Indiana was running Utah out the damn gym, up 21 points in the middle of the third quarter. Then a funny thing happend on the way to a blowout: the Jazz went on a 25-to-4 run as the Pacers missed 10 straight field goals. Just like that, the game was tied, and it looked like Frank Vogel might have a Sacto Part Deux on his hands.
It was quite the shame, too. Roy Hibbert and especially Darren Collison had been dynamite all night. They combined for 29 first-half points on 13-for-16 shooting and DC surpassed his season-high in scoring when he reached 21 points mid-way through the third quarter. (He finished with 25.)
Not to worry. Not long after the Pacers coughed up the lead and couldn’t get anything going, Danny Granger took over. He made 5 of his 6 shots in the fourth quarter on the way to 12 points in the final period. It was more than that though. He played top-notch defense late, running timely double teams at the Jazz post players and not forcing anything on offense. The key play of the game came on a Granger drive with just over 3 minutes to play and the teams knotted at 95.
Danny made his way into the paint and looked poised to elevate for the same off-balance, in-traffic 6-footer he has been bricking all season. Instead, he crouched, gathered and kicked it out to a pretty-open Collison on the right wing. The defense, which had collapsed on Granger’s penetration, ran out at DC, who calmly swung the ball to a wide-open Paul George at the top of the key. All net. Indiana took a 98-95 lead they would never relinquish.
I don’t want to overstate one pass, but it seemed like a big moment in this season for the Pacers captain. Granger missed all 6 of his first-half shots. He didn’t look any better in the third quarter. After the game, Mike Wells reported that Danny told him he took sleeping pills on Monday and still felt groggy throughout the game before perking up in the fourth. Regardless, he was clearly feeling it at the time of his critical pass and had hit his last 4 shots in the past 4 minutes, three of which were mid-range jumpers that didn’t so much as touch the iron.
But rather than putting up a shot you know he wanted to take (shooters gonna shoot), he made the right play. A while back, after a win in Boston in which he passed up an even more delectable shot for him — an open three — to pass the rock over to a more-open George Hill, he told me that “whoever has it going, that’s where we’re going.”
He meant that the Pacers have so many weapons that, whoever is hot, that will be the guy who gets the ball. Well, tonight, in the fourth quarter, when the rest of his team was letting the Jazz storm back into this game and nearly win one on Indiana’s home court, Granger was the one who had it going. He had every right to take that shot — because he was on fire, because he was the only one really getting anything going in he fourth and because he had earned an attempt by penetrating into the paint on that play.
Instead, he kicked it out.
So perhaps he needs to revise his little slogan. Maybe from now on it should be: whoever is open, that’s where we’re going. With team-wide ball movement focused on that goal — like they displayed in the second half against the Mavericks, for example — the Pacers truly do look like one of the best teams in the league. We saw plenty of that tonight. Until we didn’t. But when it really mattered, and the team needed to close out a team that made a game out of one that should have been over, they got back to it. Increasingly, that ball movement and instinct to find the open player is beginning to look like it’s ingrained in this team’s DNA.
Here is how each guy played individually tonight. Agree? Disagree? Express your thoughts below in the comments or yell at me (@8pts9secs) or Tim (@TimDonahue8p9s) on Twitter.
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David West - 30 MIN | 3-9 FG | 6 REB | 3 AST | 8 PTS Nothing standout but had 2 hoops as the Pacers started pulling away in the 2nd half. Was a good decoy in the pick-and-roll. |
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Danny Granger - 36 MIN | 6-14 FG | 5 REB | 3 AST | 16 PTS MVP of the game with 12 pts in the 4th on 5-for-6 shooting while playing elite defense late and making the pass of the game on a kickout that led to the go-ahead-for-good George trey. |
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Roy Hibbert - 35 MIN | 7-13 FG | 10 REB | 2 AST | 17 PTS The Jazz had absolutely no defense for the Big Hoss tonight, who notched a double-double and sent back 4 Utah shots. |
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Darren Collison - 36 MIN | 10-14 FG | 4 REB | 5 AST | 25 PTS Despite the Pacers nearly giving this one away and Granger taking over late, this is one DC game nobody should forget. Made excellent decisions all game on the way to a season-high 25 pts. |
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Paul George - 29 MIN | 5-10 FG | 5 REB | 2 AST | 14 PTS “RT @8pts9secs The way Paul George knifes through traffic sometimes and—especially—slithers around screens, I swear his natural state is gaseous.” |
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Dahntay Jones - 13 MIN | 1-6 FG | 1-1 FT | 0 REB | 3 PTS On the one hand, missed 5 shots. On the other hand, had a sweet and-one. On the other other hand, had some gross isolation plays. |
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Louis Amundson - 12 MIN | 0-1 FG | 0-0 FT | 2 REB | 0 PTS Looked a lot like Lou Amundson out there. |
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A.J. Price - 12 MIN | 2-5 FG | 0 REB | 1 AST | 5 PTS Had back-to-back inexplicable turnovers when he straight handed the ball to the Utah for a breakaway layup and followed that up with a back-court travel for no reason. |
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Tyler Hansbrough - 19 MIN | 3-8 FG | 3 REB | 1 AST | 8 PTS Stuck some jumpers and got a sweet assist on that aforementioned Dahntay 3-point play. Rebounded. |
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Lance Stephenson - 18 MIN | 4-7 FG | 0-4 FT | 1 AST | 8 PTS Looked fantastic scoring in the paint. Now, make a FT. |
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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
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