The feeling is a familiar one: the bottom drops out of my stomach, a bleak emptiness consumes my soul and mind, and a vein of burning acid starts working its way up my esophagus. The end result is always the same: the Pacers lose – badly – and I vow to never watch them again. This has happened 14 times in the last 58 games. Luckily all these symptoms can be cured by — and my solemn vow forgotten after — a good night’s sleep.

If you were wondering, 58 is the number of games the Pacers have played with Frank Vogel at the helm. Fortunately for the Pacers (and my esophageal lining) 33 of those games have been wins. What disturbs me, however, is that in the 24 games this team has lost, they have been unwatchably wretched for large portions of 14 of them.

Lately I’ve begun calling these types of games – games where all the joy is sucked out of watching my favorite team in all of sports due to their general malaise, pathetic effort level, or atrocious play – vomit-inducing losses (VILs). My gut feeling was that these losses were more common for the Pacers under Frank Vogel than for any other team I’d ever seriously followed, so I decided to dig into the numbers and see what I could find.

At first blush, the numbers certainly seemed to justify my suspicions.

The Pacers have lost 24 games during Vogel’s tenure as coach, and 14 of these losses have been of the vomit-inducing variety. This number includes five of the Pacers’ six losses this season and nine of their eighteen losses last season. This means that 58% of the Pacers losses have been VILs.

What exactly qualifies as a VIL? As I delved into the historical box scores, where my intestinal rumblings were of no help, I developed the following definition of a VIL: (1) the team in question is never really in the game resulting in a double digit loss (for example, the game at Miami this year), (2) the team in question plays an inordinately awful stretch of basketball that results in loss (e.g., at Sacramento or home vs. Orlando), (3) the team in question is beaten by an inferior team that does not play particularly well (e.g., at Detroit or at Sacramento), or (4) the team in question is beaten by an injury-riddled that does not play particularly well (e.g., at Boston).

Even with this (admittedly vague) definition, it is hard to know exactly how much of an outlier that 58% number under Vogel is. I wanted to find some historical comparisons for this number. So I first perused the box scores from 2009-2010: the last full year that Voldemort, a guy you may know as Jim O’Brien, coached the Pacers. (Note: This is not something I would recommend doing for any Pacer fan. It was a painful experience. I used to think the Pacers would have been a playoff team a year earlier if they’d only re-signed Jarrett Jack. I no longer think that.)

The Pacers lost 50 games that year and 20 of them seemed to fit into the VIL category. That’s 40% —  a number which seems high, but is far short of Vogel’s 58%.

However, Voldemort’s teams played a style that lead to more wild swings in results and quality of play than Vogel’s teams. To see what a “normal” team would do, I looked at the box scores of the 2010-2011 Philadelphia 76ers. They were a 41-41 team that was near the middle of the pack in every major statistical category, had a bunch of young players, and played at a similar pace to Vogel’s Pacers. The 76ers had only 9 VILs among their 41 losses. That’s a remarkably low 22%. For a comparison with the 2009-10 Pacers, I looked at the 2010-11 Golden State Warriors: 19 of their 46 losses (41%) were VILs.

At this point, the only conclusion I was able to draw was that Vogel’s VIL% was incredibly high. I didn’t want to lie this at his feet, however, without doing due diligence. Maybe the players were the problem.

I decided to look at the first 44 games of the 2010-11 season. During this span, the Pacers lost 27 games with twelve of them being VILs. That’s 44% — approaching Vogel’s rate, but still far short.

All these numbers, though they point to a phenomenon that is certainly occurring, do nothing to explain why. They also don’t tell us if this occurrence is even a problem for anything other than my esophagus. Sadly, I have no definite answers to those questions. I can only offer a couple of theories that I am not entirely satisfied with.

The first is that Vogel’s uber-positivism and use of “rah-rah” motivational tactics has a natural ebb and flow that is not sustainable on a nightly basis. When the confidence/enthusiasm starts to wane, the bottom drops out.

My second theory is that it has nothing to do with Vogel’s coaching whatsoever. Former NCAA football coach Homer Rice once said “You can motivate by fear, and you can motivate by reward. But both those methods are only temporary. The only lasting thing is self-motivation.” It’s possible that this collection of players is just not a very self-motivated group.

The truth could be a combination of these two ideas or it could be something else entirely. It might even be nothing more than coincidence and a small sample. It is, however, something to watch as this young team and coach move forward into what I hope will be a bright future.

No related posts.

In the next part of our detailed analysis of the upcoming Pacers/Bulls 1st round playoff series, we’re going to take a look at some Synergy breakdowns.  mySynergySports.com is a fantastic site that tracks a team’s results by play types — isos, pick-and-rolls, post ups, etc. — and provides film on each of these plays.  It’s a great way to look at how a team approaches its offense, and where a team is strong or weak at both ends of the floor.

