Indiana Pacers Player Reviews: Power Forwards

Breaking downs the seasons of Pascal Siakam and Obi Toppin

By: Caitlin Cooper I @C2_Cooper

With the NBA Finals coming to an end on Monday night, teams can officially start negotiating with their own free agents, which means it's incredibly timely for Tony East and I to be turning our attention to the two most prominent fours on the roster -- as Pascal Siakam, who is an unrestricted free agent, and Obi Toppin, who is a restricted free agent, both finished the season on the final year of their current contracts. Of course, other than occupying the same position and rarely matching up against top-tier wing threats, Siakam and Toppin are very nearly foils of each other, with the latter building out the team's strengths and the former more so filling the void of some of what the team was missing. Meanwhile, in addition to sharing minutes at power forward, the two of them also ended up sharing the floor at times, whether downsizing with Toppin at nominal five against the spread lineups of Milwaukee and Boston or playing big against New York's physicality with Toppin at small forward in groupings with Siakam and Isaiah Jackson. In that regard, while the episode covering the center position has already come and gone, there's certainly a case to be made that the utility of both Siakam and Toppin extended beyond the power forward position, although they were both somewhat limited in their overall utility on defense -- albeit for different reasons.

As such, in order to discuss it all, Tony East and I are back over at Locked on Pacers with another set of player reviews, selecting one play, one number, and one over/under that best summarizes each of their seasons while also looking ahead to what comes next.

To make it easier to follow along, the clips, numbers, and lines are included below, albeit with some spoilers for those who may prefer having something to read while they watch. Enjoy!

Pascal Siakam

One Play: 2-man game progressions

During the regular season, Tyrese Haliburton set a total of 33 picks for Pascal Siakam as the ball-handler, which equated to 1.772 picks per 100 possessions. Needless to say, despite generating 1.125 points per chance, those inverted looks weren't exactly a staple of the offense, and to some degree, it's easy to understand why. In many cases, when Haliburton and Siakam are both being defended by hard-nosed, wing defenders, there isn't always an advantage to be gained by having them screen for each other, especially when Haliburton-Turner was the most efficient pick-and-roll combination in the league. That changed in the playoffs, not only for the purpose of attacking cross-matches when Siakam was more often defended by fives, but also in the sense of real-time problem-solving between the team's two best players. Granted, Haliburton still only set 2.842 picks per 100 possessions for Siakam as the ball-handler, but there was some real progress in how they started to attack certain types of exaggerated coverages with their two-man chemistry.

Just look at that initial clip from the team's first-round series against Milwaukee. With Patrick Beverley forcing Haliburton to his left and away from the screen, notice how Siakam pops out to the three-point line and immediately looks to filter the ball to the weak-side, which ultimately results in a late-clock, step-back two from Myles Turner. To be fair, the Pacers pride themselves in having an egalitarian offense, and there can certainly be merit to getting to the next action and punishing defenses with movement, but there can also be a fine line between spreading the wealth and divesting the ball too often from the strong-side.

That's why, the second clip, with the action taking on different shapes and forms between Haliburton and Siakam in Game 6 against the Knicks, stands out as one of the most notable plays from the playoffs. Here, rather than popping out to the three-point line, Siakam relocates to the elbow, where, in theory, Haliburton could immediately flow into a "get" hand-off and regain access to the middle of the floor.

Of course, Deuce McBride was top-locking Haliburton and defending him on the high-side, so that meant the roles needed to be reversed, with Haliburton instead looking to sandwich McBride at the elbow into a short-angled pick-and-roll for Siakam.

 Then, as Haliburton approached with McBride angling to apply counterpressure, Siakam rejected the pick, attacking with his right and spinning back to this left with floater-like touch.

No one else on the roster could've complemented Haliburton in that way, let alone maintained a live-dribble in the middle of the floor as a big.

It isn't always clear what Siakam's defensive role should be. He runs into contact on screens, which doesn't exactly mesh with Turner, who mainly needs to play in drop or at the level. Meanwhile, despite being a wing-sized wing, he also didn't reveal himself to be a wing-stopper. Remember, when the team was in New Orleans, he started the game defending Jonas Valanciunas -- not Brandon Ingram (Aaron Nesmith) or Zion Williamson (Myles Turner). Likewise, in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Finals, he was checking Jrue Holiday -- not Jayson Tatum (Nesmith) or Jaylen Brown (Andrew Nembhard). He can also be touch-and-go as a roamer, but his biggest impact on that end of the floor was when he was flooding strong-side and lurking in the shadows, which allowed Nesmith to press up closer to Jalen Brunson with a safety net behind him. Whether that would've worked if O.G. Anunoby and/or Julius Randle was available is of course debatable, but there's no denying that Siakam gave the Pacers a dimension that wasn't there during the regular season -- and especially the Finals of the In-Season Tournament -- when opposing teams trapped and face-guarded Haliburton.

