Will the Pacers still be the (Pace)rs?

The following is my response to a mailbag question in which patron Sko asked what aspects of the team's identity will be limited/challenged most by Tyrese Haliburton's absence and whether there will be fewer run-outs involving Obi Toppin and Pascal Siakam

By: Caitlin Cooper I @C2_Cooper

Two summers ago, when Tyrese Haliburton was coming off the bench for Team USA at the FIBA World Cup, the coaching staff for New Zealand could be overheard on the broadcast warning of the change of context that would take place with the changing of the guard.

"Haliburton's in," cautioned one of the assistants, before going so far as to parrot the same refrain for added emphasis. "No passes over the top. Haliburton's in."

Since then, Haliburton has continued to put the NBA on similar notice, leading all players in passes ahead per 100 possessions during the 2024-25 season (13.2) while barely turning the ball over for a team that posted the lowest average touch length in six seasons. With the ball flying here, there, and everywhere in the blink of an eye, the question for the Pacers is whether and to what degree there should be a change of context now that, in a reverse scenario to that of New Zealand, there is a different sort of changing of the guard, with Haliburton no longer "in" to author the offense or be shadowed the full-length of the floor.

Here are some factors to consider.

Early offense is better offense

For the Pacers, when looking at their performance from the field during each range of the shot-clock last season, earlier shots in transition tend to hold more value.

• Very Early (24-18 seconds): 57.4 FG%

• Early/Average (18-7 seconds): 48.5 FG%

• Late (7-0 seconds): 40.8 FG%

The same also applies to the league at-large.

• Very Early (24-18 seconds): 54.4 FG%

• Early/Average (18-7 seconds): 46.6 FG%

• Late (7-0 seconds): 39.6 FG%

Put simply, the more a team can run, the better. After all, this was especially evident during the early portion of last season, when the Pacers weren't getting off to as many running starts, as neither Haliburton nor the team exactly looked like themselves, despite returning the same roster. For as much as that slowdown can be attributed to the fact that Haliburton had to work his way back up to speed after being held back in his training by injuries during the offseason, it seems reasonable to wonder whether the remaining roster will be able to mimic in his absence what he even struggled to replicate while, at times, operating as a shell of his usual presence. Of course, the change in Haliburton wasn't the only factor that led to the temporary change in identity, as the identities of who was running with him also changed.

Just look at this possession from their 94-90 loss to the Orlando Magic in November. As Haliburton was being escorted the full-length of the floor, the onus for "handling" the pressure would oftentimes be shifted to other ball-handlers, with him starting possessions away from the ball. In a game without Andrew Nembhard, that meant that Bennedict Mathurin was occasionally tasked with leading the break, while being flanked and at times disrupted by unfamiliar and imbalanced lineups.

Notably, no one is in a full out sprint to the corners, and without Haliburton at the controls to advance the ball with the pass, Turner needed to delay his trail to avoid jamming up Mathurin's penetration push. Instead, four players ended up on the same side of the floor, when ideally, Turner would've stayed behind the ball and simply flowed into a drag screen for Mathurin with Walker emptying from the three-player side to the opposite corner. Of course, Mathurin and Walker were closing that game with the starters when neither had even been part of the playoff push a few months earlier. Now that they both have more reps and experience, along with the fact that Nembhard and Nesmith are actually both healthy and available, it seems fair to assume that the running patterns should at least be easier to follow, even if Haliburton isn't the player giving the team the rundown, whether on or off the ball.

Take them at their word

When Rick Carlisle made it known last month that Bennedict Mathurin would be the Day 1 starter at the two-guard position, he also revealed what the fourth-year guard was told as to what the team would require from him in a full-time, starting role: "We need you to keep working on the running and simply running to the corners and stretching out the defense."

From there, he went on to describe Ben Sheppard as someone who's made it on the floor by virtue of running to the corners and functioning as a solider within the system, albeit while at times being too unselfish with regard to triggering the extra pass rather than letting the ball fly. In that regard, he and Mathurin are almost perfect foils of another, as the latter, who admittedly possesses the much higher ceiling, can at times be overly wired to score no matter what. By comparison, Sheppard led the team in the percentage of his playing time that he was moving "fast" last season (13.95 percent), as defined by Genius Sports as more than 14 feet per second, whereas the only "regular" rotation players who moved "fast" less often than Mathurin (7.53 percent) were Tony Bradley (7.05 percent) and Myles Turner (4.96 percent).

Put simply, Sheppard is a top candidate to outrun the camera's pan sprinting to the corners.

Just as an added note: There were 262 players in the NBA who played at least 1,000 minutes last season. Among them, no one spent a higher percentage of their time on the floor playing "fast" than Sheppard.

