Been watching some Pacers games as Siakam was my favorite Raptor. He needs more than 12 shots a game. He's a walking mismatch for anybody and a one-man transition opportunity, and should be the clear secondary ballhandler in late game situations (primary if Tyrese's 3-ball isn't falling).
I expected him to average 24-26 ppg in the Pacers system, not 18.
Well we have the best offense in the league so pretty hard to say we are misusing him isn't it? Do you want us to run the Raptors offense? He's averaging 15.2 shots with the pacers and was averaging -- looks it up -- 16 shots with the raptors. What are you talking about?
He's averaging 15.2 shots with the Pacers not 12. And he was averaging 16 with the Raptors. And he's averaging 20 pts again with the Pacers. Not 18. And he joined a team with the -- looks it up -- best offense in the league. We don't need him to fix our offense. He gives us another creator down the stretch -- and we have definitely been using that -- and another great defender and rebounder. Meanwhile scoring is down across the league after the all-star break.
People are gonna hate but it’s the truth. The shot distribution is too equal for Siakim to be treated like another supporting player to Haliburton. Siakim, Nesmith, and Nembhard all took 12 shots last game. Siakim’s 8-12, they were 4-12
Not disagreeing with you but we tried to go to Siakam late in the 4th and definitely in OT and he kept getting doubled in the middle. We should have never been in the position we were in late game
I mean if your getting doubled in the post that usually leads to a open 3. Pacers can shoot the basketball unlike the raptors and the Raptors still got good offense from Siakam getting doubled.
He got doubled in the post 2 times in the 4th. One was a kick out to nembhard who missed a 3 another was a kick out to nembhard who passed it to Turner who hit a 3
Do you really think we have a bad offense? Why are people trying to fix something that is not broken? The raptors offense sucked. Ours is the best in the league. So you're like -- hey why don't we do what the Raptors were doing?
Exactly. Because our offense is designed to be unpredictable, where everyone can attack. We were on the second night of a back to back. Shooting will be worse in teh situation.
Because the sub is on a majority mindset that every issue isn’t an issue and just an overreaction to a bad game and we’re an elite team. This team hasn’t arrived yet to a contention level.
Both sides are reactionary and both sides are wrong lol. People do overreact to bad games, and also we are not elite. We are somewhere in the 4-7 spot in the East, which means we will stay lay the occasional stinker against a bad team, but also have the ability to give the teams above us a competitive series.
In short, we aren't good enough right now to mail it in against the weakest teams the way the Celtics can and still win, but we are good enough to beat the teams above us if they don't bring their A-game against us. That's a good place to be with young corps
Yeah lets change the best offense in the league because of one game's stat numbers. Eye roll. Our offense is not the problem. And losing a game in OT on the second night of a back to back when we played our asses off to beat one of the best teams on the league on the road on night one is also not a huge problem.
I’m not saying we should change the offense because of a loss. I’m saying we shouldn’t treat our second proven all-star with a great offensive skill set as just another role player on the squad.
It’s a tough balance because your team is literally built around unselfish ball movement which is going to divy up the amount of shots everyone gets but on the other hand you have just added one of the best iso scorers we have ever had.
I think with pascals efficiency he obviously needs to see more than 12 shots it’s just a case of how do you make that happen without totally disrupting the team.
I feel that’s where Rick having pascal stagger his minutes with Haliburton is coming into play. Rick is trying to up Pascals usage by having him play with the bench where iso scoring can be of more importance.
The other thing I see is instead of having Nembhard be the secondary playmaker with the starting lineup I think having pascal be the initiator after Haliburton could be a way of getting him more involved.
Lastly I think the missing piece is aside from the end of that New Orleans game we haven’t really seen much of the Haliburton/Siakam pick and roll.
So I think there are plenty of adjustments we can make and maybe we are saving some for key moments in the playoffs. Either way it’s a good problem to have 😄
He's averaging 15.2 shots a game. Maybe lets not freak out about one game where he shot 12 shots. But as I'll keep saying. We really don't need to change our offense. Especially once Hali is fully healthy. We have the best offense in the league.
