Given that the Pacers have officially signed Lance Stephenson, who they think can run the offense, and there are reports that the front office still can’t find any takers for TJ Ford, Indiana’s desperate need for a point guard may not be as great today as it was back when Earl Watson was leaving in free agency and AJ Price was fracturing his patella playing charity basketball.
And since they have 14 players under contract already and might give Magnum Rolle the final roster spot, there may have to be a trade before the Pacers even have room to bolster the PG spot through free agency.
White Chocalate (who has sweet negative sideburns)
Bobby Brown
Chris Quinn
Earl Boykins
Mustaka Shakur
Acie Law
Antonio Daniels
Travis Diener
Eddie House
Jamaal Tinsley
Marcus Williams
Rafer Alston
Brevin Knight
Jason Hart
Lester Hudson
Tweety Carter
Sherron Collins
Patty Mills
Mike James
Marko Jaric
Šarūnas Jasikevičius
John Lucas III
Jerome Randle
John Scheyer
First of all, the Pacers pathetic PG situation is best summed up by the fact that this list includes a full five players who have received paychecks from the team in the past few years (and, of course, one who is still receiving them. Don’t spend it all in one place, Jamaal.). It also includes one guy that I’m pretty sure Sham made up (no way Tweety Carter is an actual, living human being), one guy who has never before dribbled a basketball (Eddie House only catches and shoots … he also signed with Miami), one guy who I’m pretty sure is dead (Brevin Knight) and several guys who will likely never play more than 20 games in the NBA.
So … Presuming the team wouldn’t bring back Earl Watson, I’m not sure any of these guys are worth the time. Acie Law, Earl Boykins and maybe Rafer (I like the guy for God knows what reason) are the only three names that inspire even a half-hearted “meh.” The rest are straight “no thanks.” (Rafer is too, really, since it would pretty much be acquiring another TJ Ford.) Sherron Collins might be worth a look, I guess.
It’s the weekend. I’m watching football. You’re watching football. What I’m getting at is that this recap will be pretty half-assed — much like the Pacers play last night.
Smoke Detroit on the road. Then lose to Philly at home. Makes perfect sense.
After getting down 6-0 to start, the Pacers actually played pretty darn good for about 12 straight minutes. The defense was forcing misses and Troy Murhpy was grabbing every rebound in sight (he had 10 boards in the first quarter). Earl Watson was making me rethink this whole “AJ should start” thing by running the offense rather well and even getting to the line himself for some points. Brandon Rush continued his solid play, going 6/9 from the field in the first half (and 2/3 from behind the arc.)
Then things slipped away. Thaddeus Young sparked Philly’s attack, and then Elton Brand, who was forced into several bad shots early and held to 3/9 shooting in the first quarter, started to abuse Troy and whoever else got in front of him. He started to look like 2005 Elton, which was probably just as surprising to Sixer fans as it was frustrating to Indy fans. Brand finished with 23 points and 4 offensive boards in the game, which combined with Samuel Dalembert’s 4 and some others gave Philly 16 offensive boards overall — compared to just 38 defensive boards for Indy. That’s a bad ratio.
By the time Troy made one of the dumbest inbounds passes I’ve ever seen (he cocked the ball back QB style and tried to make a three-quarters court pass upcourt so the Pacers could get another decent shot up before the half … but there were still 3-point-something seconds to go so there was no need for the Grant Hill-to-Christian Laettner-style heave — which got picked off and taken down the court for a layup by, I think, Marreese Speights), Philly was rolling. AI started playing rather well. Iggy was hitting threes (he went 3/4 in the game, which helped the Sixers go 7/11 from behind the arc as a team). And Young Thad (22 points on 16 shots) and Elton just kept getting easy baskets around the paint.
Indy would never get back in the game.
Danny actually had a really good third quarter himself (5/6 and a great-to-see 0/0 from three plus 4 boards and 3 dimes), but it was too late. No one else on the Pacers could do anything. Troy was particularly useless, finishing the game with an unimpressive 12 rebounds after recording 10 in the first quarter. Nice work in the opening period, dude, but you realize we play three more of these things, right? That was better than Roy Hibbert’s game at least, however, as he was a total no-show, shooting 1/6 with 4 rebounds. Yes, 4. According to the box score, Mike Dunleavy, Jr. also played in this game and supposedly took 9 shots, but I can’t really recall any of that happening. AJ Price eventually got into the groove (shot 5/8 for 17 points) and helped lead a nice faux-comeback with back-to-back threes on two possessions and just generally being productive with his dribble, but the Pacers couldn’t get any defensive stops so it probably wouldn’t have even helped if he was hitting 5-pointers. (It should be noted that AJ made a few really boneheaded plays in this game as well, as did Brandon, who had two obscene turnovers — one failing to catch a routine pass and another where he just inexplicably threw the ball directly out of bounds as if he was shaving points).
