5. Sabonis is a keeper
After the Paul George trade was made, most of the focus on Indiana’s end was on Victor Oladipo and whether he was even worth his annual salary (spoiler alert: he was). Few gave much attention to the other player in the deal — a late lottery pick coming off as nondescript a rookie season as you can have in the NBA while playing over 1,500 minutes.
At best, Kevin Pritchard thought he’d acquired a solid future rotation player to back up incumbent starter and resident next big thing Myles Turner. What he got was something much, much better.
This season featured only three first- or second-year players with a usage rate of 22 or higher and a true shooting percentage over 56. Two of them — Joel Embiid and Jamal Murray — are considered untouchable franchise building blocks for their respective teams. The third is Domantas Sabonis, and if people haven’t already put him in the same category for the Pacers, they’d better rethink things.
Not only was Sabonis great individually, but he had an uncanny connection with the player who accompanied him in the trade. Together, he and Oladipo had a +10.4 net rating over 1,987 possessions, putting lineups featuring the pairing in the 96th percentile of the NBA, according to Cleaning The Glass.
The Son of Arvydas Sabonis also came up big when it counted the most. He was arguably the second-best player on the floor for the Pacers over the course of the first round, evinced by his three games of at least 19 points and 58 percent shooting throughout the series.
Sabonis, of course, is not the only young center on this team with promise, which leads us to a somewhat uncomfortable discussion.