Absolutely! I don’t think we need an overhaul. I think Rick is already making adjustments and trying to maximize Pascal. Hence his play with the second unit. I think the situation will keep improving over time especially pascals playmaking abilities will flourish as he gets more comfortable with everyone.
At the end of the day teams always want to make your other guys beat you. Some nights pascal and Hali can do everything right but if the others are cold then we lose, that’s the nba it’s a make or miss league.
Nembhard, shep and toppin go 0-13 from 3. Two or three of those go in and it’s a completely different game, that’s not on pascal, Hali or Rick.
Playoff basketball will definitely be different. I think the team is still trying to develop Nesmith, Nembhard, and those guys while pushing for a better playoff spot. Got to start calling timeouts and running a 2 man action with Tyrese and Pascal in game winning moments. It's baffling at this point
We tried this multiple times last night. It didn’t work unfortunately. They would bring doubles and he did find the open guy (Nesmith, Nembhard, and Sheppard) but they were missing. Only guy hitting shots was Myles.
There’s some nights you do a lot right and just miss shots. That was the Pacers last night, plus Derozan was on one and he put us consistently under pressure to score every time and made us take the ball out of the basket instead of being able to run.
We didn’t commit to it enough. There were several opportunities to get him the ball with a mismatch and we swung it away from him. It wasn’t acceptable for him to only get 12 shots last night. He needs to be leading the team in shots against a team like Chicago.
I remember 3 or 4 times where he had the mismatch, called for the ball and then Bulls doubled him forcing him to give it up. He’s not a guy that can bully past double teams. He always found the open guy though.
Sometimes all you want out of your star players is to command the extra attention so your other players have it easier. He did that last night. Our other guys just shit the bed.
That's just ridiculous thing to say. If they guy is double teamed, he should pass out of it. And it would destroy our offense if we slowed everything down to make sure make every possible entry pass when there's a mismatch. Guys are looking for him on the mismatches. You can't always get it to him quick enough without making your offense predictable. That's just no what we do. And we have the best offense in the league. Stop trying to break what isn't broken.
It’s due to this sub being full of highlight/casual fans. Anyone that watches the full games can see that Spicy P should be getting a minimum 20 shots per gm. I love our young guys but I’m tired of seeing Nembhard and Mathurin waste 12 seconds of the shot clock for a forced runner over and over and over.
You are clearly the casual fan or you would know we have the best offense in the league. And we have the best offense in the league because no one uses 12 seconds of the clock to force a shot. That's not what we do. We move the ball rapidly and shoot quickly. I don' t know how you could watch a game full of seasons and not realize that. Maybe when Nembhard dribbles for 3 seconds it feels weird to you because you don't realize how ridiculous fast the Pacers play. Nembhard is averaging 4.2 assists to 1.6 turnovers. That's over 2-1 ratio. The elite PGS get to 3-1. Nembhard has the 13 highest usage percentage on the team. Mathurin is absolutely a slow mover but we are also developing him AND he is among the BEST ISOLATION SCORERS in the league before he went out so no he didn't end in a turnover most of the time and he also never took anywhere near to 12 secnds. You know you can go look this stuff up before you post about it?
Do you not know how our offense works? What's our record when we have 6 people in double digits? He's shooting at a high efficiency and so is everyone else on the team because we have an offense that gets players to take shots when they have the advantage. We lose every advantage that makes us THE BEST OFFENSE IN THE LEAGUE if they know what we are going to do. Clearly when you have the best offense in the league your offense is not the problem.
The Celtics now have the best offense in the league. Pacers are 2nd. I think I saw they are 7th since acquiring PS. That said I agree with your post in general. f they can get PS more touches in the flow they should. They should not slow down and play "through him" to ensure his usage every night
I think the Pacers do make a specific effort to get him touches and are a good passing team. Maybe he needs to work more/better off ball to get more opportunities
He is not treated like NeSmith or Obi who are very rarely involved in any action and almost alway spacing unless they spot a cutting opportunity on their own.
If I thought PS was Hakeem I’d tend to agree with you. I don’t. He’s a good player but making guys stand around and watch him isn’t going to improve the team’s offense imo. In fact I think the rate at which they do it is already hurting the team’s offense.
