Breaking Down How the Indiana Pacers Are Keeping Their Defensive Swagger
The Indiana Pacers are not the bruising championship contender they were last season. Still, a 6-9 start has them in ninth place in the Eastern Conference, a huge surprise when many projected them to bottom out completely.
Fighting through a myriad of injuries, the Pacers have maintained one of the best defenses in the league. Their respectable start has come, primarily, from clamping down on opponents' scoring. Currently, they rank 10th in the league in defensive efficiency, allowing just 105.6 points per 100 possessions.
Although just one of their starters from last season, Roy Hibbert, has played so far this season, he happens to be the most important part of their defense.
The entire structure of the Pacers' system is built around Hibbert's ability to protect the basket. On pick-and-rolls and most dribble-drive actions, he sags back into the paint. This strategy walls off the basket and cedes the space for penetrators to pull up for an inefficient long two-pointer.
This defensive plan is illustrated by the team's defensive shot chart from this season:
As in year's past, they have been incredibly difficult to score on around the rim. By Seth Partnow's rim protection statistics, Hibbert has been the second-best interior defender in the league this season, saving an average of 3.23 points per-36 minutes over an average big man (this metric compares both how often and successful a player is in contesting shots at the rim).
Opponents are currently shooting 38.5 percent on shots at the rim when defended by Hibbert, the lowest mark in the league by players contesting at least five shots per-36 minutes. He has also been much more aggressive in his contesting, currently leading the entire NBA in block percentage.
Before their Nov. 24 game against the Dallas Mavericks, Bobby Karalla of Mavs.com broke down Hibbert's defensive impact:
"The Pacers’ defensive strategy is pretty simple: They just work hard. Everything is built around a healthy Roy Hibbert, who has for years been one of the best rim protectors in the NBA. The center blocks 2.8 shots per game this season and holds opponents to a 38.5 field goal percentage at the rim, by far the best in the league.
Part of Hibbert’s impact can’t directly be measured by statistics, though. His presence alone is enough to dictate the opponent’s offensive scheme, as players generally avoid attacking him.
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It's pretty telling that Hibbert occupied nearly half of Karalla's game preview. Especially since Hibbert wasn't even playing in that game, nursing a sprained ankle. He's that important to what the Pacers do.
Playing without Lance Stephenson, as well as the injured Paul George, David West and George Hill, is what has taken the Pacers defense from elite to just very good.
Having Hibbert as a backstop makes everything easier for the new defensive perimeter and renders their individual defensive abilities irrelevant to some degree. Although Solomon Hill has potential, most of the other players who have been playing big minutes for the injury-riddled Pacers are not exactly defensive stoppers.
After a Nov. 12 victory over the Miami Heat, point guard Donald Sloan talked to the Indianapolis Star's Autumn Allison about how Hibbert holds everything together:
"He's so great at the rim and protecting it, we can, not necessarily not play great defense because he is back there, but we know that if we are playing that hard and have a minor slip-up, he's back there to help and protect.
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The job of backcourt players in the Pacers' system is to funnel penetration toward Hibbert and recover quickly to contest on perimeter shooters if the ball is kicked out. You can see from the defensive shot chart that teams have been shooting a high percentage on mid-range jumpers and from a few spots behind the three-point line.
It's in this area that we can see the downgrade from Hill, George and Stephenson to Chris Copeland, Rodney Stuckey and Sloan. Last year's wings were extremely skilled at covering space to both pinch on penetration, helping Hibbert, and recovering to the perimeter to smother kick-outs.
The group that has been playing this year is not quite as good at that responsibility, but it doesn't matter a huge deal. Any shot outside the paint and inside the three-point line is a victory for the Pacers defense. Those shots have a lower expected value than shots at the rim or behind the three-point line, even if they are made at an above league-average rate.
If you look at the Pacers' defensive shot chart from last season, you can see that things don't look drastically different from what we've seen this year:
The Pacers aren't anywhere close to the historic defensive pace they were setting last season. But with Roy Hibbert in the middle they are still one of the league's best, regardless of who is playing around him. As Hill and West get healthy, the defense should even improve over the course of the season.
It's enough to keep them in the Eastern Conference playoff hunt, and with a little bit of offense, they could really make some noise.
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