Once again, we’re going to start at the top of the house, with a comparisons at each end.  The tables you’ll see below will show each team’s ranking in a specific play category based on points per play (PPP).  They are color coded with the same green/yellow/red methodology as used in Part Two of this series – Stoplight Analysis.  They also include the percentage of time each play was used/defended by that team.

Pacers Offense vs. Bulls Defense

One limitation Synergy has is that all information is year-to-date (YTD).  This makes it difficult to break out the Pacers under Vogel vs. under O’Brien.  I do have some analysis that approximates this relatively well, and we’ll discuss it later, but for the big picture, we’ll just use the YTD numbers.

You may want to avert your eyes.

Looking at this chart, I can’t help but hear the old Irving Berlin classic, “Anything you can do, I can do better.  I can do anything better than you.”  (What can I say?  I have seven sisters.)  In this case, however, it’s more like, “Anything you can stop, I can stop better.”

Chicago’s D is 99 different kinds of nasty.

The only thing they’re “bad” at stopping is “hand offs”, and that’s pretty survivable, considering they only allow the opponent to run those about twice a game.  The Pacers are decent at them, but most of theirs came out of O’Brien’s motion offense, not Vogel’s.  Regardless, nobody’s getting anywhere against anyone trying to curl Danny off Roy in the high post for a handoff 50 times a game.

No, the Pacers are going to have to go into Chicago’s strong points and defeat them.  I’ll get more into this later, but my sense is that Indy’s best chance is with PnR Screener, post up, and transition plays.  And, as I mention in the Stoplight Analysis, control the offensive boards.

Bulls’ Offense vs. Pacers’ Defense

The green at the top of the Bulls column underscores Derrick Rose’s impact on the Bulls’ offense.  Danny was largely correct when he said:

“Chicago, they go as Derrick Rose goes. If you make a concerted effort to stop Derrick Rose, you have a better chance to beat them.”

Though, I’d qualify it to say that Chicago’s offense goes as Derrick Rose goes.  His 32.3% usage rate is second only to Kobe’s 35.0% in the Association. According to BasketballValue, the Bulls score 110.6 points for every 100 possessions with Derrick Rose on the floor, but only 101.9 without him.

Though only about 23% of Chicago’s plays finish as Isos or PnRs, that doesn’t mean they don’t go to it often.  Another limitation of Synergy is that it charts plays based on how they finish. Therefore, other plays, like spot ups and cuts can actually come out of a set that was begun with either iso or PnR action.

And that’s where Derrick Rose lives and breathes.  Just short of 60% of his plays and shots come out of isos and PnRs.  The Pacers are OK at defending the ball-handler in the PnR, but they’re one of the worst in the league in PPP given up in iso situations.  More disconcertingly for the upcoming match-up is that Rose’s counterpart, Darren Collison, gives up 1.13 PPP when iso’d.

But it’s really much simpler than that.  Rose is the guy that can get inside the Pacer defense, and once he’s there, he does a lot of damage.  He scores, he creates, he draws fouls.  In 93 minutes against Chicago this year, Roy Hibbert has committed 11 fouls.  Five of them have been shooting fouls on Derrick Rose.

Collison will have to step up as much as he can, but Rose will get by him.  Rose will get by pretty much anybody Indiana will throw at him.  Pacer rotations will have to be quick and strong, because if he gets in the lane, it’s all over but the shouting.

Different Approach

Frank Vogel has moved away from the motion and passing offensive system in favor of the very simple approach of isolations, PnRs and post ups.

The yellow overlay shows the current distribution.  As noted in Part II of this series, the offense has improved by 3.5 points per 100 since the end of January.  Some of this was personnel changes, but some of this has to do with scrapping an offensive system that the players either couldn’t or wouldn’t understand.

Since this was done in the middle of the season, compromises had to be made.  In this case, the Pacers sacrificed coherence, for lack of a better word.  In the half-court, they run very simple one-option sets.  These primarily consist of iso’s & mid posts for Danny, Post action for Hibbert, and pick-and-roll/pick-and-pop action for Collison, generally paired with Hansbrough.

Given a training camp, Vogel or his replacement may be able to tie these things together into a coherent offense.  For this series, however, they’re just going to have to execute the plays they call will brutal precision.  It will be no mean feat against the Bulls Defense.

One thing to be encouraged by is the Pacer win over the Bulls on March 18th.  In it, the Pacers posted an offensive efficiency of over 116.  The Bulls have only allowed more than that five times this season.

The offensive play distribution for that game looked like this:

So, it worked once.

Once.

