Diagnosing the sloppy play of the Pacers

On the cause of the cause of turnovers and why what is often deemed as carelessness can be a careless catch-all

By Caitlin Cooper I @C2_Cooper 

In blowing a 21-point lead to the Charlotte Hornets on Monday night, the Pacers coughed up 21 turnovers for 35 points -- the most surrendered by any Charlotte opponent this season. Needless to say, with the Pacers falling 2.5 games back of the Bulls for the 10th spot in the Eastern Conference, the sloppiness of what became a squandered opportunity seemed, at times, very on the nose for a game between two teams focused more on development than optimizing winning in the playoffs.

But, what exactly is sloppiness and what causes it?

After the game, Rick Carlisle shared his thoughts on the turnovers being committed in bulk, saying, "...the ball security was very poor, and we have to work on it headed into Toronto, which is a team that turns you over."

Normally, turnovers  are thought to arise for one of a few general reasons. In some cases, they can accurately be attributed to swarming defense as being forced. An example of this would be what De'Anthony Melton did to the Pacers over the weekend, recording six steals through three quarters, while appearing to grow an extra set of arms that functioned like ball-seeking tentacles against T.J. McConnell.

From the offensive perspective, not all turnovers are created equal, as leeway can occasionally be warranted for being adventurous and at least trying something as opposed to being too safe or not even having the vision to see the opportunity. Consider Darren Collison. Yes, Collison led the league in assist-to-turnover ratio during the 2018-19 season as the starting point guard for the Pacers, but he was rarely shifting the defense, with most of his assists occurring around the top of the key, ably slipping paint-by-number pocket passes to teammates out of the pick-and-roll (for midrange twos!), as opposed to getting downhill and generating advantages with any modicum of risk. Otherwise, when what required multiple passes from that squad as opposed to one, perhaps chancier though far higher-leverage, offering from, say, Tyrese Haliburton, isn't the culprit, the tendency is to blame something nebulous, like carelessness or lack of focus.

Don't get it twisted. That can definitely be a thing. After all, who among us can fault Rick Carlisle for having this reaction a few weeks ago in response to the ball getting flung out of bounds on a simple reversal without being pressured?

Still, while there were certainly some of those types of flourishes on Monday night, what the game against Charlotte revealed is that diagnosing sloppiness and, more importantly, finding a fix for sloppiness, can also be a matter of perception. As in, rather than evaluating the cause (i.e. take better care of the ball!), it might also be necessary to consider the antecedent of the cause.

For example, here's Aaron Nesmith getting the ball stolen in a crowd after attempting to navigate through tight space with his left hand.

Not great. But, here's the thing: why is he the player in the position to navigate through tight space with his left hand? Granted, he's improved in this area over the course of the season, particularly when attacking closeouts against bigger wings after making the shift to the four position, but he generally isn't explosive enough to beat players his own size from a standstill. With that in mind, consider what happened just prior to when he put the ball on the deck.

For frame of reference, with a corner-to-wing exchange lifting a player to the middle of the floor followed by a swing pass into a slipped flare screen for the ball to be reversed into a step-up screen, this is a play the Pacers ran often last season as a means of playing 5-out with two bigs on the floor.

Except, spot the difference. Here, the timing is somewhat off because Chris Duarte rolled his ankle mid-possession; however, because he didn't quite have the juice to slip the flare, Caris LeVert cuts the action short and attacks the switch in space.

LeVert had his warts with the Pacers, as far as needing star-level usage without exactly being a star-level player, but his ability to toy with his defender and go find a shot when things don't go as planned (and yes, *sigh* sometimes even when they did go as planned) isn't something that Nesmith currently has in his arsenal.

Furthermore, with the Hornets trapping ball screens throughout most of the game, look at how his defender is straying to cover Isaiah Jackson as the release valve.

In that regard, imagine if Buddy Hield and Nesmith had simply traded roles, with the latter slipping the flare screen and the former lifting to the middle of the floor. To be fair, Buddy's handle can also be perilous when overtasked, but the stress he puts on off-ball defenders with his deeper range may have enabled the ball to go to Jackson as intended. Or, allowed Buddy to pull the trigger from deep.

Either way, the resulting turnover was arguably less about poor performance than the reality that Nesmith was perhaps stretched beyond his capabilities to stretch the floor and/or make the most of his own gravity in getting to the basket with two bigs on the floor.

Along those same lines, look at Bennedict Mathurin throwing this errant pass to the corner off the bottom of the backboard.

For the most part, Mathurin isn't a very accurate passer, especially when attacking baseline, and he can be confounding with the types of passes he chooses to throw (like, ahem, attempting to enter the ball to Myles in front of the rim with a baseball pass???). Even so, as was the case with Nesmith, look at what happened before that happened. T.J. McConnell is generally adept at keeping the offense moving, but size is size.

To his credit, he does well to jump while looking in the direction of Turner to manipulate the help before ultimately making the advance pass to Mathurin (in case you haven't heard, jump passes are good now). Even so, because Rozier is sinking into Turner from the weak-side, Nick Richards doesn't have to recover to him as the screener and can instead rotate to Mathurin at the rim, which exacerbates the rookie's already existing issues with making longer passes through the trees with one hand from a live dribble.

All of which brings to question whether the entirety of that outcome might've been avoidable with a tiny tweak. As in, when Turner was rolling out of the ball screen, why not counter for the aggressive ball-screen coverage by setting a pindown in the  middle of the floor. Then, with Richards recovering to the paint and looking for Turner as the screener instead of making the emergency rotation to Mathurin at the rim, Buddy could've fired away from deep, with McConnell pivoting to escape from the trap. Generally speaking, it's a tidier solve, which perhaps would've been worth a try in the sense of maintaining the ability of everyone to do what they do best.

To a lesser extent, the same also applies here, with Turner losing control of the ball out of the post. Myles has played bigger than ever this season on a number of fronts, not the least of which being the way he goes about taking his time while also being quick when facing-up against bigs, but there's reason to test the limits of his playmaking with dig downs and doubles.

And yet, he might not have ever been in position to lose control of the ball while apparently being unaware of the screening going on around him, if he had tried rolling into the pindown for Hield out of the initial action. Or, just popped.

Overall, while this is clearly only a tiny taste of the 21 turnovers that were served up to Charlotte like steak on the lid of a garbage can on Monday night, there's still a case to be made that carelessness, while perhaps accurate in result, isn't always a catch-all for what occurs in pre-production. In that regard, whether pertaining to the ball security of Nesmith and Turner or the passing accuracy of Mathurin, turnover perception, as it applies to evaluating the potential cause of the cause, can be essential to turnover prevention -- especially if progress is to be made for as long as Tyrese Haliburton remains out and with the Toronto Raptors, who lead the league in opponent turnover rate, next on the docket.