Their offense is rated 20th overall and they play at the 5th slowest pace, which is all part and parcel of their ugly ball, smashmouth style.
However, taking a look at their turnovers is where ugly ball goes bad. The Pacers rank 26th in turnover percentage, which is a major chink in the armor. With the slow, defense first philosophy they play, taking care of the ball needs to be paramount.
Where a team like the Thunder will generate their easy baskets through transition offense, Indiana generates theirs through post offense in the half court.
Oklahoma City’s turnovers are born out of a function of how they score. Indiana’s are just plain sloppy. In short, not all turnovers are created equal. Turnovers are more damaging for teams that play a slower pace because they’re generally not a byproduct of their style of play.
The Memphis Grizzlies, on the other hand, are almost a mirror image of the Pacers from a statistical standpoint. Where the Pacers are 1st in defense, the Grizzlies are 2nd. Where the Pacers are 20th in offense, the Grizzlies are 18th. Where the Pacers are 26th in pace, the Grizzlies are 28th.
The big difference comes in with turnover percentage. The Pacers are the 26th best team at taking care of the ball and the Grizzlies are a much more respectable 10th. That has manifested itself in a slightly better record for Memphis in the regular season in the tougher West. The turnover picture is the one that bears watching.
A quick glance at the pace numbers can be very revealing for why certain teams are, as the great Bill Parcells says, what their record says they are. The most glaring example is the Lakers. They hired a fast-tempo coach with slow-tempo personnel. For all the talk about how Mike D’Antoni has changed to fit his roster, the Lakers rank 4th overall in pace.
With a center coming off back surgery, a torn labrum in his shoulder, and a corresponding conditioning issue, the Lakers are 4th in pace.
With an aging, but still awesome Kobe Bryant, a really old Steve Nash, a pretty old Metta World Peace, and an almost ancient Antawn Jamison, the Lakers are still 4th in pace.
Yes, their 19th ranked defense has been an ongoing issue and has been the biggest casualty from Howard’s physical problems, but there has been no bigger smoking gun for the Lakers are sitting on the playoff bubble than the fact that they have played as one of the fastest teams in the league when they should have been one of the slowest.
For all of the talk about the Nets playing faster with P.J. Carlesimo at the helm, the numbers tell us quite a different story. The Nets are dead last in the league at pace. That isn’t a terrible thing because they’re a middle of the road defensive team, currently ranking 12th.
It doesn’t kill them offensively either because they rank 10th, so they’re obviously getting enough easy baskets. They have Brook Lopez in the low post to thank for that. The problem for the Nets is similar to the Pacers, except the Nets don’t have the #1 defense in the league to make things better. The Nets are 25th best in the league in turnover percentage.
Deron Williams’ turnovers are something that the Nets have to live with, but all the talk about the Nets using too much Reggie Evans at big forward is spot on. Evans hands over a whopping 27.2 turnovers per 100 possessions. Forgetting every other variable, under our premise that all turnovers are not created equal, Evans is choking the life out of the Nets offensively by treating the ball like Lindsay Lohan treats a breathalyzer.
Even though there are many ways to skin a cat, the teams that are intentionally sacrificing an aspect of their overall game as part of a quest to shore up other areas are much better suited to playoff success than teams who are incidentally struggling with an aspect that flies in the face of what they do philosophically.
In summary, regular season records matter. Teams like the Heat, the Thunder, the Spurs, and the Grizzlies are much more prepared to advance than teams like the Pacers, the Nets, the Lakers and to a lesser extent, the Celtics.
Brian Geltzeiler is the executive producer and co-host of SheridanHoops Radio, and the editor of hoopcritic.com. His father, Burt, was an elite college basketball player for Newark Rutgers in the late 1940s and was drafted by the Tri-City Hawks (now Atlanta) in 1950 by GM Red Auerbach. You can follow Brian, who lives in Livingston, N.J. with his wife and 4 children, on Twitter.