Breaking Down What's Behind Indiana Pacers Surge for Final Playoff Spot

For most of this season, the Indiana Pacers have been waiting to get healthy. With George Hill back in the lineup for their last 10 games, they've finally had their full complement of players together and things are starting to look up.

The Pacers are 6-4 over those last 10 games. During that stretch they've been scoring 108.6 points per 100 possessions, allowing 106.9 for a net rating of plus-1.7, according to the possessions numbers at Nylon Calculus. That's a far cry from their season-long numbers of 103.1, 104.8 and minus-1.7, respectively, also per Nylon Calculus. 

The defensive decline is troubling, but scoring at that rate is an incredible turnaround. Hill's return has had a lot to do with it.

Hill's minutes are still restricted, which depresses his per-game totals. Per 36 minutes, he's averaging 21.2 points, 5 rebounds, 5.7 assists and 4.9 free-throw attempts, while shooting 46.6 percent from the field and 40 percent on three-pointers. The point, rebound, assist and free-throw numbers and the three-point percentage are all career highs to date.

He's not just getting his own numbers either. Josh Planos, of The Washington Post's Fancy Stats blog looked at how the Pacers have performed with Hill on the floor, finding, "The team’s offensive rating is 12 points higher than its average with him on the court and its turnover percentage spikes nearly five percent without him."

Hill's return has injected a much-needed dose of offensive dynamism into a team that was struggling to generate anything positive at that end of the floor. His presence has also led to a lot more fluid collaboration on offense. 

Over this recent stretch, 61.8 percent of the team's field goals have been assisted, according to NBA.com. That's compared to 58.6 percent over the rest of the season. This stretch has also seen them taking 36.8 percent of their shots from the high-value areas around the rim and in the corners, compared to 34.1 percent on the rest of the season.

Those may seem like minor numeric changes, but for a team without an elite individual scorer small structural changes like those can add up to big leaps in offensive efficiency. To see just how starkly different things have been, we can look at the team's shot charts from Austin Clemens. 

Here is the team's shot chart for their first 44 games.

www.AustinClemens.com/shotcharts

Here is how things look over the last 10 games.

www.AustinClemens.com/shotcharts

Obviously the shot densities are different since the first chart covers 3,697 shots and the second covers 730. Still, you can see how improved the Pacers efficiency has been from several different areas. They're getting much better shots and, consequently, they're scoring has improved. Imagine that.

All of this offensive improvement can not be attributed to the individual play of Hill, as impressive as it's been. Still, the Pacers are a team who have relied heavily on continuity and the chemistry among their players. Having everyone healthy, especially Hill, allows this team to slide each player back into the roles they were supposed to fill when the season began.

There is plenty of work left to do—the Pacers are still two games behind the Miami Heat for the Eastern Conference's final playoff spot. Still, there seems to be a single-minded focus in the organization about reaching that goal.

Frank Vogel shook off a question about becoming the coach with the most technical fouls this season from The Indianapolis Star's Candace Buckner. He turned the attention back to the playoff push, saying, "We're in a fight. We're going to do everything we can just to be in that fight."

Making the playoffs will require sustaining this offensive hot streak, as well as buckling down on defense and getting those numbers under control.

The Pacers are confident about their defense and trust in their abilities at that end. If they can keep the ball moving on offense, they just might get there after all.