I mentioned earlier that I thought the keys to success lied in PnRs to the screener, post action, and transition.  Taking the last first, transition is crucial because they’ll need easy baskets.  Indiana won’t be able to fight a war of attrition in the half-court over a seven-game series.  They’ll need to push tempo, because Chicago is just too good otherwise.  This may be the toughest thing they’ll have to do, because the pace of play in the playoffs historically has dropped 3 to 4 possessions per game from regular season levels.

The post action will be vital, because it should serve as an anchor to the offense.  The Pacers have used the post more under Vogel (12.6% vs. 9.5%).  Unfortunately, they have been less effective.  The points per possession has dropped from 0.88 to 0.83, and they’re only scoring 42.6% of the time, down from 46.4%.  However, the post can best be compared to the running game in football.  Even if it’s weak, you have to call the play to keep the defense honest.

The most important weapon — the one most likely to be potent — is going to be the PnR action.  We’ll get into this more in the rest of this series, but what really hurt the Bulls on that Friday night was Tyler Hansbrough in the PnP.

Deconstructing the Bulls

We’ve looked in detail at the strengths and weaknesses of both teams, and we’ve talked about how the teams approach the game.  In the next part of this series, we’ll break down in further detail the Pacers win over the Bulls on March 18.  We’ll also take a look at the other Chicago losses in hopes of finding a common theme.

Related posts:

1. Pacers vs. Bulls Playoff Preview, Part 2: The Stoplight Analysis
2. Pacers vs. Bulls Playoff Preview, Part 1: Why Indiana Can Win
3. The Pacers’ Past, Present and Future Records Against 2011 Playoff Teams

The first statistical deep dive we’re going take into the Pacers/Bulls series is what is sometimes called a “Stoplight Analysis.”  It’s a simple visual tool that identifies the good (green), the average (yellow), and the bad (red).  In this instance, green will reflect a top ten ranking in a category, yellow for middle ten, and red for bottom ten.

The graphic above shows where both the Pacers and the Bulls rank in key advanced statistical categories as of this past weekend.  What I’ve done here is lined up the Pacer offense with the Bulls defense, and the Bulls Offense with the Pacers Defense.

Full Season Team Comparison

From 30,000 feet, this tells you more or less what you would expect.  The Pacers — a well below-average offensive team — are going to go up against the top defensive team in the league.  The teams seem more evenly matched at the other end, where the Pacers D and the Bulls O both rate as above average, but not quite top ten.

However, there are ebbs and flows over the course of a season, and the Pacers had a big one on January 30.  When Frank Vogel took over for Jim O’Brien, there were some foundational changes made to the way Indiana plays the game. (The Bulls end-of-season stats are also more relevant to its current roster considering that both Carlos Boozer, who didn’t play his first fame this year until December 1, and Joakim Noah, who sat out from December 16 – February 23, missed substantial time. Only in March and early April have we really seen this team all together for an extended stretch.)

For these reasons, we need to look at how these teams have performed since Vogel was hired to get a closer picture of how these teams will match up on April 16. Here are the same breakdowns looking at only games played since January 30.

After the Fire

The view at the top of the house doesn’t change a great deal.  The Pacers under Vogel have become a more efficient offensive team, but still rank only 19th overall.  The Bulls defense is slightly less stingy, but still ranked second in the league since the end of January.

Digging deeper shows that the Pacers Offensive improvement comes from focusing on two specific areas: offensive rebounding and getting to the line.  Under Vogel, Indiana has moved from 25th in ORB% to 8th, and from 28th in FT/FGA to 3rd.  They were rewarded with an increase in offensive efficiency of 3.5 points per 100 possessions.  This has been an impressive mid-season jump, but the Pacers remain a mediocre-to-poor offensive team.

It’s clearly this end of the court — Pacers O vs. Bulls D — that is the biggest obstacle that the Pacers will face in their upcoming series.  The two factors that impede Indy’s offense are turnovers and shooting.  Intuitively, it’s easy to focus on the turnovers.  They have a more visceral effect — there’s seemingly nothing worse than to not even get up a shot.  However, there is no single factor at either end more important than shooting (eFG%).  Over the last 30 years, the ranking in eFG% has had a 0.79 correlation (1 being perfect, o being no correlation, and -1 being the opposite) to rankings in offensive efficiency.   The correlation between ranking in eFG% allowed and defensive efficiency has been 0.84.

And therein lies the biggest challenge for the Pacers in the upcoming series.  Shooting is arguably Indiana’s biggest weakness, and it’s going right into the teeth of the Bulls’ biggest defensive strength.  The best way to balance this is by hitting the offensive glass, but as strong as the Pacers are at that, that is also going against a Bulls strength (2nd in DRB%).

The one area that of Pacer strength that is going against a Bulls weakness is getting to the line.  Indiana will have to exploit this and try to control their offensive glass if they are going to avoid being smothered by the Bulls’ D.

