Moses Brown provides Pacers with spiritual lift

Can I get an amen? 

By: Caitlin Cooper I @C2_Cooper

Moses Brown is 7-foot-2 with two healthy Achilles tendons. It would be hard for him not to standout from the rest of Indiana's roster, if for no other reason than he stands much taller than the rest of Indiana's currently short-handed roster.

That said, when he entered the game against the Washington Wizards, with the Pacers down 4-0 at the 9:19 mark of the first quarter, Brown also quickly distinguished himself for playing big, rather than merely just tall. In not-so-short order, after Myles Turner had picked up his second foul, Brown scored all of Indiana's first eight points, rapidly revealing his quirky gawkiness, as he left-handed everything from driving layups to push-shots despite the fact that he shoots (and oftentimes misses) free throws with his right. On his very first bucket, however, he provided no such mystery as to which hand he prefers. Instead, after slipping into space and pulling down the overhead pass from Tyrese Haliburton, he demonstrated that two hands can be better than one.

In fact, he was so emphatic that the bigger lingering question, at least in the afterglow of his energized performance, arguably is when exactly the last time was that a big for the Pacers went up for a dunk with both hands after carving out space with a bump. Since the start of last season, Myles Turner has completed 102 dunk-shots. After reviewing the film of all of those slams, none happened in tandem with that degree of physicality, as his athleticism can be somewhat random. When he gets rolling downhill with momentum, he's fully capable of rising up and detonating on defenders of all shapes and sizes. If any type of pound dribble is required, though, he's a lot more apt to stay ground bound while relying on his touch rather than testing the limits of his balance.

James Wiseman, meanwhile, never completed a dunk in his only game with the Pacers, and none of the six completed by Isaiah Jackson saw him root out a defender. That is, not since last season -- when the Pacers played the Nets at home on April 1.

As such, that means Moses Brown completed a shot for the Pacers that no one on the roster has made in nearly seven months. For the game, he finished with 15 points, four rebounds, and one block on 6-of-8 shooting in less than 12 minutes of action, while also stockpiling good vibes from the bench during his initial scoring run. Granted, the opponent certainly had at least somewhat of a hand in the exploits he was executing with both of his hands, whether apart or in tandem. After all, there was one particularly egregious possession in which Jonas Valanciunas rotated laterally from the dunker spot to meet Pascal Siakam at the rim and the help defender just never helped, even though the player in the corner who they would've been helping from was T.J. McConnell.

Put simply, that isn't exactly magical defense by the Wizards, who rank 29th in field-goal percentage allowed at the rim. Meanwhile, although Brown makes every effort for his voice to be heard on defense, as he can oftentimes be seen cupping his hands around his mouth while calling out directives to the on-ball defender, he's joining a team that ranks among the top-five in the league in total volume of picks defended up to a touch.

As such, he tends to rely on the wild activity of his arms to make up for what he lacks in backward mobility, just as he also closes out with sky-high, two-hand contests in an attempt to obscure the fact that he is a slow-footed, 7-foot-2 center who isn't likely to get from the rim to the 3-point line or vice versa. Still, even when he reached in against Valanciunas or later gambled for an offensive rebound, he at least made every effort to lumber his way back into the play, albeit aided by whatever led old friend Malcolm Brogdon to spray the ball out to the three-point line instead of immediately toward the rim.

Of course, there's also some obvious spots where the offense has to run differently with him on the floor by comparison to Turner. Normally, when Siakam gets a switch after setting this vertical chase screen, Turner would be at the top of the key, prepared to either feed the post with a high-low pass or flow into the next option, which would be a swing pass to Mathurin with Siakam and Turner dropping down into a stagger for Quenton Jackson to cut from the corner to the opposite wing. Here, because Brown doesn't pose any type of threat as a shooter and likely wouldn't be guarded above the break, all of that movement gets chopped from the action as he instead runs straight to the block, only leaving to set a quick step-up screen for Mathurin.

In that sense, just as he's going to have to find hacks in order to adjust to the Pacers on defense, the Pacers are also likely going to be in search of hacks to adjust to him on offense. If nothing else, whether clearing space for a two-handed dunk that hasn't been seen in seven months or taking up space in sets where his spot would otherwise be unoccupied, he's going to stand out -- sometimes, for being tall and, in this game, for also playing big. Overall, he may not be a godsend, but with two healthy Achilles tendons and plenty of aggression around the rim, Moses Brown came through on a Sunday in providing the Pacers with a spiritual lift.

At some point, it's probably going to be fair to ask to what degree that should've been necessary at home against a 2-13 Washington Wizards team. For now, though, given that the Pacers had dropped four of their last five games, it's probably better just to accept the blessings in whatever form and, in this case, much-needed larger size, they come.