Short-handed Pacers leave Pascal Siakam short-handed

Shoutout to RayJ Dennis and Tony Bradley, but Indiana's star could've used a few more helping hands in powering the Pacers forward against the opposing team's power forward

By: Caitlin Cooper I @C2_Cooper

On the second night of a back-to-back, with eight players on an injury list that grew to also include Obi Toppin (hamstring), there was perhaps no sequence more telling as to the current shortcomings of the short-handed Pacers than that which transpired over a 3:45 span in the fourth quarter. Just before Pascal Siakam scored nine of his 33 points for the game, providing balletic ballast on the block against both Jaylen Clark and Julius Randle, he was attempting to batten down the hatches against Randle in the post at the other end of the floor.

With both fours powering their teams forward in the absence of major contributors, third-string center Tony Bradley dropped down from the top of the defense, where he was "guarding" Jaden McDaniels, to double Randle on the move. The only problem is, without full-bodied help, Randle split the trap, stepping through to squirt the ball out to the perimeter.

Still, rather than a shot, the result was a pass - which was a change from the first half when the Pacers predominantly defended Randle with one player: Pascal Siakam. For the most part, despite the fact that Anthony Edwards left the game in the first quarter with hamstring tightness after playing just three minutes, Indiana only sent help when a guard was switched onto him or doubled when he was cross-matched against Aaron Nesmith. Otherwise, the coverage was one-on-one, which not only led to a 20-point first half for Randle, but also asked a lot of Siakam, when a lot (as in, 33 points and eight assists) already was necessary from him in order to keep the game close.

Granted, Bradley's help, as was also the case with some of the other doubles in support of mismatches in the first half, may not have been perfectly executed, but his readiness and recognition to help, not unlike some of his other quiet, stabilizing contributions in the fourth quarter, reinforced why he played his way into the closing lineup.

The same also applied to RayJ Dennis. After Randle passed the ball out to the perimeter and relocated to the top of the key, Dennis walled up at the nail, deterring the bowling ball-like driver from rolling downhill with his dominant left-hand, leading instead to a self-created three from McDaniels.

Unfortunately, the Pacers didn't manage to finish the stop with a rebound, but the point remains that Bradley and Dennis were at least there to lend a helping handed in forcing Randle away from his strong hand. That changed a few possessions later, when the Pacers changed defensive match-ups. With Siakam carrying the load on offense against Clark, he also started guarding Clark. In turn, Nesmith squared up against Randle, except he didn't exactly stay square, at least not in the direction of shading the bully driver toward his right and into the help from Bradley.

As such, on the next possession, another swap occurred. Nesmith moved up to guard Naz Reid, with Jarace Walker checking Randle. For screen help, Minnesota turned to McDaniels in order to target Bradley. Once again, Randle attacked to his left, but Bradley had enough length in recovering to alter the shot at the rim.

Whether for a breather or in response to the possibility that the Wolves would continue hunting switches against Indiana's third-string center, Isaiah Jackson subbed in for Bradley when Siakam went to the line after stepping around Clark at the other end of the floor. In contrast to Bradley, who was screened into defending Randle, Jackson was all-out guarding Randle. Like Bradley and Nesmith before him, Jackson also gave up penetration to the star four attacking to his left. That said, there's a difference between Randle maneuvering to drive in that direction and the defense basically maneuvering for him to drive in that direction.

Put simply, that is a very strange stance for Jackson to take closing out to a left-handed driver, which is to say nothing of the bump that dislodged him on the finishing move.

In response, there was some give-and-go chemistry between Jackson and Siakam to relieve pressure on the latter that resulted in a layup followed by a short, turnaround hook shot from Reid over Walker and then an open three out of a non-committal double from Jackson on Randle, prompting an immediate timeout from the Pacers.

Coming out of the huddle, Bradley reentered for Jackson and Siakam also stayed out for a brief rest. Taken altogether, the Pacers were outscored 11-9 over that 3:45 stretch, with Siakam scoring all nine points. After getting some help from Bradley and Dennis with help coverages against Randle, Siakam ultimately received less help when he stopped guarding Randle, as Minnesota's brutish driver repeatedly got his way in getting his preferred way. For the game, Randle drove left on 16 of his 18 recorded drives, tallying 1.188 points per chance. Last season, including the playoffs, he drove left on 54.4 percent of his drives, scoring 0.983 points per chance. Meanwhile, Indiana only doubled him on four of his 30 touches when Siakam was guarding him, all of which occurred in the fourth quarter, with two executed by Bradley and Dennis within the same aforementioned possession.

Randle finished with 31 points on 18 field goal attempts, while recording his fewest passes per 100 possessions (52.5) in the three games he's played this season, even though Anthony Edwards logged less than five minutes of action.

With Sheppard, Dennis, and Quenton Jackson as the only guards available for the Pacers, it was reasonable to think that Siakam would have to take on more responsibility on offense. So far this season, he's averaging career highs in possessions per game as the bring-up ballhandler (21.7), as well as isolations per 100 possessions (18.3), while also posting a career low in expected effective field-goal percentage (i.e. shot quality), at just 46.95 percent. If that amount of hard is going to be required of him while the team remains short-handed, then there's reason to think that, for the sake not only of making things harder on Randle but also perhaps less burdensome on Siakam, more needed to be done by his teammates to ensure that he wasn't left short-handed, whether forcing Randle to his left hand or in bringing extra hands that were more committed to helping, at the other end of the floor.

And yet, that's why the beginning of this 3:45 stretch was so telling. On the second night of a back-to-back, with eight players on an injury list that grew to include Obi Toppin, the Pacers, somehow, still had a chance to steal a game on the road, with the same players who played a hand on that initial possession, being RayJ and Bradley, also taking matters into their own hands to earn staying on the floor. Following a game in which Bradley didn't play until the second half, he played himself into playing crunch-time, sprinting the floor for a running layup, manufacturing an angle for a drop-off pass under the basket, boxing out Rudy Gobert, and, yet again, lending a (literal) hand to Siakam by deflecting a pass from Randle to Gobert.

The game wasn't a win; however, following a night in which the Pacers scored just 0.474 points per chance on 20 drives with James Wiseman on the floor, compared to 1.182 points per chance on 41 drives with Wiseman off the floor (as the center who most needs to be fed struggled with how and whether to insert himself in a starting lineup sans any of last year's point guard rotation), Bradley's opportunism, at a position with plenty of opportunity that has frequently changed hands, at least provided a win in that a center, while certainly not winning the position (can there even be a winner?), could definitively say they had strong-armed themselves into gaining the upper (helping) hand.