Complicating things is the fact that things are going the other way at the defensive end.  Though still having a similar ranking overall, the Pacers are giving up nearly an addition 1.5 points per 100 possessions under Vogel.  That’s not a huge drop off, but it is a concern when coupled with the fact that the Bulls have increased their offensive efficiency by 6.2 points per 100 in the same time frame.

The Pacers are still pretty good at defending the first shot (8th in eFG%), but the defense has slid with their drop in defensive rebounding.  The Pacers have gone from 6th in the league in DRB% (.754) to 20th (.726) under Vogel.  If they’re going to stay with the Bulls, they’re going to have to get better control of the defensive glass, and that will be a tall challenge.

By focusing on the offensive backboard and by playing a more traditional lineup, the Pacers have become a top 10 rebounding team overall.  They now grab over 51% of the rebounds available.  This makes intuitive sense, given the personnel changes made (most notably, a lot more Hansbrough, no Granger at PF and no Posey at all). However, the Bulls have been the best rebounding team in the second half of the season, pulling down 54% of the available rebounds and rating 1st in DRB% and 2nd in ORB%.  This match of strength on strength could be one of the most important areas for Indy in the series.

Summing Up

I’m sure it comes as no surprise that the #1 seed in the East has significant statistical advantages over the #8 seed.  Normally, you would hope to see some areas where Pacer strengths could exploit Chicago weaknesses, but there aren’t a lot of those.  Still, the last time the two teams met, the Pacers looked very strong for three quarters before coming away with an overtime victory.

The Pacers need to figure out a way to repeat that success four times in seven games.  What we’re going to do over the next few days is to take a look at more detailed information.  We’ll look at several things Synergy play breakdowns and individual player performances in the head-to-head match-ups.  We’ll take a look at that Pacer win from March 18th, as well as other big Pacer wins or comparable Bulls losses to see if we can find a common thread.

I’m not sure whether we’ll find the key to a Pacer upset or just more completely understand the Bulls superiority.  There’s value and hope in both.  If you can understand a seeming miracle, you can demystify it and, perhaps, repeat it.  If the series ends with Chicago moving on, then a better sense of what the team is lacking when measured against the best might help us see how best to fill that gap.

Related posts:

1. Pacers vs. Bulls Playoff Preview, Part 1: Why Indiana Can Win
2. The Pacers’ Past, Present and Future Records Against 2011 Playoff Teams
3. Where Have I Seen This Before?
   Bulls 104, Pacers 95

Danny Granger

Roy Hibbert

Darren Collison

Mike Dunleavy, Jr.

Related posts:

1. Pacers Players Are Not Running the Floor Properly
2. Indiana Loses One They Should Have Won: Bucks Beat Pacers 94-90
3. Pacers Fire O’Brien – Stay Tuned

The below video doesn’t tell us a whole lot more, but we will certainly be learning plenty in the following days as Vogel won’t have an easy first week on the job. The team plays four games between tonight and Sunday. (Toronto tonight, @Cleveland on Wednesday, Portland on Friday and @New Jersey on Sunday.)

And here’s the new coach’s official introduction to the media. (via Indy Star)

No related posts.

Frank Vogel said he was excited and ready for the challenge, but wished it was under different circumstances.

Bob Kravitz said that Bird was telling us a story, and that this move was driven by owner Herb Simon.  How much of that is true, and how much of that is a self-serving attempt to show the prescience of his recent diatribe,  it’s difficult to tell.  Watching Bird’s presser through several times did cause me to wonder if Bird was feeling the heat.

Bird clearly outlined enough of his own complaints about Jim O’Brien – mostly surrounding his use of the younger players (Tyler Hansbrough, Paul George, and Lance Stephenson mentioned by name) and O’Brien’s critical style (particularly in regards to Roy Hibbert) – to justify the termination, so there’s valid reason to believe that Bird was speaking true when he said that it was his call.  However, there was just enough discomfort and subtext of desperation when talking about the roster and future player moves to make  a conspiracy theorist wonder whether he was explaining his decision, or rationalizing someone else’s.

Frank Vogel takes over, and when asked if he planned to make immediate changes, he responded with an emphatic, “Yes.”  When asked to elaborate, he said, “Stay tuned.”   Perhaps he was being coy, but if you watch the presser and the interview with Conrad Brunner linked above, you’ll see a guy who for all the world looks like he’s drinking from a fire hose.

Of course, that’s perfectly understandable.  This is a huge challenge for him, and the next three months could very well make or break his career in the NBA.  Only a fool wouldn’t be at least a little agog.  However,  I suspect the changes he’s already decided to make will be the ones articulated earlier by Larry Bird.   We’ll see more of Tyler and Paul, and we’ll get a chance to see Lance Stephenson play.  There will be minor stylistic changes, but both Bird and Vogel pointed out how hard it was to change styles in the middle of the season.

