Can the Pacers dial back the pressure?

On how they can take the edge off in regaining their edge 

By: Caitlin Cooper I @C2_Cooper

It's becoming increasingly commonplace. Last season, the Pacers averaged 12.014 possessions in which they were confronted by at least one back-court defender when Tyrese Haliburton was on the court. During the playoffs, that number increased to an average of 14.667 per game. Now? It's continuing to climb, as the Pacers have run into (or rather, walked up on) one or more pests on 15.125 possessions per game through the first 16 games of the season. On Friday, when the Pacers fell to 0-2 in group play of the NBA Cup with a 129-117 loss to the Milwaukee Bucks, they tallied 20 such possessions.

And, here's the thing: This wasn't just token pressure. Even when Haliburton took the ball out, the Bucks didn't drop-back or transfer the peskiness to the ball-handler, they remained intently focused on Haliburton, including going to such extremes as face-guarding him the full-length of the floor and effectively being content to play 4-on-4 in the half-court.

Here, he's trailing well beyond the play and Andre Jackson is still shadowing him at the logo, without the slightest clue (or care) as to what the rest of the players on the floor are up to behind him.

Then, once Haliburton crossed half-court, he still couldn't take his eyes off him.

Turner is getting ready to catch the ball at the top of the key there, and Jackson didn't even move a muscle to glance in the direction of the pass. Eventually, Haliburton touched the ball with under 15 seconds remaining on the shot-clock; however, once Brook Lopez surged toward the ball on the re-screen along the sideline, he immediately got rid of it, which left Bennedict Mathurin in the role of grenadier against the worst possible match-up in Giannis Antetokounmpo.

To his credit, he didn't just concede. There were occasions where he brought the ball up the floor against Jackson and even managed to peel off the itchy sweater-like pressure by throwing the ball ahead into space and manufacturing a switch, but the Bucks simply responded by hitting that switch with a blitz while once again being content to play 4-on-4 -- especially when Giannis was the player at the receiving end of yet another late-clock 1-on-1.

On the night, the Pacers generated just 0.750 points per possession on the 20 possessions in which they were confronted by at least one back-court defender when Haliburton was on the floor, with the average run-time of those possessions being 17.153 seconds. By comparison, on the 57 possessions in which there wasn't a back-court defender when he was on the floor, the Pacers scored 1.158 points per possession with a much shorter average possession length of 12.578 seconds. Again, as was pointed out in a prior piece about why the Pacers aren't getting off to running starts as often, early shots hold more value for this team when looking at their performance from the field during each range of the shot-clock.

• Very Early (24-18 seconds): 61.5 percent

• Early/Average (18-7 seconds): 47.7 percent

• Late (7-0 seconds): 38.9 percent

Of course, one way to avoid a back-court defender more easily is to manufacture stops, as the defense at least doesn't have as much opportunity to pick-up the full-length of the floor following a made basket. Still, the opposing team is going to score at some point, which means the Pacers need to find some means by which to be more efficient against pressure.

Here's some ideas, including a look at what was effective against Milwaukee.

Increase T.J. McConnell's playing time 

The Pacers have been outscored by 8.2 points per 100 possessions in 557 minutes with Tyrese Haliburton on the floor this season. Of the 10 two-man lineup combinations that include him and have logged at least 50 minutes of action, only two are currently above sea level in total plus/minus:

Haliburton-Nembhard: +24 in 174 minutes played

Haliburton-McConnell: +9 in 101 minutes played

Notice a theme? Granted, lineup data can be noisy, especially this early in the season with such small sample sizes. After all, opponents have shot 28 percent from three during the Haliburton-McConnell minutes, as well as 30 percent from three during the Haliburton-Nembhard minutes. That certainly helps and isn't particularly controllable by the Pacers, but they've also scored 114.7 points per 100 possessions with Haliburton-McConnell on the floor and 115.0 with Haliburton-Nembhard on the floor, compared to just 108.5 when Haliburton is on the floor without either of McConnell or Nembhard.

In that regard, two point guards have generally been better than one. Just think back to the playoffs. Throughout that entire run, the Pacers only played a total of 18 possessions with Haliburton on the floor without McConnell or Nembhard. In turn, they still managed to score 1.150 points per possessions on the 220 possessions they faced when confronted by at least one back-court defender when Haliburton was on the floor. To be fair, this is a different team right now, and Haliburton is a different player right now, but that largely just reinforces why there's reason to release some of the pressure on the star guard by playing an additional pressure release more often.

Notably, the Pacers finished plus-10 in the eight minutes that Haliburton and McConnell played together against Milwaukee, and even more notably, the Bucks only deployed a defender in the back-court once during those minutes. Some of that is because their shared playing time aligned with a stretch toward the end of the third quarter that saw the Bucks score points on just three of eight possessions against Indiana's zone, which means the Pacers weren't taking the ball out of the net as often. Still, there were three possessions in which they did score against the zone, and they didn't apply back-court pressure on those possessions.

