Indiana Pacers | Pace and Space

The Pacers’ 2019 Draft Has Something For Every Fan

June 23, 2019 - by Fox Doucette

To say Kevin Pritchard had a whirlwind of activity on draft night Thursday is to say that Dorothy got caught up in a light breeze on a calm Kansas evening. Normally that kind of capacity for understatement is reserved for British political leaders in the midst of a war. No, what Kevin Pritchard did was a full-scale, F5 tornado whirlwind of activity that saw the Pacers acquire a known commodity (T.J. Warren, one of those guys I love to watch play because when his shot starts falling he scores a lot of points in not a lot of time) for …

Editorial / Pacers Tuesday

The Pacers’ Point Guard Options Are All Terrible

June 9, 2019 - by Fox Doucette

The Indiana Pacers have so many trade and free agency rumors swirling around who is going to start at point guard when the 2019-20 season tips off that you could plug any name from the entire NBA into a Mad Libs and send it off for editing and readers would tweet it far and wide with no regard for its credibility. Part of this is because every offseason for every team at every position of need is like this and part of it is the simple fact that the Pacers, by virtue of Darren Collison being about to turn 32 …

Analysis

The Pacers—And Everyone Else—Should Avoid DeMar DeRozan

June 9, 2019 - by Fox Doucette

The San Antonio Spurs are, unsurprisingly, rumored to be interested in moving on from DeMar DeRozan, figuring out a year too late that having a guy who relies heavily on low-efficiency midrange jump shots probably isn’t a guy you want taking a high volume of shots in your offense in 2019. What’s more, DeRozan and Kawhi Leonard, by virtue of being swapped for each other, provided a perfect test case for just how grotesquely overrated DeRozan is, as 60 regular-season games of Kawhi Leonard was (as this goes to press, it’s the day before Game 5, so if you’re reading …

Pacers Tuesday

The Indiana Pacers Should Trade the 18th Pick in 2019

June 2, 2019June 2, 2019 - by Fox Doucette

The Indiana Pacers are, as of this writing and pending any Woj bombs or Shams scoops, picking 18th in the 2019 NBA draft. It is the fourth time in a row they’ve picked between 18th and 23rd, that late-first-round ghetto where the best talent is off the board and for every Gary Harris (19th in 2014 to Chicago) or Caris LeVert (20th in 2016 to Brooklyn via Indiana), there are seemingly dozens of guys like Fab Melo (22nd in 2012 to Boston, played six NBA games) or Malachi Richardson (22nd in 2016 to Memphis, posted negative Win Shares in 70 …

Editorial

NBA Awards and the “Media Doesn’t Watch Games” Argument

May 29, 2019 - by Fox Doucette

Every time the question of analytics and the “eye test” comes up, someone starts in with the “these media guys never played the game” argument, suggesting that you have to play the game at a high level to fully understand it. Now, I don’t buy that argument for a variety of reasons. For one, most former NBA players who get into coaching tend to be awful at it. Sure, they’re great at the management of egos and the team cohesion side of the job, but when it comes to the Xs and Os, most former players revert to the style …

Editorial

Should the Indiana Pacers Trade Victor Oladipo for Bradley Beal?

April 23, 2019 - by Fox Doucette

The Indiana Pacers badly need to shake things up this offseason. They’ve got millions in cap space, millions more under the luxury tax, plenty of expiring contracts, and one superstar whose injury sealed their fate fully three months before the Boston Celtics finally made it official and swept the Pacers out of the playoffs. Now, the Pacers could go the sensible route. They could ride with Victor Oladipo, re-sign Thaddeus Young (the glue that holds the team together) and Bojan Bogdanovic, fire Nate McMillan and bring in a legitimate head coach who can actually run a modern NBA offense, and …

Pacers Tuesday

Pacers Predictive Postmortem on the Playoff Precipice

April 12, 2019 - by Fox Doucette

In 2016, the Memphis Grizzlies started the season 39-26 before a combination of injuries to Mike Conley and Marc Gasol led to a downright violent regression to the mean that left them 3-14 in their last 17 regular-season games before meekly bowing out to the San Antonio Spurs in the first round of the playoffs via sweep. In 2019, the Indiana Pacers started the season 40-20, even initially staying strong despite an injury to Victor Oladipo in January. But that injury, plus a vicious toughening of the schedule, led to the team finishing 4-9 in their last 13 regular-season games …

Highlights

Breakfast Special: Blowouts! Nothing But Blowouts!

April 4, 2019 - by Fox Doucette

There were 12 games in the NBA Wednesday night. The only ones that were close were meaningless games between non-playoff teams, so you can guess how the Lightning Round’s going today. But first, we’ve got three games with pretty meaningful playoff implications, even if all of them were clobberings. Nugget Revenge The last time the Nuggets and Spurs faced off, in San Antonio, Denver got sent down by the squeakiest of margins, losing by a single point. For the return engagement in Denver, the Nuggets left nothing to chance and destroyed the Spurs 113-85. Nikola Jokic had 20 points, 11 …

Pacers Tuesday

Teammate of the Year? They Should Call it the Thaddeus Young Award

April 2, 2019 - by Fox Doucette

This week’s edition is brought to you in part by Pacers Twitter, who were collectively and understandably getting sick of the doom and gloom inherent in this weekly department ever since the team went 4-10 in March and…ahem, I’m doing it again, aren’t I? So the preview of the Celtics series, a hit piece on Tyreke Evans, a comparison to the 2016 Grizzlies…all of those will have to run some other time. This week, we’re talking about the greatest teammate and glue guy in the NBA if not in all of sports, the one, the only Thaddeus Young. Specifically, Young’s …

Highlights

Breakfast Special: Angry Sabonis Is Best Sabonis

April 2, 2019 - by Fox Doucette

Journalistic integrity and standards are a double-edged sword. On the one hand, I really wanted today’s headline to be “Breakfast Special: Great Job, Motherf—er” to give proper credit to Domantas Sabonis after his first-rate outburst at the referees following his sixth foul in the Indiana Pacers’ 111-102 win over the Detroit Pistons Monday night. On the other hand, Pace and Space is a content partner with Basketball Reference and I’m pretty sure their editorial staff would be less than pleased by one of their content partners providing them with a headline—even a censored one—featuring Samuel L. Jackson’s favorite word. So …