It seems relatively obvious to me that Frank Vogel will be his own man, but that man will have an astounding number of opinions that are in perfect sync with Larry Bird.

A few days ago, I had basically said that while O’Brien was a problem, he wasn’t the problem.  I can understand the firing of O’Brien, and it’s impossible to make a full-throated – or even half-hearted – case that he should have been allowed to finish the year.  However, I still believe he wasn’t the problem, he was just a problem that Bird or Simon or whoever you want to believe was pulling the strings thought they could solve.

O’Brien’s firing removes a great deal of chaos and noise from the situation.  He was being booed in pre-game introductions and skewered in the local radio talk shows and forums.  No doubt these issues made the lives of the Pacers’ front office miserable.  So those are now gone, and the focus should move…to where?

First, it will come to Larry Bird.  This was his team – his coach and his players.  By firing O’Brien, he’s removed one of his and his players’ biggest shields.  There won’t be any more random hip-shot quotes to distract from the basic questions that haunt this roster.  Vogel and his inexperience may create some deflection, but the fact of the matter now is that it’s all about Bird and his players now.

And, really, it’s about no player more than Roy Hibbert.  Remember how I said that O’Brien wasn’t the problem?  That’s because I believe that Roy Hibbert is the problem.  Just as he was key to the early success, he was the author of the team’s decline.  I have rarely seen a player respond so poorly to the challenges posed by a more attentive defense.  I have rarely seen a player decline so precipitously.

And the vast majority of the Pacers’ problems have flowed from this – at both ends.  It’s robbed the team of any semblance of an inside presence, and made the entire structure of first the offense, and now the defense, unstable.

Much of the benefits of removing O’Brien will be around the edges.  You’ll see more young players, and (I hope) you see more stable rotations.  However, I’ve said before, and continue to maintain, that the Pacer season rises and falls based on the core – Danny Granger, Darren Collison, and Roy Hibbert.  While fans may like seeing more McRoberts and Hansbrough, and less Posey, it won’t make any meaningful difference if those three, and especially Hibbert, don’t play well.

Of course, there has been/is/will be a rush to lay Hibbert’s problems at O’Brien’s feet.  Bird alluded to it in his press conference, and even Hibbert himself seemed to be positioning for it according to Mike Wells’ Tweets.

Hibbert on O’Brien firing, “It’ll be a different atmosphere. Hopefully it’ll re-energize us to move forward.”

More Hibbert, “I hate to see anybody lose their job. It’s going to be on all of us to get this thing turned around.”

Well, maybe it’s true.  Maybe O’Brien was crushing Hibbert’s soul.  I’m not in the locker room, so I don’t know.  I guess we’ll find out.  I can only say that the comments by O’Brien of which so much hay has been made weren’t anywhere near harsh enough to justify this.  In fact, they were relatively mild and 100% accurate.  Of course, O’Brien was of no help in the situation and was failing in his responsibility to help Hibbert work through his issues.  However, I still believe that Hibbert’s issues – and the team’s issues – were caused by Hibbert himself.

So, now, this becomes Vogel’s biggest job.  He must get Hibbert back to not being a detriment to the team – at the very least – and if they want to make the playoffs, then Hibbert must become productive again.

I’d feel much better about this possibility if in watching Vogel, I wasn’t strongly reminded of this scene from The Candidate:

Related posts:

1. One More Year for O’Brien – Pacers Extend the Coach’s Contract Through 2010-11 Season
2. Game #15 Preview: Stay Out of Monta’s Way or You’ll Pay. Listen to What I Say. How About I Just Go Eat Some Hay? I Could Make Things Out of Clay. Lay by the Bay. I Just May. What D’ya Say?
3. 8p9s/Pacers TrueHoop Network Season Preview

Besides, this year’s team is playing the best defense any Indiana club has since 2006, so he has to be doing something right. You don’t just trip and fall into being a top ten defensive team. (Although the weak defensive efforts we have seen all too often in January are obviously a troubling sign that this early-season ranking might soon look hollow.)

I guess the issue of how this team is being coached just something that has been on a lot of people’s minds this week now that we officially enter the second half of the regular season.

Mike Wells sat down with O’Brien for a Q&A on the state of the team and his role in that. Among the topics discussed are the rotation-tinkering, Roy Hibbert’s struggles, transitioning to a “youth movement” and his future with the Pacers after the next 41 games.

Q: Is it frustrating that you’re at the halfway point of the season and still adjusting the lineup?

A: It’s not frustrating. You’re trying to find the right balance and the right rotation that will allow you to play winning basketball. If you’re not playing winning basketball, then you’re always going to tinker with the lineup. Nobody gets a free pass from the standpoint of their playing time. If people are not playing at the level where I feel it gives us the best chance of winning, then I’ll adjust. You have Danny (Granger), who is going to get his minutes. Darren (Collison) is playing at a pretty good and consistent level. Other than that, I’m trying to find the right combinations.