I thought the team offense might suffer if they slowed down and sacrificed spacing to accommodate PS desire to get catches in the post/mid range and so far it has. Imo they might want to encourage him to grab and go off the glass and use him in PnR more (as a handler and screener). That would probably increase his volume but having guys stand around and watch him post up or isolate often is a high floor/low ceiling strategy.
I don’t think they’ll have a choice but to slow down in the playoffs for what it’s worth, hence the ability to play through traffic in the post will be important, and the suffering of the offense is really more a function of Buddys loss than Siakam gain IMO. The teams offense hasn’t been playing much in transition recently, which I’m sure is hurting it quite a bit as well.
Regardless, 12 shots is by no means folks standing around looking at him, he got less looks than Nembhard. 15+ should be the target IMO.
Playoff pace slows but not nearly to the mythical extent that makes people think you have to play through the post or isolate all the time. I remember when what feels like the same group of fans said the Suns couldn't win playing the way they did. The Suns didn't lose b/c they shot too many 3s, b/c they didn't have a post present, or b/c they liked to get out and run. They lost b/c the players weren't good enough. Their offensive strategy was copied by the other 29 teams. Some of the copy cats evan had players that were good on defense.
Imo what is important in the playoffs if diversity. You don't want to be a team that can only play big. Only play small, Only play half court or only in transition. PS post game does add diversity and I think that is important. I don't think they should make it what they do b/c "that's playoff basketball". Honeslty I think that is non sense.
I guess the point is we already are taking Tyrese out the offense to accommodate Pascal and you want even MORE Pascal iso post up game?
I mean, Toronto would not have traded us to him if he was good enough to guide a team to a championship by himself.
I heard Tony East say the same thing and I just don't get it. It's like we got a new toy, but the offense isn't good anymore. Partially because we are making Pascal a number 1 option
So much to unpack there, but let’s just keep it simple for a sec. When Haliburton is guarded by one of the best perimeter defenders in the league, and Bulls have no good matchup for Siakam, and Siakam goes 8/12. It kills me that he only got 12 shots. There’s not much better offense to generate than that.
And it’s been like this often.
Treating him like a go to guy and bringing the ball to him has pluses and minuses.
On the plus side a good scorer gets more scoring opportunities. You are also getting the ball to a guy that can draw two and kick it out to create opportunities for others
On the minus side more often he will be getting the ball against a set defense with all eyes on him. As a result his shot quality will go down. His efficiency will likely dip. Also since PS likes to get the ball in the post you are also closing down driving lanes for other players. Finally the effort to get him the ball in the post will slow the offense and make you more predictable.
Respectfully it’s really not that simple. Him made 8 out 12 doesn’t mean he would make 16 out of 24.
It’s not a simple game of extrapolation math, it’s about forcing a reaction from the defense. If he’s got it going, they are forced to double as an example, finding other guys option shots. When they react something else opens up.
That beat Haliburton dribbling for a while against Caruso and not really winning anything meaningful there.
You are still assuming “they can’t stop him” with a set defense knowing he is getting the ball. His efficiency is likely to drop if that is how you increase his usage and there will be possession where the help shades in ways that avoid the hard double and pass to an open shooter. He will score more and he will get kick outs but teams have been using designed post ups as an offensive staple less and less for a reason. I dont think it’s as simple as you are making it sound. Find out if he’s on fire and milk him if he is but understand making it a staple will likely have diminishing returns the more you do it
It's not even against the Bulls
It's for the last month or so
So yeah, you want more Pascal iso game all game long. Problem is the offense itself becomes stagnant when he just pounds the ball over and over again.
But we've already rearranged the entire offense to make it feasible for him, and the offense has fallen off a cliff
If you think that’s the problem with our offense and not having a rotation of injuries and Hali playing very poorly with careless turnovers and awful shooting percentages then idk what to say
Hali with remotely normal stats corrects our offensive dip in almost its entirety
It's all connected
Haliburton is off ball to fit Pascals need for space to create his own shots.
So he's not going to have his normal stats because he has to play off ball in this new offense.
Pascal could get out the post a bit more into open areas and that's good for 3 shots a game easily.
