Indiana Pacers: The second quarter was beautiful vs. Knicks

The Indiana Pacers played one of their best quarters of the season against the New York Knicks. Analyzing some of their best plays shows what went so right for the team.

The Indiana Pacers dominated the New York Knicks Monday night. They ended up winning the classic Hicks vs Knicks matchup 115-97, but that does not tell the story of the game well. The Pacers were up 38 in the middle of the third quarter, and the team let off the gas significantly in the fourth quarter, which made the final score closer than the game itself was.

The Pacers absolutely dominated in the first half. They went into the locker room with a 66-40 lead, and their dominant second quarter was the big reason why. The Pacers won that quarter 35-21, and it might have been their best offensive quarter of the season.

They were moving the ball, they got everybody involved, and they were generating an incredible amount of open looks. Considering the second quarter has been one of the biggest weaknesses for the Indiana Pacers this season, it was encouraging to see them move the ball around effectively in this portion of the game. They had a wide variety of perfectly executed plays and decisions, and breaking them down can help show how the team succeeded in the period.

The first play worth reviewing was the first bucket of the quarter, a Domantas Sabonis dunk out of a pick-and-roll. T.J. Leaf, an effective 3-point shooter, starts the play on the wing by feeding Cory Joseph the ball on the top of the key. Joseph, being a cerebral player, takes one dribble toward the hoop to draw in both Leaf’s defender and the hedging big man who was previously guarding Sabonis. Sabonis had a free run to the rim for a dunk:

The reason this play works, beyond Joseph’s awareness with the ball, is the off-ball action that happens right at the start of the play. Watch the clip again, and watch Bojan Bogdanovic on the wing. He takes a back screen from CoJo to cut under the rim, forcing his man to cut away from the play.

Bojan fills the weak-side short corner, and because Bogdanovic is such a good shooter, his man dares not leave him to help stop Sabonis at the rim. The help comes too late, and the beautiful chess-like play design from Nate McMillan leads to an easy bucket for Domas.

The next terrific basket the team put in was actually their second bucket of the quarter. This one was less play design and more a heads up play by Sabonis.

With Frank Ntilikina switched onto the big man, Joseph throws him a well-placed entry pass. The Knicks send help from the weak-side post to double Sabonis, and Joseph’s man drops to the wing to fill. That leaves Joseph wide open behind the arc, and Sabonis does a great job to recognize he was open amidst all the moving parts:

More an effort play, these two players hooked up again for a similar basket later in the quarter. This time, Sabonis’ effort on the glass, and a terrible job boxing out by Jarrett Jack, leave CoJo open and Sabonis finds him for a 3-pointer:

We can’t forget about the Indiana Pacers’ other stud big man, Myles Turner. His heads-up play here leads to a basket.

With Thaddeus Young backing down the much smaller Jack, Enes Kanter and Lance Thomas slowly creep over to help. Thad Young shot fakes to get both of help defenders to bite, and as soon as Kanter bites, Turner back cuts into space for a wide open dunk:

Turner wasn’t done either. This one is way more simple, but it needs to be appreciated. Late in the shot clock, Darren Collison torches his man on his way to the rim and draws the help, which happened to be Turner’s man. Collison kicks it out to Turner who nails the corner 3:

While incredibly simple, this is still an important sequence for Indiana Pacers basketball. Turner has only taken four corner 3s this season, but he’s made half of them. That isn’t enough attempts to make any determination about Turner’s corner 3 shooting, but he deserves more chances from the corners, especially since he has made half of them so far. This play proved he can do it, and it was a great read by Collison to find him.

The last play I want to focus on was a bucket by Lance Stephenson. No, not the basket you’re thinking of, we will get to that later, but instead an actually good basketball play.

The Pacers rarely try to generate offense out of the post. They run a lot of screen actions, but they rarely go into the deep post to try to create shots elsewhere. However, that is exactly what happens here, and it works spectacularly.

Turner catches the ball about 10 feet from the rim and starts to back his way down towards the rim. Once he draws the double, he turns inside to face the weakside corner. This makes his pass easier, and he fires it over to Lance in the corner for a simple 3:

It’s great that Lance made the shot, but the focus of that play was the pass by Turner. To have the awareness to both recognize that the opening was across his body and make the necessary bodily rotation to get the ball to the opening is very impressive. Hopefully, Turner can continue to improve as a passer out of the post as the season goes along.

To top it all off, Lance did this:

That topped off the quarter. The Pacers played excellent team basketball and had their most entertaining play of the season happen in a 12-minute span.

Next: 2017-18 Week 8 NBA Power Rankings

If the team needs to get out of an offensive slump at some point, I recommend watching this quarter to get back on track.