Whether Mathurin will consistently commit himself to taking on this particular attribute of the other Ben, who started in place of Haliburton during the Eastern Conference Finals a year ago in order to prove more pressure at the point of attack while also lubricating the offense in transition and between actions, remains to be seen. But the fact that he's been asked to run as a point of emphasis is the surest sign of any that, as of now, they still intend to get a move on as much as possible, despite not having Haliburton.

Determining who handles what

To that point, it bears pointing out that in not having Haliburton the Pacers aren't just down by an All-NBA caliber player, they also don't have as many surefire point guards (barring an unexpected leap from Kam Jones, RayJ Dennis, or Quenton Jackson). Ideally, based on the information from the prior two sections, Mathurin will mostly be spraying out around the ball to receive the advance passes rather than delivering (or not delivering) advance passes as a primary or secondary initiator. As a team, the Pacers averaged 21.9 passes ahead per 100 possessions with Haliburton on the floor, compared to 18.2 with him off. For frame of reference, the Denver Nuggets averaged 17.8 passes ahead per 100 possessions last season, which ranked third in the league. Needless to say, even when Haliburton's vision and timing isn't on the floor, the premise of his playstyle that the ball moves faster off the pass than the dribble still generally is by proxy, as his back-up, T.J. McConnell, ranked third in passes ahead per 100 possessions (11.2) with Andrew Nembhard also coming in at 28th (5.6) among the 41 players who completed at least 200 advance passes.

Of course, Nembhard is going to be the starter, and at first blush, his average may seem like a steep decline from that of the other two lead guards, but he averaged far fewer possessions per game as the bring-up ball-handler (16.6) than either Haliburton (35.6) or McConnell (23.3). When presented with the opportunity, he's shown himself to be more than capable of placing the ball over the top into the catch area for rim-runners and/or early transition seals.

Siakam is masterful at sliding underneath his match-up, holding his seal, and maintaining space between himself and the rim to maximize the time limit for the catch area, but that's all for naught if he doesn't play with guards who are readily willing to push the pace and chance finding those angles -- which are obviously more available before the defense can establish weak-side principles behind the seal. On the season, Siakam caught 95 advance passes leading to a shot, which was the most of any player on the team. Something to consider though is that the Pacers played 1964 minutes with at least two of Haliburton, Nembhard, and McConnell on the floor last season, compared to just 590 with Haliburton on the floor without Nembhard or McConnell. Nembhard, meanwhile, played a grand total of 278 minutes without Haliburton or McConnell. Generally speaking, it didn't matter so much that there's only one ball, when the Pacers were so quick to move it. They were better with more point guards on the floor, not less.

Granted, Nembhard isn't likely to get face-guarded to the extent of Haliburton, which is why having more hands to handle was oftentimes to Indiana's benefit, but the fact that Nembhard won't be on hand for Nembhard (yes, you read that right) to catch ball-side advance passes and punch-and-spray means someone will likely have to fill that void. Even if Nembhard isn't Haliburton, the league as a whole registered its highest average pick-up distance in the tracking-era last season. Ball pressure, with the Pacers leading the charge, has become a growing trend. Assuming the league continues in the direction of dictating the terms of engagement earlier with regard to the direction of the ball, Pascal Siakam may need to revert to functioning more often as a driver and/or bring-up ball-handler, which could potentially result in fewer run-outs thereby underscoring the running emphasis for Bennedict Mathurin.

On that note, Siakam obviously can't throw advance passes to himself for direct shots at the rim against mismatches, but if he's receiving the ball-side hit-ahead from Nembhard to punch-and-spray (as Nembhard so often does), then the Pacers can still put themselves in position to play with tempo and attack a broken or unbalanced floor.

In what could turn out to be somewhat of a microcosm of the season, while there's a chance that Siakam's points in transition may not come as easily, he'll likely still play a significant role in easing what develops in transition for the rest of the team, provided that the team runs with him rather than relying on him to run as much in front of the team.

Ball (In)security?

Another factor to consider with regard to the volume of leak-outs or early work for Siakam and Obi Toppin is the possession war. As the saying goes, "the basketball is the most important part of basketball." Tyrese Haliburton is the immaculate exception when it comes to keeping the ball safe without playing it safe.

Just look at this excerpt from a breakdown that was published in March:

After all, while he may be the sun, the moon, and the stars, as it pertains to jump-starting the offense for the Pacers, he isn't a particularly heliocentric option when it comes to holding onto the ball. Second Spectrum tracks touches and average touch time. When multiplying those two numbers together for Haliburton and dividing by the same product for the team as a whole, he's only had the ball 28.6 percent of the time within the Pacers' egalitarian offense, despite the fact that he ranks second in touches per game (94.1), trailing only perennial MVP candidate Nikola Jokic (104.6).

