Nothing like a swift kick in the reality to deflate the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade-sized balloons that have been trailing the Pacers bandwagon all week. Sure it was the second night of a back-to-back during the tail half of a West Coast road trip, but Utah just sent Indiana a clear, 110-88 message about the difference between a borderline contender and an up-and-coming team with some moxie. (I use the term “moxie” only because I bet that’s how Jerry Sloan would describe this squad.)
It wasn’t all bad. There was the second quarter. But the rest was indeed bad. Really bad.
Indy started off the game looking like they had just stepped off a plane. They turned the ball over repeatedly, didn’t close out on shooters and could not keep the Jazz off of the offensive glass. Even while letting Utah score basically at will early, Indiana did manage to keep up … for a while. Less than four minutes in, the Pacers tied it up at 12-12. Soon after, it was 12-23. And the Pacers would only score 5 more points over the next 8:30. Deron Williams set the tone with 9 points and 9 assists in the initial frame.
At that point, with the Jazz finishing the quarter more than doubling up the Pacers at 35-17, the game looked all but over. To their credit, however, Darren Collison and Danny Granger showed some good on-court leadership, pushing the team to such a good quarter that, at the half, Indy actually was out-shooting Utah 47.1% to 46.9% — this despite the fact that the Jazz posted a video-game-like rate above 60% in the first quarter.
But the Jazz would blow it open again in the third, flushing any hopes the team had down the toilet. DWill continued his good play (overall, he dropped 24 points and 16 dimes with 0 TOs while shooting 10-15), but the second half belonged to Utah front court, with Paul Millsap and Al Jefferson torching whoever was standing in between them and the hoop. AK-47, if inefficiently, even got in on the action. Millsap, Jefferson and Kirilenko finished with 16, 17 and 18 points, respectively, to go along with a combined 25 boards.
There were no real standouts individually for the good guys.
Collison definitely looked really good in the second quarter, but he faltered at times later, turning the ball over six times. It wasn’t just the total either; a few came just as the team was starting to put a few good possessions together and hoping to crawl back into the game in the late third. Danny Granger was an all-too-willing shooter early, several times using a few mere inches of space after a dribble hand-off to launch a three. One of his attempts from behind the arc fell. Five others did not. He finished 5-for-16 with 14 points. Pretty gross.
Roy Hibbert’s 6-for-8 line looks better on paper. He probably should have gotten more looks, and I’m sure people will be upset that the team didn’t go to him more down low. The thing is, though, he had trouble really getting good position, often being forced to a less-than-ideal spot to receive the ball in a good place for him to do much. He didn’t really force the issue either, which is odd considering that he has size and strength on Al Jeff, a guy not known for being a formidable post defender by any stretch of the imagination. Hard to pinpoint what went wrong. Roy looked a little tired perhaps. Long road trip and all maybe.
Mike Dunleavy, Brandon Rush and Josh McRoberts each had their moments of good and bad play. James Posey and TJ Ford were largely a waste of post-game-uniform-detergent.
But it really wasn’t about the individuals so much as one team aggressively hammering the glass and making a lot of mid-range shots. At first, it just seemed as though Utah was hot. But after a while, the more and more quality looks they had, you could see their confidence grow as they realized they had jumpers available whenever they wanted — and quite possibly a second or third chance if they missed. 19 offensive rebounds by a team that missed 53 shots is simply unacceptable. Tough to win that way — especially if you’re also going to turn the ball over 18 times (most of which came before the fourth quarter garbage time began).
Ultimately, this was all to be expected. It would be absurd to expect a team unaccustomed to having the label of being good to win three straight out West. Not in Utah against a Jazz squad playing as well as this team has been.
The best thing to takeaway from this is the second quarter, during which the Pacers didn’t lay down and die when they easily could have, and part of the third, when they also cut the lead down to single digits for one stretch that made it seem like the game was not already over.
On to the next one.
