Indiana Pacers Complete 2016-17 Season Preview

Larry Bird delivered a decisive message when he fired head coach Frank Vogel back in May: Nothing would get in the way of the vision he mapped out for the Indiana Pacers—not loyalty, not stability, not even finishing one win shy of a surprising second-round postseason bid.

Indiana’s team president wanted his troops to play smaller and faster. He made that much clear at the end of the 2014-15 season. It didn’t matter that jettisoning Roy Hibbert and signing Monta Ellis hardly fit the bill. The Pacers squad he watched on the floor in 2015-16 never met his standards.

Paul George spent most of his time at small forward. The Pacers cracked the top 10 in pace but finished bottom eight in offensive efficiency. They were middle of the road in three-point accuracy.

Vogel, in that sense, failed, so the next coach would be a better reflection of the identity Bird wished to champion. But then he named Nate McMillan as Vogel’s successor, which portended a series of aggressive offseason moves that indicate no discernible identity.

Next season’s Pacers are more confusing for it, their floor as low as their ceiling is high. Armed to the teeth with talented individuals who don’t easily fit together, it’ll take the right breaks for them to avoid getting lost in the Eastern Conference’s hellishly deep middle class.

Biggest Offseason Move

Trading for Thaddeus Young and signing Al Jefferson are solid, if undefined attempts by Indiana to move the needle. But its biggest offseason move is the acquisition of Jeff Teague—which, considering he came at the expense of George Hill, doesn’t sit right.

It seems justifiable for a team looking to sharpen its offense. It’s beyond difficult to field an elite scoring machine without a top point guard, and Hill is more possession manager than floor general. Teague is by far the better playmaker; his assist percentage last season (34.4) more than doubled Hill’s mark (15.5), and he initiated 545 pick-and-rolls to his predecessor’s 259. He can also be considered a lateral shooting move after burying nearly 50 percent of his spot-up treys.

But this switch is rife with risks, as Ben Golliver underscored for SI.com:

First, Teague reportedly played through a knee injury last season. Second, the Hawks weren’t able to recapture their 2015 chemistry last season, and Teague occasionally was benched for back-up Dennis Schroder down the stretch. Third, Teague grades far worse than Hill defensively: Hill ranked 14th among point guards in Defensive Real Plus-Minus last season, while Teague ranked 55th.

Not even the offensive benefits of adding Teague are sure things: He had the better catch-and-shoot percentage last year, but Hill is the superior three-point marksman for his career and is used to working away from the ball, off of George, in volume.

Teague, on the other hand, hasn’t played beside a ball-dominant supporting cast since 2011-12, when he counted Joe Johnson and Josh Smith as Atlanta Hawks teammates. While the two-man game between him and George should effortlessly blossom, adding Ellis and Young to the equation displaces Teague from his comfort zone and into a role he’s never known.

Rotation Breakdown

At a time when many teams are scrambling to iron out consistent rotations, the Pacers don’t have much thinking to do. Starting Ellis, George, Teague, Myles Turner and Young is a given. Incorporating two new on-ball contributors will take time, but the Ellis-George-Turner tricycle ranked among Indiana’s five most-used trios last season. Working in Teague shouldn’t be too hard if he gets enough time as the lead ball-handler.

The rest of the rotation is similarly set in stone:

Offense is clearly a point of emphasis for …

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