Indiana Pacers: Getting Familiar With Thaddeus Young

The Indiana Pacers added Thaddeus Young to the roster on Thursday. If you haven’t been watching a lot of Nets, Wolves or Sixers games over the past few years, get familiar with Young’s game.

The Indiana Pacers started draft day off with a bang, trading the 20th pick in the draft and a future second rounder in exchange for Nets forward Thaddeus Young.

For those unfamiliar with Young (and you would be forgiven if you weren’t tuning into Nets, Timberwolves or 76ers games over the past two seasons), this is a chance for you to brush up on the Pacers’ new starting power forward.

Young is a 6’8″ power forward who will be entering his 10th NBA season after spending one season in college at Georgia Tech. For his NBA career, he’s averaged 13.9 points and 5.9 rebounds per game.

Last season, Young averaged 15.1 points and a career-high 9.0 rebounds per game for the 21-61 Brooklyn Nets.

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Young’s game is a unique one. He’s slightly undersized and came into the league with questions of if he was a small forward or a power forward. As the league has trended to skill over height in recent years, he’s become a clear-cut power forward.

Unlike many undersized power forwards, Young doesn’t shoot the ball particularly well. He’s a lefty with a game that relies heavily on scoring in the paint, both around the rim and at the elbows of the free throw line.

He possesses an unorthodox offensive game in the paint that features a lot of variety. Young can put the ball on the floor and get his own shot pretty effectively. Whether it’s a close-range floater, hook shot, posting up smaller defenders, or driving by bigger defenders, Young can get himself a good shot.

He’s also superb at working without the ball, finding crevices in the defense and making great cuts to receive passes in a position to score.

I’ve already seen many people say that Young is the coveted stretch-4 that the Pacers have been needing in order to play small-ball. That’s not entirely accurate.

Young’s three-point shooting throughout his career has been an interesting study. Sometimes he takes a lot of three-pointers, sometimes he doesn’t shoot them at all. I’d be surprised if there was a player in the league with as much variance with their three-point attempts throughout their career.

Young is a capable shooter for his position at 31.9 percent on three-pointers for his career. The 31.9 percent from deep is just good enough to make him a threat if left wide open on threes, which should bode well for the Pacers’ spacing — something that it seems they’ve put an emphasis on improving this offseason.

The addition of Young should be good news for the Pacers guards and wings as Young will provide more room for driving opportunities, lanes that simply haven’t existed recently due to big men who clog the lane.

Valley of the Suns

While Young’s rebounding numbers (5.9 per game for his career) are a bit underwhelming, he’s a surprisingly good offensive rebounder (2.0 per game for his career, 2.4 per game last year). Young’s 9.0 rebounds per game is a bit of an outlier for his career and it’s more likely that regresses to the mean for the Pacers.

Young uses his athletic advantage and strength to create opportunities for offensive rebounds.

It’s worth noting that Young has had to play a larger role for subpar teams over the past four seasons. Playing a larger role for a bad team often lends itself to less-efficient offense, poor percentages, and high turnover rates. Young has largely been immune to such circumstances, other than a slight dip in field goal percentage in 2012-13 and 2013-14.

The 2016-17 Indiana Pacers would project to be the best team that Young has ever played for and he should finally find the right role for him as a third or fourth option offensively on a team that has slashing guards, a star wing in Paul George, and a rising star in Myles Turner.

I’d compare Young to a poor man’s Paul Millsap, who has earned his way onto three All-Star teams with the Atlanta Hawks. Millsap has been a slightly better shooter and is a better defender than Young, but both are undersized power forwards with unique games that make their teams better.

More hoops habit: NBA Trade Grades: Nets Deal Thaddeus Young To Pacers

With the addition of Young, the Pacers have presumably filled their biggest hole at power forward (with Myles Turner likely becoming the starting center). Also, the Pacers got more athletic and added some scoring punch that was absent in the playoffs beyond Paul George.