Q: You have players going from being inactive to getting minutes in the rotation. Can you explain your rationale behind it?

A: It does change because we’re looking for the right combinations and you can’t dress everybody. I’m constantly looking at different situations. The guys know that. For an example, I’m looking at Paul (George) to see if he can give us more of a consistency than what we’re getting from Brandon (Rush). What you can’t do with a young team where the majority of the players are of equal levels of talent, is if they’re not playing at the level you think they need to be playing at, you need to make changes. I’m never going to hesitate to do that, and I’ve shown that.

Like with these responses, there isn’t a lot in O’Brien’s answers to Wells’ other questions that is surprising or particularly illuminating, but head over to the Star to read six more questions and answers. It’s nice to at least see O’Brien willing to respond to the most prevalent criticisms I’ve heard fans throw at him.

Related posts:

1. 5 Questions: Daily Thunder on Earl Watson
2. 5 Questions: Hoopinion on Solomon Jones
3. Game #19 Preview: Answering Some Questions

I believe that there are a select few “great” coaches, and, surprisingly, even fewer “terrible” coaches. Most are qualified individuals with their own collection of strengths and foibles. Most will succeed with good talent, and fail with weak talent.

The most successful coaches have their biggest impact before the game starts. Their primary job is to teach the players what to do and prepare them for what the opponent will do. In general, I consider in-game moves, particularly play-calling out of time outs or in late-game situations, to be highly overrated. Those times more than any other are dictated by the quality and the execution of the players.

Because of this, I consider the greatest sin an NBA coach can commit is to over-coach. To think that he can “out-coach” the game, or win a game in the huddle, as opposed to the players winning it on the floor. Or, as I like to say, “To become Isiah Thomas.”

Right now, Jim O’Brien is over-coaching. He seems to be over-coaching, because he has no faith in his players — at least most of them. The lack of faith in a lot of his players (guys like TJ Ford, Brandon Rush and, now, Roy Hibbert) is well earned and well deserved. But that is beside the point.

A classic rule of management says that people will perform to expectations — whether that be up or down. So by assuming failure on the part of his players, he changes that assumption from being probably right to almost certainly right. Therefore, he’s creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that these guys will fail.

So, while the root of the problem is, was, and will continue to be the issues related to the inadequacy of the players, O’Brien has become a contributor to the problem by confirming those flaws, predicting failure and, therefore, ensuring failure.

Perversely, the thing that seems to have happened here is not so much — as one commenter to 8p9s said — that the coach has “lost” the players, but that the players “lost” the coach.

So, the Pacer management is faced with a problem I’ve seen before in my professional life: How do you remove an under-performing manager without letting the under-performing workforce off the hook?

I’m of two minds on firing O’Brien mid-season.

Firs of all, I don’t like it because it gives credence to the overwhelming fan voice that says O’Brien is the problem. To me, that’s a gross oversimplification of the situation, and much of the vitriol is based on style, rather than actual substance. Put more simply: it’s always easy to blame the coach, particularly one you don’t like.

On the other hand, there doesn’t currently seem to be any signs that the team will turn around under O’Brien. It is possible that even a temporary (and false) bounce would be enough to get to the playoffs. That’s something I think these players (Danny Granger, Rush, Hibbert, Darren Collison, A.J. Price, Tyler Hansbrough, even Paul George) and this franchise desperately needs, and should weigh heavily in any considerations.

It has been reported that the Pacers’ brass are not pleased with O’Brien’s performance right now, but they will keep him until the end of the season — primarily because they don’t view any of his assistants as viable alternatives. Arguably, this restriction on removing O’Brien right now seems entirely artificial.

Let’s not pretend that former Pacers assistant coach Lester Conner was some head-coach-in-waiting and current Pacers assistant coach Frank Vogel isn’t. It seems to me that Vogel could continue the system well enough, while arguably being more likely to “not know what’s going to fail.” If I thought O’Brien was actually doing serious damage, Frank Vogel being only replacement wouldn’t stop me from pulling the trigger. (Mike Wells is reporting that the team “wouldn’t move any of the assistants up,” however.)

Still, what happens if Bird walks into Conseco today, tells O’Brien they’re letting him go, promotes Vogel, and then says to the players, “OK … no more excuses”? Does the team turn it around? Who knows? But there probably would not be a major windfall of victories immediately. This isn’t an incredibly talented team whose coach is holding them down. This is a flawed, immature team whose coach isn’t making things any better or easier.

Ultimately, I think O’Brien is committing what I consider to be the worst coaching sin.  However,  I don’t think he’s the core problem, and I don’t think firing him is the core solution. It’s self-serving, but my suspicion is that Bird’s opinion isn’t that far different from mine.