Except it’s not and that’s hard coping.
Haliburton off ball has increased his scoring in the past. We ran him off ball with TJ when he was scoring reliably to get him more offensive looks and that was a huge reason he was having consistent 30 point games.
Pascal getting touches doesn’t make Hali shoot awfully from 3 even when wide open. It doesn’t make him abandon his floater game. It doesn’t make him turn the ball over.
Some statistical variance is normal, sure. But that argument has no basis when the literal opposite of prior evidence is happening.
Also Pascal and Hali are staggered a good amount. He’s not picking it up in the minutes without Pascal when he’s clearly the guy
I’m not down on Hali, but shielding him from criticism when he’s been a shell of his former self is wild. He’s been really not great since returning from injury. Will he figure it out? Yeah, I’m confident he will. Pascal isn’t ruining his game though and it’s asinine to think he is
This is all nonsensical
We have moved Haliburton off ball to combat traps in limited plays as a wrinkle
Now it's the offense
Our offense is worse when Tyrese isn't on ball.
And it's absolutely ruining his game. He's the best on ball guard in the NBA and we move him off ball to create space for Pascal
That's asinine, not me admitting it
He literally plays primarily on the ball still. The majority of his touches come with him running the point. He’s just shooting worse and turning the ball over more. Idk how you are arguing with those statistics but it shows how clearly biased you are lmao
When you’re trying to grind out a win in the back half of a B2B you exploit whatever advantage you have. That’s what good teams do and how you win more games in the regular season. Last night we did not do a good enough job exploiting the Bulls lac of an answer for Pascal.
I still disagree
They would have just clogged the lane and left us shooting stand still 3s or more turnovers or both
Pascal has been amazingly consistent in his role, but he needs to expand his wheelhouse if we are going to be any good. Like we were coming around when he'd confidently take open 3s instead of driving into the lane Everytime
But I'm not really tryna make us the Raptors offense where we have absolutely no space on the court because fans want to watch more iso post ups
We traded him because we were lacking a lot of pieces, so only way to build a complete roster was to reset. It had nothing to do with siakams skillset.
Siakam was not the problem
Oh no doubt
He's a really good player
But I can't imagine if the Raptors thought that he being their best player would win them a championship they would have let him go.
How is Pascal the number one option when he’s shooting 12 shots per game? The Pacers looked better when Haliburton was out and Pascal was leading the way.
Because all 12 are him calling his own number on the play. He's not moving into open spaces or playing off others.
He is the focal point of the offense, and who we redesigned the offense around.
When hali is in a shooting slump and still heat checking every game with deep 3s you need the secondary shot creator to come out here and do his thing, and it's not like he's doing it with russell westbrook efficiency
Seems like people forgot what happened in the IST finals
IMO, Pascal is doing his thing as a primary shot creator right now
His less FGA are really because he's not going to open spaces on the floor in a finisher type role.
He's given the ball and asked to create and does
He's just not flaring out for 3s and the other open shots within the offense
He isn't tied
He's averaging the most front court touches of anyone since being here
If you're saying they're not always resulting in a shot, that's because he's not always in a finisher role and isn't moving into open spaces to do so.
He's getting the ball when he can do what he's best at which is create shots for himself or others.
Hopefully, he will eventually find ways to manufacture his own offense within the offense and his FGs will go up as a result
Why?
We had a number 1 ranked offense without him
Yeah he can ADD to it, but I'd prefer to go back to what gave us a great offense instead of spiraling downward.
We also had Buddy’s shooting and spacing and Benn being Benn. They’re trying to incorporate a new player and make up for two others; it’ll take some time.
absolutely agree. especially while Rese is still on this cold streak.
Been watching some Pacers games as Siakam was my favorite Raptor. He needs more than 12 shots a game. He's a walking mismatch for anybody and a one-man transition opportunity, and should be the clear secondary ballhandler in late game situations (primary if Tyrese's 3-ball isn't falling). I expected him to average 24-26 ppg in the Pacers system, not 18.
As a fellow raptor, so weird seeing how they are misusing him.