That’s all. Familiar story. Gross game.
Not even going to do the stats for this one. (Box score here, if you care.) Honestly, the only number you really need to see to know what happened is …
Interior Defense: 0
UPDATE: Just realized I failed to mention the 21 turnovers. Yeah, that happened, too. And, guess what? Didn’t help. Danny had 7 of em in this slopfest, but it was those two from Brandon and that one from Troy that provided the nice little microcosms for how well the offense valued the ball.
(Ed note: We’re trying something different here today. We’ve essentially gone “swinging” with one of our favorite NBA writers, doing the blog equivalent of wife-swapping by trading sites for the IND/SAC recap. Zach Harper of the ESPN TrueHoop Kings blog Cowbell Kingdom wrote the recap below, and I’ve written the one for his site. Zach knows his stuff about Sacramento, obviously, so he has a good perspective on last night’s game. But, more importantly, he follows the entire league about as close as anyone can, so I thought ye Pacer fans could get something useful out of hearing an educated outsider’s thoughts on the Indiana franchise at large. – JW)
So this is the life of an NBA swinger? I’ve been eyeing this blog for a while, and I’m very happy that Jared decided to swap with me for a night. So let’s ease into this with a nice cognac and turn on a nice romantic comedy to set the mood…
These are not the Pacers that I remember.
I mean, they still have a really good wing scorer. And they can rebound inside with some size. But there isn’t much in the way of substance with this team. Where are the guys that kill themselves to win? Where is the solid starting lineup? Where is the grit and determination that bred successful night after successful night for more than a decade?
Instead, I watched a team against the Kings that had Jeff Foster, Dahntay Jones and Earl Watson play the role of players who wouldn’t be intimidated by a hostile environment (even if there were only 7,000 people in attendance). They were the ones that wouldn’t be bullied. Guys like TJ Ford, Mike Dunleavy, Troy Murphy and Roy Hibbert, on the other hand, came out and played a nice 18 minutes — then got smacked in the mouth and wilted.
When the Pacers played a scrappy version of this game, they looked like they were ready to upset a team on the road. For the first quarter-and-a-half, the Pacers double-teamed with a purpose. They swarmed the Kings ball-handlers, swiped at the ball and forced turnovers. In fact, in the first half of the game, they forced 14 turnovers. On offense, they moved the ball well, found open jumpers and put the Kings defensive rotations on their heels. They made the Kings indecisive, which is the best thing you can do against a young team. And the Kings are very young. Seven of the ten guys that played in this game for Sacramento are 23-years-old or younger.
With a young team, you need to get them frustrated early, maintain a manageable deficit or flustering lead at halftime and then come out in the third quarter and bury them early to get them yelling at each other and playing selfishly on offense. You have to turn them into a collection of individuals instead of letting them come together as a team. This is what the Pacers started to do.
Unfortunately for the Pacers, they allowed the Kings second unit to take over this game in the second quarter and rescue Sacramento from this plan. Beno Udrih came in and continued his hot shooting. They let Jason Thompson dominate inside in the second quarter. The Pacers got lazy on offense and stopped moving the ball around the Kings defense. Instead, they force-fed Danny Granger and made him try to win this first half rec-league style. But that doesn’t work in the NBA.
The rest, you know, is pretty much history. The Pacers made one big push in the third quarter to get back into the game. After Tyreke Evans picked up his fourth foul, Indy went on a 15-2 run. The Kings effort became stagnant while the Pacers rode the hot hand of … this can’t be right … Earl Watson?
Seriously, Earl Watson?
Now this is the problem with this Pacers team that I mentioned before. Sure, Granger is great. I mean, he’s really impressive. I watched Kevin Durant torch this Kings team for 37 points a couple of weeks ago. Last night, I watched Granger go off for 33 points against the Kings. And I honestly can’t tell the difference between the two talents. They’re basically the same skill-set with the exact same abilities. The difference is that Granger settles for jumpers more often than he should, and Durant settles for nothing but his opponent’s soul.
My guess on the reason for this is the malaise that hovers around this team. Mike Dunleavy is supposed to be the second or third gunman on the Conseco knoll. However, he moves like his dad. Maybe his knee is healed and maybe he just needs to get back in shape before he gets his quickness back, but neither of those things have happened yet. He moves slowly and is a liability on the court because of it. Troy Murphy looked like one of the more useless power forwards you could find. He didn’t look like he could create a single basket on his own.
And then you have guys like Roy Hibbert and T.J. Ford.