So can Bird stage an intervention?

What happens if Bird does two things?

1. Goes to the players and lays it all on them. Says, “Grow up. The reason you’re losing is because you aren’t playing well. O’Brien will be here for the rest of the year, so man up, and do your job.”
2. Then goes to O’Brien, and says, “Look, I’m not going to tell you who to play, but I am going to tell you to make a decision. By tomorrow morning, I want you to come back in here with a rotation that you will go with for the rest of the season, along with contingencies for injuries. It will be entirely up to you. I don’t care who it is, but you will lock down a 9- or 10-man rotation, and you will communicate this to your players with your commitment to stick with it for the rest of the year. I will back you completely. If a necessary change becomes apparent, then we will discuss it, but we are done with the constant changes. I know what you think the problems are, and I don’t necessarily disagree, but I don’t care any more. We need to pick a course and stick with it.”

Is that the happy — or even unhappy — medium that gets this team back on the same page?

Just as it would take a total team effort for these Pacers to have gone 15-5 over the last 20 games, it has taken a total team effort for them to go 5-15. Everybody had to come to the party on this one, including Larry Bird, who has been with the Pacers in some function when every player on this roster was acquired.

Ideally, problems are handled as they arise at lower levels of any organization. The best teams have strong leaders in the locker room to head off trouble early. Should that be insufficient, then it’s the coach’s responsibility to get things back on track. If it moves past that, then you have a team in crisis.

Right now, the Pacers are a team in crisis, and Larry Bird is the guy who must step up and resolve it.  He needs to make sure the players understand their ultimate accountability for their own (and the team’s) performance. He must address any problems he has with O’Brien’s performance without scapegoating him. He must put a fractured team back together.

And if he can’t or won’t do that, then I don’t know what this franchise can do to change the path they’re on. And I don’t know how they come back from where that path leads.

Related posts:

1. One More Year for O’Brien – Pacers Extend the Coach’s Contract Through 2010-11 Season

What? I don’t know. This has been a busy day in Pacers town. I’m on fumes.

Here’s the latest from Mike Wells.

It’s gotten to the point where it’s not “if” Indiana Pacers swingman Brandon Rush will drift in and out, but a matter of “when.”

Rush is currently in one of those moments and it appears it could cost him a spot in the rotation.

Pacers coach Jim O’Brien said rookie Paul George is close to bumping out Rush as either the first wing off the bench or the starting shooting guard, depending on the opponent.

“The decision that I have to make is when do I move Paul definitely in front of Brandon,” O’Brien said. “That’s coming if we keep getting sporadic play.”

Brandon Rush is shooting 38.3% on his way to a whopping 8.6 ppg in 10 January games, so this isn’t a huge shock. He isn’t even playing particularly good defense either. If he’s not going to make shots or stop penetration, he really isn’t bringing anything to the table.

Paul George, on the other hand, has what appears to be a versatile skill set: he can make some dribble moves in isolation, bring the ball up the court, get out on the break, make some jumpers, slash, dunk and even play a little defense. And while he is also rather inconsistent and clearly blows some assignments, he’s a rookie so that’s expected. Brandon can’t use that excuse anymore as much as he would like some way to explain his baffling fluctuations between looking like decent player and D-League also-ran.

Even Coach Jim O’Brien is having to come up with unique ways to describe whatever it is that goes through Rush’s head, saying that the fact that Brandon “drifts in and out” is what has him poised to pull the trigger on making George the first SG off the bench (or perhaps even the starter Wells insinuates).

AJ Price is also now officially the second string PG.

Second-year point guard A.J. Price has replaced veteran T.J. Ford as the team’s backup point guard. Although he has looked rusty in his first few games, Price said he’s ready to keep the position.

Stay tuned tomorrow to see what changes next.

Related posts:

1. O RLY? Brandon Rush
2. John Hollinger Notices Brandon Rush!
3. Update: Pacers Pick Up Brandon Rush’s Option

To outsiders, there often seems to be little rhyme or reason as to why, for example, marquee offseason acquisition Darren Collison was often watching TJ Ford close out games early in the year (and even as recently at 1/2/2011 watch TJ get the bulk of the meaningful fourth quarter time against the Knicks). Or why a guy like Tyler Hansbrough can have a 20-point/9-rebound game (on 9/12 shooting) in 29 minutes during the Pacers sixth game of the season and then get 11 minutes (with 0 fouls) in the seventh. Or why Roy Hibbert’s crunch-time minutes were often jerked around early in the year. (It may be hard, but think back to the time when he actually, ya know, deserved minutes based upon his performance.) Or why James Posey (a) very often has been leaned on to play power forward in crucial situations only to (b) pick up 2 DNP-CDs in the past five games. Or why when Roy Hibbert got sick and couldn’t play against the Warriors on Wednesday, Josh McRoberts, recipient of DNP-CDs in 6 of his previous 7 games, got the start.