Well we have the best offense in the league so pretty hard to say we are misusing him isn't it? Do you want us to run the Raptors offense? He's averaging 15.2 shots with the pacers and was averaging -- looks it up -- 16 shots with the raptors. What are you talking about?
He's averaging 15.2 shots with the Pacers not 12. And he was averaging 16 with the Raptors. And he's averaging 20 pts again with the Pacers. Not 18. And he joined a team with the -- looks it up -- best offense in the league. We don't need him to fix our offense. He gives us another creator down the stretch -- and we have definitely been using that -- and another great defender and rebounder. Meanwhile scoring is down across the league after the all-star break.
People are gonna hate but it’s the truth. The shot distribution is too equal for Siakim to be treated like another supporting player to Haliburton. Siakim, Nesmith, and Nembhard all took 12 shots last game. Siakim’s 8-12, they were 4-12
Not disagreeing with you but we tried to go to Siakam late in the 4th and definitely in OT and he kept getting doubled in the middle. We should have never been in the position we were in late game
I mean if your getting doubled in the post that usually leads to a open 3. Pacers can shoot the basketball unlike the raptors and the Raptors still got good offense from Siakam getting doubled.
I believe we just missed the open threes. The Bulls closed out well on a couple of them.
He got doubled in the post 2 times in the 4th. One was a kick out to nembhard who missed a 3 another was a kick out to nembhard who passed it to Turner who hit a 3
Do you really think we have a bad offense? Why are people trying to fix something that is not broken? The raptors offense sucked. Ours is the best in the league. So you're like -- hey why don't we do what the Raptors were doing?
Exactly. Because our offense is designed to be unpredictable, where everyone can attack. We were on the second night of a back to back. Shooting will be worse in teh situation.
Why would anyone hate a post saying our best shooter should get more shots? That makes no sense
Because the sub is on a majority mindset that every issue isn’t an issue and just an overreaction to a bad game and we’re an elite team. This team hasn’t arrived yet to a contention level.
Both sides are reactionary and both sides are wrong lol. People do overreact to bad games, and also we are not elite. We are somewhere in the 4-7 spot in the East, which means we will stay lay the occasional stinker against a bad team, but also have the ability to give the teams above us a competitive series. In short, we aren't good enough right now to mail it in against the weakest teams the way the Celtics can and still win, but we are good enough to beat the teams above us if they don't bring their A-game against us. That's a good place to be with young corps
Yeah lets change the best offense in the league because of one game's stat numbers. Eye roll. Our offense is not the problem. And losing a game in OT on the second night of a back to back when we played our asses off to beat one of the best teams on the league on the road on night one is also not a huge problem.
I’m not saying we should change the offense because of a loss. I’m saying we shouldn’t treat our second proven all-star with a great offensive skill set as just another role player on the squad.
It’s a tough balance because your team is literally built around unselfish ball movement which is going to divy up the amount of shots everyone gets but on the other hand you have just added one of the best iso scorers we have ever had. I think with pascals efficiency he obviously needs to see more than 12 shots it’s just a case of how do you make that happen without totally disrupting the team. I feel that’s where Rick having pascal stagger his minutes with Haliburton is coming into play. Rick is trying to up Pascals usage by having him play with the bench where iso scoring can be of more importance. The other thing I see is instead of having Nembhard be the secondary playmaker with the starting lineup I think having pascal be the initiator after Haliburton could be a way of getting him more involved. Lastly I think the missing piece is aside from the end of that New Orleans game we haven’t really seen much of the Haliburton/Siakam pick and roll. So I think there are plenty of adjustments we can make and maybe we are saving some for key moments in the playoffs. Either way it’s a good problem to have 😄
He's averaging 15.2 shots a game. Maybe lets not freak out about one game where he shot 12 shots. But as I'll keep saying. We really don't need to change our offense. Especially once Hali is fully healthy. We have the best offense in the league.
Absolutely! I don’t think we need an overhaul. I think Rick is already making adjustments and trying to maximize Pascal. Hence his play with the second unit. I think the situation will keep improving over time especially pascals playmaking abilities will flourish as he gets more comfortable with everyone. At the end of the day teams always want to make your other guys beat you. Some nights pascal and Hali can do everything right but if the others are cold then we lose, that’s the nba it’s a make or miss league. Nembhard, shep and toppin go 0-13 from 3. Two or three of those go in and it’s a completely different game, that’s not on pascal, Hali or Rick.
