Indiana Pacers: Examining the team’s plus/minus statistics

The Indiana Pacers are off to a solid and somewhat surprising start this season. Here is a breakdown of who is making the most impact on the team.

Expectations were low for the Indiana Pacers coming into the 2017-18 campaign, but this group has exceeded what most pundits thought they could do this season.

It’s too early to make conclusive judgments on this new-look Pacers squad; after all, we are not yet a quarter of the way through the regular season and much can change between now and next spring.

However, the team has performed admirably considering the massive amount of change and perceived dearth of overall talent on the roster.

When analyzing the individual contributions of NBA players to their teams, one good tool we have is the on court/off court metric, sometimes referred to as a player’s plus/minus number.

NBA statistician Roland Beech, founder of 82games, was one of the earliest NBA analysts to calculate plus/minus stats for basketball (this concept had already been around a long time in hockey circles).

The plus/minus metric for the Indiana Pacers reveals some rather interesting things regarding the club’s relatively fast start in 2017-18.

There are two players in the early going who are proving to be extremely valuable in terms of their impact on the lineup when they are on the floor: Domantas Sabonis and Darren Collison.

Sabonis leads the Pacers with an on court/off court number of +11.9 (the team is +5.4 when he is in the game, but -6.5 when he is on the bench).

Collison is in a virtual tie with the Lithuanian big man with a rounded plus/minus of +11.9, which includes a +3.2 when he’s on the floor and a -8.7 when he is not.

No other rotation player for Indiana comes close to these numbers — the next-best performer is Cory Joseph, who checks in with an on court/off court value of +4.6.

On the flip side, there are two players who are putting up good basic numbers but are not doing so well in the plus/minus category: Victor Oladipo and Bojan Bogdanovic.

Bogdanovic’s shooting has come around nicely after a slow start (44.1 percent on 3-point attempts, 50.7 percent overall). However, his on court/off court value is sitting at -6.2.

Even more surprising is the unimpressive plus/minus stat for Oladipo, who is averaging over 23 points per game and is doing it efficiently with shooting splits of .474/.443/.824.

Victor Oladipo’s on court/off court number is -5.3, so the Pacers have actually been performing better as a unit when he’s not in the game.

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One possible reason for Bogdanovic’s rating could be his defense, although he has improved a bit in this area since last year. Oladipo has struggled with turnovers (3.2 per game), which has reduced his overall effectiveness.

It should be noted that this metric is best utilized with a large sample size, and we don’t have that less than 20 games into the season. However, these statistics can be helpful in identifying early trends — both good and bad.

The Indiana Pacers are clearly better at this juncture than almost anyone expected, and a look at the plus/minus numbers tells us that Domantas Sabonis and Darren Collison are having a significant influence on the team’s solid start.

Victor Oladipo and Bojan Bogdanovic are scoring and shooting the ball well, but their overall impact has not been positive in terms of the on court/off court values they are posting so far.

Next: 2017-18 Week 5 NBA Power Rankings

This bears watching as the 2017-18 campaign progresses, because these stats can change drastically over the course of 82 games — but this is what we are currently seeing in Indiana as we approach the season’s quarter pole.