“I came in knowing that it’s his team,” he told Sheridan Hoops. “I saw that I had kept him to six points and four rebounds in the first half, and I know that he’s such a good player and he’s going to get off at some point. So I wanted to make things tough on him. He’s going to get his points somewhere, but they’re going to have to be earned. I wanted to make sure to take away his right hand, took away his pop jump shot.”
Another reason for the Pacers’ success is the team’s lack of a legitimate superstar (though George could soon change that). The players embody that team-first mentality, which always begins on the defensive end.
“Our defense is our staple,” Hibbert said. “A team like Brooklyn who has closers and lethal weapons at every position – we have to buckle down and not be weak at any spot; we have to be on a string all together.”
West also discussed that sense of unity and togetherness on D.
“Our approach defensively is we’re not gonna leave anyone on an island,” he said. “We’re not gonna allow one guy to isolate any of our guys. We’re gonna work together as a group defensively, possession after possession.”
Another staple of this Pacers squad is its depth and continuity. A lot of title contenders have one of those two things, but not both. Brooklyn has good depth but lacks continuity, at least right now. Oklahoma City has continuity but may no longer have elite-level depth after losing Kevin Martin to Minnesota. Miami and San Antonio have both, which is probably why they were in the NBA Finals.
“We’re gelling and we’ve got the continuity that some of the other teams don’t have,” West said. “We didn’t change coaches; our core guys came back.”
Not only did the nucleus return, but management added key reserves Luis Scola and C.J. Watson to strengthen the bench, the team’s lone glaring weakness from last season. That will come in handy in the postseason, but it’s already paying dividends now. Indiana just finished off a stretch of four game in five days, and the second unit is relied on more when that many games are played in a condensed time period.
Talking about the bench, Hibbert said, “There’s no drop-off. They’re either keeping the lead or extending it.”
One of those bench additions is sharp shooting wing Chris Copeland, who played on a pretty deep team last season in New York.
“We’ve got a deep team,” said Copeland, who averaging 15 minutes per game with the Knicks but has played just five total minutes thus far with the Pacers. “The bench is ridiculous. You wear teams down when you could come off the bench with a guy like Scola.”
Scola would start on most teams. Watson is a really strong reserve point guard. Ian Mahinmi is a solid backup center. Orlando Johnson’s defensive rating is a robust 95 so far this season and is just 24 years old. And former All-Star Danny Granger isn’t even back yet.
“We feel like we have a lot of depth on this team, guys that can help at every single position,” West said. “At some point throughout the year, everybody’s going to be counted on to win us a game or two somewhere.”
As a second unit, Copeland said, “guys are playing well together. We’re clicking and really focusing on details and executing the way we should.”
All that clicking and executing still goes back to intensity and strong defense.
“We’re playing against quality teams and we’re winning on the defensive end, and we’re winning down the stretch,” Hibbert said.
When the playoffs arrive, Indiana’s two guiding principles of intensity and defense could ultimately propel the Pacers past Miami to the franchise’s first NBA title.
“We’re a pretty intense group ourselves. We play hard,” West said. “We set the tone defensively every single night. That’s our motto, and we’re going to let our defense speak for us.”
Shlomo Sprung is a national columnist for Sheridan Hoops who loves advanced statistics and the way they explain what happens on the court. He is also the web editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. A 2011 graduate of Columbia University’s Journalism School, he has previously worked for the New York Knicks, The Sporting News, Business Insider and other publications. His website is SprungOnSports.com. You should follow him on Twitter.