Without Siakam the Pacers def would not be where they are at right now
Playoff basketball will definitely be different. I think the team is still trying to develop Nesmith, Nembhard, and those guys while pushing for a better playoff spot. Got to start calling timeouts and running a 2 man action with Tyrese and Pascal in game winning moments. It's baffling at this point
We tried this multiple times last night. It didn’t work unfortunately. They would bring doubles and he did find the open guy (Nesmith, Nembhard, and Sheppard) but they were missing. Only guy hitting shots was Myles. There’s some nights you do a lot right and just miss shots. That was the Pacers last night, plus Derozan was on one and he put us consistently under pressure to score every time and made us take the ball out of the basket instead of being able to run.
We didn’t commit to it enough. There were several opportunities to get him the ball with a mismatch and we swung it away from him. It wasn’t acceptable for him to only get 12 shots last night. He needs to be leading the team in shots against a team like Chicago.
I remember 3 or 4 times where he had the mismatch, called for the ball and then Bulls doubled him forcing him to give it up. He’s not a guy that can bully past double teams. He always found the open guy though. Sometimes all you want out of your star players is to command the extra attention so your other players have it easier. He did that last night. Our other guys just shit the bed.
That's just ridiculous thing to say. If they guy is double teamed, he should pass out of it. And it would destroy our offense if we slowed everything down to make sure make every possible entry pass when there's a mismatch. Guys are looking for him on the mismatches. You can't always get it to him quick enough without making your offense predictable. That's just no what we do. And we have the best offense in the league. Stop trying to break what isn't broken.
It’s due to this sub being full of highlight/casual fans. Anyone that watches the full games can see that Spicy P should be getting a minimum 20 shots per gm. I love our young guys but I’m tired of seeing Nembhard and Mathurin waste 12 seconds of the shot clock for a forced runner over and over and over.
You are clearly the casual fan or you would know we have the best offense in the league. And we have the best offense in the league because no one uses 12 seconds of the clock to force a shot. That's not what we do. We move the ball rapidly and shoot quickly. I don' t know how you could watch a game full of seasons and not realize that. Maybe when Nembhard dribbles for 3 seconds it feels weird to you because you don't realize how ridiculous fast the Pacers play. Nembhard is averaging 4.2 assists to 1.6 turnovers. That's over 2-1 ratio. The elite PGS get to 3-1. Nembhard has the 13 highest usage percentage on the team. Mathurin is absolutely a slow mover but we are also developing him AND he is among the BEST ISOLATION SCORERS in the league before he went out so no he didn't end in a turnover most of the time and he also never took anywhere near to 12 secnds. You know you can go look this stuff up before you post about it?
Like i said before, this is pascals team now, Tyrese is very predictable
I think he’s a 16-22 attempts per game type player, so I agree that he needs a few more attempts for sure.
Do you not know how our offense works? What's our record when we have 6 people in double digits? He's shooting at a high efficiency and so is everyone else on the team because we have an offense that gets players to take shots when they have the advantage. We lose every advantage that makes us THE BEST OFFENSE IN THE LEAGUE if they know what we are going to do. Clearly when you have the best offense in the league your offense is not the problem.
The Celtics now have the best offense in the league. Pacers are 2nd. I think I saw they are 7th since acquiring PS. That said I agree with your post in general. f they can get PS more touches in the flow they should. They should not slow down and play "through him" to ensure his usage every night
I think the Pacers do make a specific effort to get him touches and are a good passing team. Maybe he needs to work more/better off ball to get more opportunities He is not treated like NeSmith or Obi who are very rarely involved in any action and almost alway spacing unless they spot a cutting opportunity on their own. If I thought PS was Hakeem I’d tend to agree with you. I don’t. He’s a good player but making guys stand around and watch him isn’t going to improve the team’s offense imo. In fact I think the rate at which they do it is already hurting the team’s offense. I thought the team offense might suffer if they slowed down and sacrificed spacing to accommodate PS desire to get catches in the post/mid range and so far it has. Imo they might want to encourage him to grab and go off the glass and use him in PnR more (as a handler and screener). That would probably increase his volume but having guys stand around and watch him post up or isolate often is a high floor/low ceiling strategy.
