Indiana Pacers Pushing to Make Surprising Appearance in 2015 NBA Playoff Race
The Indiana Pacers are within striking distance of a playoff spot, which is a huge surprise given the litany of injuries they've faced so far this season.
Whether or not pushing for that playoff spot is in their best long-term interests is beyond the point.
Bob Kravitz of USA Today reported on an August press conference right after Paul George's season-ending injury, where Larry Bird explicitly stated that making the playoffs was still the plan, saying, "Have our expectations lowered any? I don't think so. I think we'll compete hard and do our best to make the playoffs; that's always one of our goals. I can sit up here and sugarcoat it all you want me to, but you just can't replace Paul George."
The Pacers are going to make a push, and they're close enough to get there.
It seems crazy making that statement about a team 13 games under 0.500 with the second-worst offense in the league, according to NylonCalculus.com (using NBA.com stats). But Indiana plays in the magically terrible Eastern Conference, a land where literally anything can happen.
Just past the halfway point in the season, Indy's just 3.5 games behind the Brooklyn Nets for the eighth and final playoff spot in the east.
There are a few different factors working in the Pacers' favor as they push for the postseason. The first is that they have been playing much better than they were earlier in the season. This graph shows a rolling five-game average of the Pacers' net rating this season.
The huge slide at the end is the result of two enormous blowouts—a 15-point loss to the Golden State Warriors on January 7 and a 19-point loss to the Atlanta Hawks on January 21. Those two losses bookend a two-week stretch where the Pacers lost seven of eight games.
That slide is troubling and currently the team's momentum is pushing them away from the playoffs. But immediately before that two-week stretch, the Indiana had gone 7-5 since the middle of December.
Obviously, making the playoffs will require another turnaround, but it is promising that the Pacers were already able to work themselves out of an enormously sluggish start to the season.
Another positive factor for an Indy playoff push is that they've already cleared the most difficult stretch in their schedule. This next graph shows a rolling five game-average of their opponents' net rating, and includes both games they've already played, as well as games yet to be played.
The Pacers have played 44 games to this point. From now to the end of the season, most of their schedule sits below the horizontal axis, meaning they'll be playing groups of teams that, on average, have a negative point differential.
Of their 38 remaining games, 22 will be played at home. They also have eight more games against the four Eastern Conference teams immediately ahead of them in the standings—the Miami Heat, Detroit Pistons, Brooklyn Nets and Charlotte Hornets.
Current struggles notwithstanding, Indiana has figured some things out since the beginning of the season and their schedule is beginning to bend in a more and more favorable direction. The Pacers will have plenty of opportunities to fight their way in, and a healthy contingent of players could really make the difference.
The returning starters—Roy Hibbert, David West and George Hill—have played just 63 minutes together this season, according to NBA.com. The projected starting lineup coming into the season—those three plus Rodney Stuckey and C.J. Miles—have not played a single minute together yet. The number of games missed by those five players, plus backup point guard C.J. Watson is staggering:
| Player | Games Missed |
|---|---|
| George Hill | 39 |
| C.J. Watson | 18 |
| David West | 15 |
| C.J. Miles | 9 |
| Rodney Stuckey | 8 |
| Roy Hibbert | 4 |
If you look at that same chart but add a column for their box plus-minus from last season (a box score-based estimate of total impact in points per 100 possessions), you can see just how much the Pacers have been missing this year, per Basketball-Reference.com.
| Player | Games Missed | Box Plus-Minus |
|---|---|---|
| George Hill | 39 | +2.2 |
| C.J. Watson | 18 | +0.5 |
| David West | 15 | +1.8 |
| C.J. Miles | 9 | +0.5 |
| Rodney Stuckey | 8 | -4.0 |
| Roy Hibbert | 4 | -0.1 |
Stuckey was mostly a disaster last year, and we all know about Hibbert's dramatic decline. But the Pacers have missed a combined 81 games from Hill, Watson, West and Miles; all reliably positive contributors from last season that they were counting on in big ways.
According to The Indianapolis Star's Candace Buckner (h/t Indy Cornrows' Tom Lewis), Hill is reportedly close to a return, and the rest of the rotation has been inching toward health as well. If they can ever catch a break and get everyone on the floor at the same time, we might finally see the full capabilities of this team.
The Pacers have not been good this season, but they also haven't been bad enough to eliminate themselves from the playoff picture. In short, they have survived.
Indiana will have to do much more and play much better to actually make the playoffs.
But some of the external factors that have been slowing them down could finally be breaking in their favor.
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