How Aaron Nesmith stayed hot without feeling the "burn"

On the player who, in just being there, can generally be counted on to be there 

By: Caitlin Cooper I @C2_Cooper

When Aaron Nesmith made his first of three three-pointers in less than a minute against the Chicago Bulls, he didn't just heat up in a hurry for the Pacers, darting here and driving there while shaping up around the inverse gravity of his All-Star teammate, he also provided a flashbulb example of the difference he makes in avoiding unexpected burns.

To understand why, consider the rarity of this action along with the fact that he can't guard himself.

On the season, the Pacers have only ran a total of six hand-offs with Aaron Nesmith as the setter for Pascal Siakam as the receiver. While some of that can probably be attributed to availability (i.e. Nesmith was out for nearly two months with an ankle injury), the connections between those two don't generally come with the same inherent advantages of those involving Andrew Nembhard or Tyrese Haliburton.

For one, both Nembhard and Haliburton have the benefit of just being able to get into those types of inverse actions more quickly as primary ball-handlers. Plus, when the setter is Nembhard, Siakam tends to receive a mismatch along with the ball. Meanwhile, if Haliburton tosses him a slot-to-slot flip, Siakam may not always see a downgrade in terms of defensive assignment, but he likely won't be as prone to see as many defenders. There, what developed was less about engineering the optimum possession for Siakam as just providing a bridge to the next action, which is what Nesmith adds with his ability to keep playing, even if his defender doesn't necessarily keep quite as close to him as what would be the case with Haliburton.

Still, after the Bulls switched the hand-off, Nesmith still managed to give them more than they bargained for, knocking down the open three as Matas Buzelis had committed to Siakam with Zach Collins forced to rotate with an indirect closeout. On the next two plays, Nesmith continued to beat the heat that was being turned up on the frontcourt, not only drilling a three via a swing pass from Haliburton that materialized out of another double-team against Siakam, but also finding the open spot along the arc with a lateral, escape dribble after Myles Turner had been swarmed in the paint running to the rim.

For a player who attempted over 85 percent of his threes without a dribble last season, that shot was arguably the most meaningful of the three in terms of potentially avoiding some of the regression that occurred in the playoffs when he struggled to recapture his rhythm while keeping a three a three against flyby closeouts, but the first shot -- at least as a juxtaposition to another shot that he thwarted -- was still perhaps the most telling as to his overall impact.

Just look at how a similar possession played out in the reverse. Like the Pacers, Chicago is running a simple hand-off at the top of the key.

Unlike the Pacers, however, the hand-off setter is a big, passing to a guard, rather than Nesmith, as a smaller wing, making the exchange to Siakam. Also, the Pacers don't switch -- at least not initially. Instead, as Nembhard is chasing over the hand-off, Turner can be seen pointing for him to veer-back to the big.

At that point (no pun intended), although the coverages aren't the same, Collins is exposed at the top of the key, just like Nesmith was on the first of his flurry of threes. As such, Haliburton responded like Collins in response to Collins, quickly attempting to rotate from the weak-side with an indirect closeout. On the one hand, the closeout is shorter from Haliburton, coming from the wing as opposed to the corner. On the other hand, however, that (perhaps overeager) rotation opens up an automatic counter from the Bulls, who attempt to punish the stunt with a "burn" cut, automatically slashing behind Haliburton from the wing to the basket.

But, look who didn't get burned: Nesmith. In a first half that saw the Pacers give up 32 points in the paint, while getting rocked by early transition offense and the overall downhill momentum of Coby White, Nesmith was ahead of his time on that possession -- not only with his timing to absorb the cut, buying time for Haliburton to recover, but also in getting a head start on the cohesiveness that was necessary in the second half to start putting more of a cork on the ball.

In that regard, Nesmith wasn't typically the player manufacturing stops against White, whether cutting off drives at the point of attack and intercepting passes as the cornerback or processing the exact moment to pull the chair around the rim. Likewise, he also wasn't the player drawing two in the paint on three possessions in a row to deliver easy passes for spot-up threes. And yet, while sometimes he can appear as though he is just there, when it comes to running hard in transition, balancing the floor with his movement, operating as a zone buster, and generally filling gaps, both in burning the defense for helping off and not getting burned on defense when help is needed, what Nesmith's career-high, 27-point performance against the Bulls goes to show is that, if nothing else, in just being there, he can almost always be counted on to very much be there.