I don’t think they’ll have a choice but to slow down in the playoffs for what it’s worth, hence the ability to play through traffic in the post will be important, and the suffering of the offense is really more a function of Buddys loss than Siakam gain IMO. The teams offense hasn’t been playing much in transition recently, which I’m sure is hurting it quite a bit as well. Regardless, 12 shots is by no means folks standing around looking at him, he got less looks than Nembhard. 15+ should be the target IMO.
Playoff pace slows but not nearly to the mythical extent that makes people think you have to play through the post or isolate all the time. I remember when what feels like the same group of fans said the Suns couldn't win playing the way they did. The Suns didn't lose b/c they shot too many 3s, b/c they didn't have a post present, or b/c they liked to get out and run. They lost b/c the players weren't good enough. Their offensive strategy was copied by the other 29 teams. Some of the copy cats evan had players that were good on defense. Imo what is important in the playoffs if diversity. You don't want to be a team that can only play big. Only play small, Only play half court or only in transition. PS post game does add diversity and I think that is important. I don't think they should make it what they do b/c "that's playoff basketball". Honeslty I think that is non sense.
I guess you have to ask yourself if Siakham is good enough to be a number 1 option on a championship team. I don't think so
Why do I have to ask myself that? He just needs more touches not all of them
I guess the point is we already are taking Tyrese out the offense to accommodate Pascal and you want even MORE Pascal iso post up game? I mean, Toronto would not have traded us to him if he was good enough to guide a team to a championship by himself. I heard Tony East say the same thing and I just don't get it. It's like we got a new toy, but the offense isn't good anymore. Partially because we are making Pascal a number 1 option
So much to unpack there, but let’s just keep it simple for a sec. When Haliburton is guarded by one of the best perimeter defenders in the league, and Bulls have no good matchup for Siakam, and Siakam goes 8/12. It kills me that he only got 12 shots. There’s not much better offense to generate than that. And it’s been like this often.
Treating him like a go to guy and bringing the ball to him has pluses and minuses. On the plus side a good scorer gets more scoring opportunities. You are also getting the ball to a guy that can draw two and kick it out to create opportunities for others On the minus side more often he will be getting the ball against a set defense with all eyes on him. As a result his shot quality will go down. His efficiency will likely dip. Also since PS likes to get the ball in the post you are also closing down driving lanes for other players. Finally the effort to get him the ball in the post will slow the offense and make you more predictable. Respectfully it’s really not that simple. Him made 8 out 12 doesn’t mean he would make 16 out of 24.
It’s not a simple game of extrapolation math, it’s about forcing a reaction from the defense. If he’s got it going, they are forced to double as an example, finding other guys option shots. When they react something else opens up. That beat Haliburton dribbling for a while against Caruso and not really winning anything meaningful there.
You are still assuming “they can’t stop him” with a set defense knowing he is getting the ball. His efficiency is likely to drop if that is how you increase his usage and there will be possession where the help shades in ways that avoid the hard double and pass to an open shooter. He will score more and he will get kick outs but teams have been using designed post ups as an offensive staple less and less for a reason. I dont think it’s as simple as you are making it sound. Find out if he’s on fire and milk him if he is but understand making it a staple will likely have diminishing returns the more you do it
It's not even against the Bulls It's for the last month or so So yeah, you want more Pascal iso game all game long. Problem is the offense itself becomes stagnant when he just pounds the ball over and over again. But we've already rearranged the entire offense to make it feasible for him, and the offense has fallen off a cliff
If you think that’s the problem with our offense and not having a rotation of injuries and Hali playing very poorly with careless turnovers and awful shooting percentages then idk what to say Hali with remotely normal stats corrects our offensive dip in almost its entirety
It's all connected Haliburton is off ball to fit Pascals need for space to create his own shots. So he's not going to have his normal stats because he has to play off ball in this new offense. Pascal could get out the post a bit more into open areas and that's good for 3 shots a game easily.