{ 3 comments }
The Value of Cap Space During the Season
by Jared Wade on December 19, 2011 at 3:46 pm · 0 comments
The other day, Tom Ziller of SB Nation ranked the Pacers among his “winners” of this NBA offseason, largely due to the fact that Larry Bird didn’t squander his cap space by over-paying players. Chad Ford agrees, praising Larry Bird’s patience and his foresight to keep his team’s payroll well below the salary cap.
The reason having cap space, even during the season, is potentially so valuable is that teams below the cap can make trades without the silly salary-matching requirements the league imposes on any teams that are above the cap. As an example, let’s say the Magic do end up trading Dwight Howard to the Nets.
Let’s say it happens in early February and the Magic get back Brook Lopez, Anthony Morrow, the Nets’ first-round picks in 2012 and 2014, and some other odds and ends. This would put Orlando in complete “tank-and-rebuild” mode. They would likely no longer have any need for Jameer Nelson, since he is good enough to keep them winning (a little bit) this year but likely too old for Orlando GM Otis Smith to want to him around long-term. Why pay a veteran floor general $8 million when you can let a younger guy learn on the job and perhaps be seasoned enough to lead an offense full of blue chippers in three years? Instead, what Otis would likely want is draft picks, young players with small salaries, and more draft picks.
So maybe Larry calls him up and gets him to agree to part with not only just Jameer Nelson but also JJ Redick. And all Bird has to give up is Darren Collison and a first-round pick. If the team was over the salary cap, the only way they could get Nelson and Redick in a trade would be to send back a package of players (or one player) with a combined salary around $15 million. Such a deal would not be attractive to Orlando since the Magic’s motivation is not so much getting rid of good players like Nelson and Redick, but gutting their payroll commitments and stacking assets for the future. They would be trying to press the reset button on the Dwight Howard era and build from scratch. And there wouldn’t be another team in the league that could so easily assist them in doing so.
If he made this theoretical deal with the Pacers, Otis Smith would be looking at a roster that includes some young talent (Brook Lopez, Darren Collison, Anthony Morrow), a few veterans he could either use to bridge the gap from the Dwight era to the future or trade later (JRich, Big Baby), and five first-round draft picks to use over the next three seasons (three of his own, two from New Jersey and one from Indiana). Not the worst scenario to start over.
Or, in a different made-up scenario, say the Utah Jazz are floundering in February and realizing that the Paul Millsap/Al Jefferson front court experiment has failed. Like Orlando in a post-Dwight world, the Jazz would likely covet salary relief and draft picks/young talent more than anything. Perhaps they look at Al Jefferson and his $14 million salary and decide it’s best just to get rid of that hindrance to their rebuilding process. They want a core of Devin Harris, Paul Millsap, Derrick Favors and Enes Kanter. They call Larry Bird, who likes Al Jeff’s game but not his price tag. Still, if he can get him without giving up much, he will pull the trigger. Technically, he can take him on payroll-wise without sending anything back. They haggle, and Bird eventually agrees to take on the last two years of Jefferson’s deal in exchange for a first-round pick in 2013. Utah gets out of the contract, gets a pick and gets a $14 million trade exception. Two years ago, the Minnesota Timberwolves wanted Bird to give up Danny Granger in exchange for Al Jeff. In this made-up reality, Larry would be getting him for next to nothing.
Both these examples may sound a little rosy for the Pacers. They probably are. It’s unlikely Bird could add this type of talent while giving up so little. But they illustrate the potential benefits of being so far below the cap. These are the types of deals that may emerge as possibilities. Right now, every team has an infinite hope in their roster that can only comes with having not played a game yet. By March, most GMs will be looking at the flawed realities of their squads. And most will be considering some sort of move to either radically change their roster or tweak it as they gear up for a playoff run.
This in no way guarantees that the Pacers will be able to turn their in-season cap space into anything. But just because his team’s payroll is so far below the cap, it means lots of GMs likely will be calling Bird’s office.
Related Topics: Al Jefferson, Dwight Howard, Larry Bird, Orlando Magic, Utah Jazz
{ 0 comments }