I actually like Hibbert a lot and think he can be a nice version of Rasho Nesterovic (that’s a compliment, not an insult). But he’s not a good option to guard guys like Jason Thompson and Spencer Hawes. When they pull him away from the basket, his usefulness plummets.
But I’d still take Roy Hibbert away from the basket over what I saw from TJ Ford. Mostly, it’s unfair to criticize him because he was going against someone twice his size in Tyreke Evans. Evans obliterated him on the court to such an impressive degree that he wasn’t seen from in the final 20 minutes of the game. Not only that, but he also attempted just four shots the entire game. And didn’t hit any of them.
The saving graces from this game were Jeff Foster’s work on the boards, Dahntay Jones’ aggressive nature on offense (that was weird to type) and Earl Watson making the Kings pay for trying to guard him with Sergio Rodriguez.
If you heard before this season started that a Kings blogger would feel sorry for you around the beginning of December, you would have assumed there was either a lethargic feel to this team or a Larry Bird stroke that made him decide to re-sign Jamaal Tinsley.
I don’t know what to say about this Pacers team to cheer you up. You have Granger who is a phenomenal talent but even he looks downtrodden after a month of play.
Ugh.
Imagine what he’ll be thinking about his teammates come March…
That was just truly, madly, deeply horrible. Just a total no show, almost across the board, by everyone on the Pacers. They got murdered on the glass — often a telltale sign of lethargy — on the way to getting blown out by perhaps the worst offense in the NBA. And this was on a night when the Bobcats only made 1 three-pointer, so this wasn’t exactly the March Madness-like phenomenon of a team just getting hot and blowing the barn doors off. Still, they shot 50% from the field overall, which helps illustrate just how many open mid-range jumpers and easy looks in the paint that the Pacers gave up.
Brandon Rush actually started off making a few shots, which was a nice change-of-pace for him — but soon reverted back to the Mayor of Brick City. Actually, that’s not even fair. I bet Cory Booker, the actual mayor of Newark, New Jersey, could shoot better than 26.2% from three-point range.
Granger was ok early but then he started settling for way too many threes. Including last night’s 2/7 showing from long-range, Danny is now up to 8.6 three-point attempts per game, easily leading the league. In fact, the only other guys who are even launching more than 7 threes per night are Kevin Martin (whose 7.6 attempts per game came is the small sample of only the 5 games before going down with a broken wrist), JR Smith (whose 7.2 attempts per came in the small sample of only the 6 games since he’s returned from suspension) and Trevor Ariza (who has played 14 games, but is stuggling mightily to figure out how to turn himself from role player to number-one option for a team that desperately needs him to score).
Last year, Danny shot threes at a high clip as well, obviously, but 6.7 per night and 8.6 per night is a huge difference. And with last night being yet another night were he was shooting them more like LeBron James and less like Peja Stojokovic, it makes his decision to stand 24-feet from the hoop shooting rather than getting into the paint even more indefensible. When you’re the only thing even close to an All-Star on your team, it’s on you to force the action and get to the hoop, not have 7 of your 14 shots be threes. Especially on a night where you’re shooting like Marquis Daniels.
Earl and TJ were both had moments of good play and moments of terrible decision-making, which appears to be a typical night at the office for both. Hibbert was ineffective and soft, having two dunks blocked and generally just getting his butt-kicked on both ends by the 32-year-old Nazr Mohammend, who scored 18 points in 18 minutes on just 10 shots. The 6’8″ Boris Diaw further exposed the lack of interior defense by Roy, Troy and the rest of the bigs by scoring his 17 points on 8/13 shooting and finding the time to grab 7 boards. Tyler brought a lift when he came into the game to raucous applause from his North Carolina faithful, but he didn’t exactly produce a ton, in part because he remains on a minute restriction. Still, even without major production, it was a productive outing for the rookie nonetheless with 8 points and 6 boards in 20 mintutes. His pick-setting ability is also improving by the game. Latsly, it was also good to see Foster out there, even in limited minutes when he didn’t do much.
Tough to find any more silver linings than that though.
Sure, it’s early, but, yeah, I’m getting sick of saying that and December is right around the corner. Last night, the offense was again a giant problem. And the 41.0% shooting from the floor we saw last night is actually buoyed quite heavily by several buckets in garbage time. They were down around the 36% mark towards the end of the 3rd quarter, at which point the game was already most certainly over.
Ultimately, they just have no one who can score. And no one who can be relied on to score, more fairly. I love Dahntay Jones’ aggressiveness, but he should not be someone we have to look to to carry the offense for quarters at a time. Just not gonna cut it.
I mean, Troy better get back to his 45% from three shooting from last year — and fast — if this team wants to even keep treading water until Dunleavy gets back. Hurry up, dude. Hurry up.
