Andrew Nembhard emerges as back-up point guard

On the Pacers making the difficult decision to avoid delaying the inevitable

By: Caitlin Cooper I @C2_Cooper

Opening Night was full of surprises for the Pacers. Bruce Brown knocked down six of his eight three-point attempts, setting a new career high for a game. As a team, the Pacers scored more points in a season-opener than any squad since 1990, and en route to the 143-120 rout of the Washington Wizards, Tyrese Haliburton amassed 20 points and 11 assists. Alright... so maybe that last part wasn't that surprising. After all, Haliburton became the only player in NBA history last season to average over 20 points and 10 assists while hitting at least 40 percent of his threes. As ridiculous as it may seem, those numbers are somewhat expected of him now. And yet, something else occurred in conjunction with his stat-line that has rarely happened since he was traded to the Pacers: He wasn't the only guard who recorded a double-double.

In fact, of the 34 games last season in which Haliburton recorded 10 or more assists, there was only one in which someone else hit that benchmark while also scoring in double figures. Eleven months ago, on November 21 against the Orlando Magic, T.J. McConnell notched 19 points and 10 assists in the same game that Haliburton finished with 18 and 14. Andrew Nembhard, meanwhile, did not play.

Nearly a year later, Nembhard tallied 12 and 10, leading a bench charge in the second quarter that saw the Pacers go on a 19-10 run with him at the helm in place of T.J. McConnell, who found himself on the outside of the rotation looking in. In a night full of surprises, that might've been the biggest. For a team that spent the majority of training camp emphasizing how minutes would be earned rather than given, it seemed like pulling McConnell from the rotation, after he arguably did everything that was asked of him while racking up minutes in place of Haliburton and Nembhard, would be delicate to explain. According to Rick Carlisle, it was.

"I had one of the most difficult conversations I've ever had to have with a player yesterday," he said, adding that he was almost "in tears" while talking with McConnell about the situation with minutes and shortening the rotation, despite how great the veteran point guard has been as a competitor.

But, there's the thing. To a certain extent, the signs were there that playing him, even while arguably deserved, only would've been delaying the inevitable. When Nembhard returned to action against the Cavs, the offense for the backups was clunky, as the all-bench unit got outscored 13-2, resulting in a wholesale substitution. Some of that could be brushed off due to rust and the mixture of zone and all-out switching from Cleveland; but in order for those units to hum, it seemed evident that Nembhard would have to play off-ball, potentially accepting a smaller role as part of the team's future than what was the case for him as a rookie when he went from being a second-round pick to a key starter. Just look at this possession from the second half of the team's preseason finale. Even before Nembhard starts to dribble off the pick, McConnell's defender is already parked in the lane.

That's quite a bit different than the environment he was able to enjoy in the regular-season opener, as he made magic out of basic double drags and stack actions, moseying to his spots while finding nearly every spot on the floor. Of course, Washington's defense deserves some of the credit for this, as does the hot shooting from the Pacers (and especially Brown), but it's also difficult to imagine what role McConnell would've played in these types of actions, other than ball-handler.

It's a clever play design, meshing veer action with a fake flare screen. The set begins with Turner setting a ball screen and then darting elsewhere as a means to punish drop coverage. At the same time, however, Buddy Hield appears as though he is going to set a flare screen for Bennedict Mathurin. That deception leverages the veer action from Turner because it prevents the weak-side help from being able to pack the paint. Rather than curling the pindown with his defender trailing, Hield then sprints into a ball-screen of his own for Nembhard to rock the ship of the offense from one side of the court to the other. With the floor tilted, Mathurin finds the seam and unlocks his athleticism at the rim. McConnell isn't going to do that, nor would he crouch around the pindown or make for a believable red herring drifting to the corner.

Here's a similar scenario from last season. With McConnell starting out in the same corner as Hield, notice how there is no veer action or accompanying fake flare screen against Toronto's drop coverage. Instead, Turner record scratches out of the pick-and-pop against the closeout from Jakob Poeltl, without any type of flow into the next action.

That was one of Nembhard's best games as a rookie, and he played 10 minutes with McConnell, but   the Pacers lost those minutes. He also was a starter, playing predominantly out of ball screens in the absence of Haliburton. According to Second Spectrum, Nembhard logged 47.8 picks per 100 possessions during the regular-season opener, compared to 27.0 as a rookie and 30.9 during the preseason finale, when he eventually had an extra pep in his step steering the offense at the end of the game in what was effectively garbage time. Based on those numbers, there's reason to think that he wouldn't have gotten to do as much "point guard-ing" with McConnell still in the rotation.

As it was, he entered at the wing to provide defense alongside Haliburton before replacing Haliburton at his more natural position.

Granted, there will be stiffer tests than that which was presented by the Wizards. Not every team is going to be stymied by how to switch the guards out of a stack screen, and Nembhard wasn't flawless. He lost control of the ball trying to turn the corner out of McConnell's pet play (i.e. pistol), just like he lost contact with the screener a few times after switching and got beat on a nasty cross-over from Jordan Poole, but the overall vibes from Summer League, as far as his pacing in the pick-and-roll and frequency of standout defensive plays, mostly carried over. On his first possession of the game, he chased Poole through a pindown screen and poked the ball away, forcing the score-first guard to regroup with less than five seconds on the shot-clock. At the end of the third quarter, he closed out not once but twice to contest a shot from Corey Kispert. Plus, he still defends even when he isn't defending directly within the action. Here, because of the way he bluffs with his exaggerated series of head fakes, Poole rocks the ball to his opposite hip, creating a prime opportunity for Turner to be like a thief in the night.

Nothing is set in stone, but assuming this marks the beginning of the end for McConnell as part of the regular rotation, this sequence will go down as a fitting tribute. The final product may not be a steal, as is McConnell's signature highlight, but Nembhard's denial defense forced a turnover on the inbound pass, just before he drained a pull-up two at the other end of the floor. Very McConnell.

Emerging out of McConnell's shadow, it was an encapsulation of what he can do in his best light, whether taking a step forward to eventually return as a starter to be staggered with Haliburton or as the means to acquiring another starter to eventually pair alongside Haliburton.

It's only one game, and McConnell played well enough during preseason to be part of a rotation somewhere, it just seemed evident since Summer League that even if the presence of a kidney stone opened the door for that somewhere to be here in the immediate, the growth and development of Nembhard would eventually dictate otherwise in the long run.

Turns out, in keeping with the other surprises from Opening Night, the present is already prepared to get a jump on the future.