The rationale for the last decision, I’ve been told by 8p9s partner-in-crime Tim Donahue, was so Jeff Foster could “finish” the game without going over his 30-minute maximum.

I’m sure there are also some reasons for the others listed (and the other curiosities that I didn’t mention). I imagine many of them have to do with players blowing defensive assignments, players not running the floor poorly, players not understanding the offense, players not spacing the floor properly and players simply just not doing their jobs. There are all sorts Xs-and-Os particulars that I have no problem admitting in public that are simply over my head.

And some things are more explainable, like AJ Price leapfrogging the struggling TJ Ford (shooting 30.6% in the new year) as the first point guard off the bench in Wednesday’s loss to the Warriors. (AJ’s poor play may have made that a quick experiment in trial and error, however.)  Similarly, it’s hard to fault anyone for Roy Hibbert’s inconsistent role in the rotation since his post-November productivity swoon reached crisis-level status (some of which has also been “can’t-stop-fouling-related,” it’s important to note).

Still, even with that caveat and another HUGE one (the complete understanding that I have of this roster’s relative parity of talent after Danny Granger, Collison and Hibbert), the rotation is weird — and it has been all season. I also fully get it that aside from Granger, Dunleavy and Rush, there has been almost no consistency from the rest of the roster this year. (Because so much of Dunleavy’s value in a game is decided by whether or not he misses or makes shots and because I’m talking about Brandon frickin’ Rush, let me doubly punctuate my empathy for a coach having to rely on anyone on this roster every night … Danny included. UPDATE: Also Jeff Foster, who I forgot to include originally as an oversight.)

But, really, at some point things need to settle down. A lot of these players we are discussing are suited to be 8th and 9th men in this league. They have some skills but they are just not super talented. Used effectively, they can help out, (I think … most of the time at least) but if they don’t have any idea what their actual roles on this club are, then is it really surprising that they so often fail to fulfill them? Don’t players, particularly mediocre players, need a defined job to do before anyone can really expect them to do it well?

Perhaps most importantly in regards to the title of this post, does the coach even know what those roles are? Because, ya know, it is almost February.

According to a report last night on TrueHoop by Chris Broussard, I’m not the first to start asking these questions. (And, yes, fans, I know many of you have been beating this drum for like three years now.)

Indiana Pacers brass is not pleased with the performance of head coach Jim O’Brien, according to several league sources.

That said, O’Brien, who is in the last year of his contract, is likely to remain as coach the rest of the season. Part of the reason is that no one on O’Brien’s staff — Dan Burke, Frank Vogel, Jay DeFruscio, Vitaly Potapenko and Walter McCarty — is viewed as a suitable replacement.

One complaint about O’Brien is the strange way he divvies up minutes: Tyler Hansbrough plays 36 minutes one night, posting 23 points and 12 rebounds, and just 23 minutes the next; Paul George plays 21 minutes one night, four the next.

GM David Morway could also be in trouble after the season, and league scuttlebutt has former Portland GM Kevin Pritchard as a likely replacement. Pritchard was close to being hired as the replacement for Rod Thorn in New Jersey, but the Nets, of course, settled on Billy King.

As an outsider, I have no inside information, so I’ll leave it at that other than to point out that it’s not just the rotation stuff that has been curious at times, but also the coach’s tone in the press (mostly earlier in the year).

And I will also say that I’ve always been a big fan of Kevin Pritchard and am curious as to why he doesn’t have a job yet. The rumors surrounding his exit from Portland made it seem as though he was a strong-headed decision-maker who enjoyed his authority. That could mean he might have trouble meshing with a guy like Larry Bird (who is also on the last year of his contract, something not noted here by Brossard).

UPDATE: Forgot to note that Pritchard was traveling with the Pacers for the start of this road trip.

Ben Golliver of CBS Facts and Rumors added this about Pritch:

A Moneyball-style GM like Pritchard would make a ton of sense in Indiana, as his understanding of advanced statistics, analytics and cap management is generally seen as the surest way for a small-market team to get the maximum bang for their buck and narrow the gap between the LA’s and New York’s of the world. Pritchard’s name will likely generate a lot of interest this summer, as he and TNT commentator Steve Kerr are the two biggest names among former GMs that are not currently employed in that capacity.

I listened to him speak last year at MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference (and briefly talked to him personally on the matter), and he certainly does know his advanced stats.

Related posts:

1. The Lamp Post: Put me in, Coach
2. “It’s Irrelevant to Me Who Starts” at SG, Says Pacers Coach Jim O’Brien
3. Back to Practice, Says Coach O’Brien