As expected, after being traded mid-season to a team that arguably identifies itself most with pace and lyrical flow, Siakam fit in by distinguishing himself, providing a necessary change of rhythm with his staccato style of play which, assuming he re-signs, should only grow to be integrated more as his teammates, like Haliburton, learn to accentuate and, hopefully, more often feed his unique quirks.

One Number: +9.77 - net rating for the Pacers in 383 minutes with Haliburton and Siakam on the floor together in the playoffs

One Over/Under: 30.3 - free throw attempt rate for next season

Obi Toppin

One Play: Shot fakes

(As a quick note, Toppin was Tony's assignment, but I'm still going to offer some of my own commentary on the clips that were selected in this space. Ok, here's my blurb)

During Obi Toppin's final season with the Knicks, he shot more threes than ever, had fewer paint touches than ever, and screened less than ever. With the Pacers, he didn't screen all that much more frequently, and his paint touches didn't exactly surge, but he shot 70 percent from two and knocked down a career-best 40 percent of his threes, as he became the first player in Pacers' history to complete 100 dunks and make 100 threes. Tellingly, even as his overall three-point attempt rate dipped in favor of more no-dribble layups, he saw a modest increase in his rate of full closeouts -- increasing from 49.3 percent with the Knicks to 52.4 in Indiana. That's interesting because, given that he hoisted 90.5 percent of his three-point attempts during the regular season without taking a dribble, it seems as though there would've been even more incentive to run him off the line. And yet, only 11 of his attempts were tightly contested. In the playoffs, however, he attempted eight one-dribble threes compared to 19 total during the regular season. So, as can be seen in the clip against his former team, there was eventually more of a reaction to his shot-fake, although he spent most of the season as a high-level (and high-rising) play-finisher off the bench.

To that point, only 11 percent of his made field goals during the playoffs were unassisted -- which was the lowest mark among the team's regular rotation players. In that regard, just as he was often the bellwether for hot girl basketball, as my co-host Samson Folk so often described him, two games from the playoffs also standout as reflections of his standing with the team. By the closeout game of the first round, the work Pascal Siakam put in against Brook Lopez in Games 1 and 2 reversed the cross-match at the five position and opened the door for Tyrese Haliburton and Myles Turner to grow the agrarian economy of buckets against both blitzing and drop coverage to the point that Milwaukee eventually pivoted to switching. Once that happened, the stage was set for the role players to deliver for the Pacers, with the ball hopping both in the open floor as well as between actions. In that setting, Toppin exceeded all expectations, stepping into threes in transition, leaking out for runouts, finding nylon on a push-shot in the lane as the roll-man, and even dribbling uphill to make a one-handed pass with his left. Whew!

The same wasn't exactly the case in Game 4 against Boston -- when the Pacers also needed to switch. With 3:54 to play in the fourth quarter, Indiana attempted to go small with Obi Toppin at the five next to Pascal Siakam. For the next two-and-a-half minutes, the Pacers were held scoreless, and the Celtics converted two shots -- both with Toppin attempting to defend in space. In that regard, while it is certainly notable that Siakam wasn't assigned to Tatum or Brown for that game, he generally isn't quite as limited with his containment switching out to the ball. In fact, according to Second Spectrum, the Pacers gave up just 0.813 points per chance with Siakam switching out to the ball as the screener defender in the postseason, compared to 1.136 with Toppin. To be fair, the Pacers outscored opponents by 9.1 points per 100 possessions in 95 minutes with Toppin at nominal five in lineups with Siakam during the regular season, and that number likewise stayed above sea level in the playoffs (+4.05) over nearly the same sample size of playing time (94), but it was largely propped up by just that... outscoring opponents.

All of which is to say that, Toppin meshes with the identify of the Pacers and also took on more spot identities than expected for the Pacers; however, for a player who largely needs to be fed, he doesn't exactly feed the defensive needs of the team against certain match-ups while also potentially taking minutes from the player who eventually might. Granted, it's possible that one or the other of them will prove that playing at a different position can be more than just a situational lineup wrinkle, but after advancing to the Eastern Conference Finals, the Pacers also have to consider whether waiting on the potential of "eventually" outweighs that which is already currently known about Toppin -- both now and for the future.

One Number: 0.01 - overall net rating for the Pacers with Obi Toppin at the five

One Over/Under: 0.5 - contracts signed with the Pacers this summer