If that same process is repeated for every team's leader in touches per game, the proportion by which Haliburton has the ball for his team barely cracks the top-10, as can be seen below.

• Trae Young: 42.5% 

• Jalen Brunson: 39.9%

• Cade Cunningham: 38.6%

• Damian Lillard: 35.6%

• Tyrese Maxey: 35.1%

• James Harden: 34.7%

• Shai Gilgeous-Alexander: 33.0%

• Dejounte Murray: 32.1%

• LaMelo Ball: 31.7%

• Tyrese Haliburton: 28.6%

As a team, the Pacers have the lowest average touch length in the NBA while averaging the second-most passes. The ball is constantly on the move, with Haliburton as the central non-centralized character. And yet, even while hanging onto the ball less often, he's somehow committed the fewest live-ball turnovers per 100 possessions of any of the above-listed names.

• Cade Cunningham: 4.55

• James Harden: 4.53

• Trae Young: 4.50

• Dejounte Murray: 3.24

• Damian Lillard: 2.77

• LaMelo Ball: 2.75

• Jalen Brunson: 2.34

• Shai Gilgeous-Alexander: 2.28

• Tyrese Maxey: 1.94

• Tyrese Haliburton: 1.47

Per Cleaning the Glass, the percentage of possessions that ended with a turnover for the Pacers last season was 2.4 percent less with Haliburton on the floor, which ranked in the 97th percentile. That isn't just about his cleanliness with the ball, either. Away from the ball, the degree to which he gets face-guarded also creates 4-on-4 opportunities for his teammates that result in wider gaps and more spacious driving lanes.

If the Pacers aren't as secure with the ball in his absence, then they might be more pressed not to giveaway second chances on the glass in addition to the giveaways. That means that Toppin and Siakam may need to stick around a beat longer to ensure the team has secured the ball before running out to catch it at the other end. Toppin is fast enough from end-to-end that he can still get ahead of the defense if he boxes out on the perimeter; however, similar to Siakam with regard to potentially taking on more ball-handling reps, that calculus could change if he ends up defending closer to the hoop more often at the five with two of the team's center options returning from Achilles injuries.

A bigger (under)taking in the half-court

That said, when Toppin wasn't making shots at the start of last season at the same time as the Pacers weren't playing with as much pace, there were eight games in which he tallied two points or less in transition and never made a three. Of those games, the Pacers only won his minutes in one of the eight. For the most part, he's just considerably more additive or at the very least positive, when his ease of movement and explosiveness is allowing him to provide, as my colleague Samson Folk described it, the "punch at the end of great creation."

He's at his best when he's playing with forward momentum, and the same will likely be the case for this version of the Pacers, even if only for the purpose of avoiding the half-court while also increasing their randomness and overall variation.

Again, the Pacers aren't only going to be down by Haliburton's playmaking, they're also going to be without his shooting. These types of possessions, when Haliburton is being guarded at the logo and his defender literally runs away from the ball to stick with him, are going to look different when Nembhard starts drawing more top assignments without as much gravity one pass away.

In that regard, if the on-ball defender ducks under the screen (and the screener) more often with Nembhard only attempting 1.5 pull-up threes per game, as he did during the playoffs, compared to 5.4 for Haliburton, then more might be asked of players like Aaron Nesmith to pop-and-drive as a counter for the coverage against weaker defensive assignments.

When Haliburton was off the floor last season, the Pacers averaged 10.8 picks per 100 possessions in which the ball-handler defender ducked under, which is more than the 30th-ranked Minnesota Timberwolves averaged on the season, at 9.6. Not all of that has to do with Nembhard (i.e. T.J. McConnell plays on this team!). Plus, he's a problem-solver, and so are the Pacers. They'll find ways to avoid dribbling in place or waiting for re-screens, and they can tinker with various alignments when a non-shooting big is on the floor to lengthen rotations to the rim or untether potential double-teams from Siakam, but the fact of the matter is they're still going to have obstacles to remove or reposition that wouldn't otherwise be there, at least not as prevalently, with Haliburton. As such, even if they ultimately determine that they can't hit the same moving targets as a result of potential changes in not only who's trying to hit the targets but also who the targets are, there's a case to be made, from the stated emphasis on running to the potential need to outrun changes in spacing, that playing how they would in the open floor with Haliburton may be just as, if not more necessary, without Haliburton.

The Pacers still need to be some version of the (Pace)rs, at least until they show they can't run before they have to walk.