To an extent, this is easier said than done right now. For as long as Nembhard continues to be sidelined with patellofemoral inflammation in his knee, the Pacers don't have as much flexibility to play multiple ball-handlers at once, as they clearly need McConnell to steer the ship when Haliburton isn't on the floor. In Orlando, when McConnell only played five minutes on the second night of a back-to-back and effectively was given the night off for rest, Nembhard played 33 minutes while starting and also playing back-up point guard. McConnell only played more than 30 minutes once last season, when he had to start on the road in Sacramento when Haliburton, Nembhard, and Nesmith were all sidelined before Siakam had joined the team.

Needless to say, he doesn't often play big minutes, barring emergencies, largely because he plays so hard during his minutes. There can be diminishing returns to his whirling-style of play if he can't turn the corner, doesn't have the legs to rise up for his push-shot, or is getting beat while applying full-court pressure. That said, he logged more than 20 in the team's recent win over the Heat, which saw him join the closing lineup both to play closer to the ball against Tyler Herro in the late-game absence of Ben Sheppard and to provide an extra outlet for the ball as a handler.

Until Nembhard is able to return to action, there might need to be some thought given to testing what the tipping point is for McConnell's minutes load with respect to increasing his share of playing time with Haliburton -- at least against teams that have actively demonstrated an intent to increase the share of attention that is paid to Haliburton.

Let Pascal Siakam bring the ball up 

If the current rotation is too thin to expect that of McConnell, then perhaps Pascal Siakam needs to be given more of the reins to "handle" the pressure. For the game, he only brought up the ball three times when Haliburton was on the floor with at least one back-court defender present. On his first foray, he made quick work of targeting Damian Lillard, turning the corner against the turnstile of the soft show, as he was greased by an inverted screen to blowby Giannis.

That said, the action doesn't always develop that speedily. Just look at the difference here, when Walker stays anchored to the corner as opposed to bringing screen help and immediately involving Lillard in the action. Plus, with Turner following behind as the trailer, Lopez has the opportunity to load to the ball as the second big back, which requires more maneuverability from the ball-handler in order to kick-start the offense.

On the whole, Indiana's average possession length with Siakam as the bring-up ball-handler on possessions featuring at least one back-court defender is 19.236 seconds, which is slower than what has been the case with either of McConnell (18.207) or Nembhard (16.822) at the controls under the same conditions. As such, if the goal is to find a way to play faster while also lessening the pressure on Haliburton, Siakam may not be a one-size fits all solution; however, as that possession goes to show with Lillard's quick show effectively functioning like a wave goodbye, he could potentially be the right tool for a specific task more often, as he continues to be the team's most reliable performer when actually relied upon.

Run more sets with Haliburton starting away from the ball to come to the ball

By now, all of this should explain why so much of the late-game offense was being initiated by Nembhard toward the end of the first loss to Orlando. If the the purpose of the back-court pressure is to slow down Haliburton, then there won't be any (or at least not as much) back-court pressure if Haliburton isn't in the back-court. Even then, the coverage against Haliburton was exaggerated, as the Pacers had to go to one of their go-to plays with him running on the underside of a pair of Iverson-like staggered picks in order to get a clean catch at the wing against the top-locking coverage from Suggs.

From there, Suggs was also deliberate in overplaying his strong hand to force him toward the sideline, but Nembhard was available to manipulate the pick-and-roll on the opposite side of the floor. In the end, Nesmith missed the shot shaking up from the corner, but the process of how the shot was manufactured was at least more within the flow of the offense than expecting Mathurin and/or Siakam to create something out of nothing against Giannis in isolation with the shot-clock winding down.

The same can also be said here. Similar to the possession against Orlando, Haliburton can be seen running beneath a pair of Iverson-like staggered picks, only this time instead of flipping around to screen for Haliburton, Haliburton entered the ball to Turner to pivot into split action with Mathurin.

The benefit of that is two-fold. For one, without the screen, the defense can't force Haliburton to his left. Additionally, since Giannis is tethered to Siakam in the corner with Turner as the trigger man above the break, the only players available to protect the rim are non-bigs. Turner can't always be counted on to space the floor with steady playmaking, but that type of organized randomness, as a mixture of both the read-based outcome out of the split action and the initial script to get to the split action, may need to be further explored until Haliburton, and the team as a whole, can return to some semblance of normalcy in so much as whatever normalcy is when the team is back whole.

In the meantime, for as long as opponents continue dialing up the pressure, this version of the Pacers, down by multiple key rotation players, may need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable, whether with regard to increasing McConnell's minutes, initiating more frequently with Siakam, or playing more often out of sets with Haliburton away from the ball, in order to take the edge off in regaining some of their edge.