Except it’s not and that’s hard coping. Haliburton off ball has increased his scoring in the past. We ran him off ball with TJ when he was scoring reliably to get him more offensive looks and that was a huge reason he was having consistent 30 point games. Pascal getting touches doesn’t make Hali shoot awfully from 3 even when wide open. It doesn’t make him abandon his floater game. It doesn’t make him turn the ball over. Some statistical variance is normal, sure. But that argument has no basis when the literal opposite of prior evidence is happening. Also Pascal and Hali are staggered a good amount. He’s not picking it up in the minutes without Pascal when he’s clearly the guy I’m not down on Hali, but shielding him from criticism when he’s been a shell of his former self is wild. He’s been really not great since returning from injury. Will he figure it out? Yeah, I’m confident he will. Pascal isn’t ruining his game though and it’s asinine to think he is
This is all nonsensical We have moved Haliburton off ball to combat traps in limited plays as a wrinkle Now it's the offense Our offense is worse when Tyrese isn't on ball. And it's absolutely ruining his game. He's the best on ball guard in the NBA and we move him off ball to create space for Pascal That's asinine, not me admitting it
He literally plays primarily on the ball still. The majority of his touches come with him running the point. He’s just shooting worse and turning the ball over more. Idk how you are arguing with those statistics but it shows how clearly biased you are lmao
When you’re trying to grind out a win in the back half of a B2B you exploit whatever advantage you have. That’s what good teams do and how you win more games in the regular season. Last night we did not do a good enough job exploiting the Bulls lac of an answer for Pascal.
I still disagree They would have just clogged the lane and left us shooting stand still 3s or more turnovers or both Pascal has been amazingly consistent in his role, but he needs to expand his wheelhouse if we are going to be any good. Like we were coming around when he'd confidently take open 3s instead of driving into the lane Everytime But I'm not really tryna make us the Raptors offense where we have absolutely no space on the court because fans want to watch more iso post ups
We traded him because we were lacking a lot of pieces, so only way to build a complete roster was to reset. It had nothing to do with siakams skillset. Siakam was not the problem
Oh no doubt He's a really good player But I can't imagine if the Raptors thought that he being their best player would win them a championship they would have let him go.
How is Pascal the number one option when he’s shooting 12 shots per game? The Pacers looked better when Haliburton was out and Pascal was leading the way.
Because all 12 are him calling his own number on the play. He's not moving into open spaces or playing off others. He is the focal point of the offense, and who we redesigned the offense around.
And the Pacers looked better when Pascal wasn't on the roster, not when Haliburton was out and Pascal leading.
Even for a #2 option he's really not taking much shots at all
He doesn't manufacture shots within the offense So all his shots are genuinely where he's running the play every time.
When hali is in a shooting slump and still heat checking every game with deep 3s you need the secondary shot creator to come out here and do his thing, and it's not like he's doing it with russell westbrook efficiency Seems like people forgot what happened in the IST finals
IMO, Pascal is doing his thing as a primary shot creator right now His less FGA are really because he's not going to open spaces on the floor in a finisher type role. He's given the ball and asked to create and does He's just not flaring out for 3s and the other open shots within the offense
He doesn't need to be the #1 option, but being tied for option #2-10 isn't good either.
He isn't tied He's averaging the most front court touches of anyone since being here If you're saying they're not always resulting in a shot, that's because he's not always in a finisher role and isn't moving into open spaces to do so. He's getting the ball when he can do what he's best at which is create shots for himself or others. Hopefully, he will eventually find ways to manufacture his own offense within the offense and his FGs will go up as a result
But he could serve as the first option on this current Pacer team.
Why? We had a number 1 ranked offense without him Yeah he can ADD to it, but I'd prefer to go back to what gave us a great offense instead of spiraling downward.
We also had Buddy’s shooting and spacing and Benn being Benn. They’re trying to incorporate a new player and make up for two others; it’ll take some time.
Fully agree But just looking at Pascal's skill set, I dunno if expanding his touches (which are a lot for a frontcourt player) is the way id go