I’m Watching You

Big weekend coming up for the Pacers with a game tonight in Charlotte, followed by the home opener tomorrow night against Philly.  The Pacers showed some promise in Wednesday’s opener at San Antonio, but came up short.  Here are some things to keep an eye over the weekend:

• Turnovers – The Pacers averaged 20 in the preseason, then turned it up to 23.  Jim O’Brien’s target is 14.  It may not happen this weekend, but they need to start moving towards it sooner rather than later.

• Shooting – Shot great Wednesday night.  If they take the same shots this weekend, they won’t.  The spider chart here shows the distribution of shots.  The Yellow shaded area shows the actual Pacer distribution from the Spurs game.   The red line is the league average.  The blue line should be the Pacers’ target shot selection – otherwise, they’ll desperately need to become a much, much better offensive rebounding team.

• Apparently, they aren’t really “Free” – The Pacers shot .700 from the free throw line in the preseason and only .679 against the Spurs.  This team has to shoot closer to the .783 they’ve hit in the three years under O’Brien.  The good news is that Granger, Dunleavy, and Ford combined to go 4 for 11, and that (hopefully) shouldn’t continue.  The three of them have combined to hit almost 82% of the 4,500+ free throws they’ve taken over their careers.

• Smallie Bigs – The bench performance the other night was pretty poor, and there are some serious questions about big man depth.  Solomon Jones backed up Hibbert on Wednesday, but will be out at least tonight with a sore elbow.  Foster is slated to take his slot, but Jeff played only sparingly in the preseason and there are serious questions about his health and mobility.  James Posey was the backup power forward, primarily because Tyler Hansbrough is behind after losing almost all of his rookie season to injury.  Essentially, Hibbert and starting power forward Josh McRoberts are the only viable “big” men on the roster at the moment.  Hansbrough offers the best hope for a post/scoring presence among the reserves, so the hope is that he gets up to speed relatively quickly.

• Trick or Treat, Brandon - Sunday is the deadline for the Pacers to pick up the fourth year option on Brandon Rush’s contract.  It seems to me that Larry Bird and the Pacers must have already decided one way or another – and Rush must be hoping that they’re just making him sweat it out as an object lesson.  I honestly don’t know what will – or should – happen.

Okay, children.  Woodsy the Owl says, “Give a hoot!  Hit yer damn free throws.”  Smokey the Bear says, “Only you can prevent careless turnovers.”  Truer words never spoken.

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Tim Donahue is an editor and lead writer for 8 Points, 9 Seconds. He lives in Fishers, Indiana, and has been around long enough to dimly remember watching the Pacers play way back in the days of the old Fairgrounds Coliseum. You can find him tweeting about the Pacers @TimDonahue8p9s.