Victor Oladipo: Having the greatest Indiana Pacers season ever?
Reggie Miller, 1990-91
One of the shorter conversations you’ll ever have in NBA circles is in answering the question “Who is the greatest Pacer of all time?”
Miller was a five-time All-Star, three-time All-NBA player, and cut out more hearts in the playoffs than that dude from Last of the Mohicans. His 25,279 career points are nearly double that of Rik Smits, the next closest Pacer on the franchise’s all-time leaderboard.
The fact that he’s still second in all-time made 3-pointers despite playing in a different era from the trey-happy one we now inhabit is a testament to just how great a shooter he was. That he can say he played against both Kareem-Abdul Jabbar and LeBron James is a tribute to his uncanny longevity.
Here’s the thing about Reggie though: for all his exploits over an eventful 18-year career, he never had one single season that jumps off the page. His three All-NBA appearances were all as part of the third team, and he never finished higher than 13th in the MVP voting. His highest Player Efficiency Rating for a season was just 21.2, good enough for 16th in the league in 1990-91.
Live Feed
8 Points, 9 Seconds
That 1990-91 season does deserve our attention though. Miller didn’t make the All-Star team or All-NBA, but his combination of shooting and usage puts him in some rare company. Throughout NBA history, only 14 times has a player had a season with a true shooting percentage of 65 or higher and a usage rate of at least 22. Of those 14, only four times was it accomplished by a guard.
The first time was Miller in 1990-91. The second was Steve Nash in 2006-07, when he finished second for MVP after winning the award the previous two years. The third time was Stephen Curry‘s second MVP season, and the fourth time is happening right now, again by Steph.
Did Mr. Pacer do much else on the court that season? Not really. Miller’s four assists per game remain a career high, and his 22.6 points per game were solid. Still, Indiana finished with a .500 record, no doubt aided by Reggie’s lackluster defense.
Despite nabbing over a steal a night, his -2.3 defensive box plus/minus was not only the worst of his career, but was the fifth-worst of the 124 players who saw the court for at least 2,000 minutes that year, according to Basketball-Reference.
There are two ends of the court, and while Oladipo’s defense has arguably fallen off a bit this year, his steal rate (99th percentile) and block rate (89th percentile) are still elite for the wing position according to CleaningtheGlass.com.
His usage rate has also remained above 30, and although his shooting is nowhere near Miller-levels, his 58.9 true shooting percentage is fifth-highest among players funneling that much of their team’s offense behind only James Harden, LeBron James, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Kyrie Irving.
As deadly as Miller was during that 1990-91 season, if Oladipo keeps this up, his year would have to edge out Reggie’s by a nose.