caron and/or Fish on the floor. Those guys are older than everyone in the Spurs rotation except Duncan and Ginobili and they are pretty much useless defensively. Fisher was able to make some 3's in Game 1 but that was the definition of a broken clock being right twice a day - he's shooting 27% from 3 in the playoffs, if you hoist enough shots, eventually some have to go in.
PJ3 gives them a ton of line-up flexibility - he can play at the 5, 4 or 3 and he shot 36% from the 3 in the regular season. He's a much bigger body for post defense than KD and he's way more of an offensive threat than Perkins or Collison. He hasn't played much over the course of his first two seasons in the NBA, but that shouldn't stop a coach from going with what he thinks is the best line-up - look at how Popovich used Aaron Baynes in Game 1. It isn't that complicated. If you miss what Ibaka is bringing to the floor, use the player on your roster who most closely replicates his skill-set.
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