Indiana Pacers: 3 big questions heading into 2019-20

Can McMillan even coach a modern NBA offense?

Comparing an Indiana Pacers shot chart to the shot chart of a team like Milwaukee, Houston or Brooklyn is to see just how over-reliant coach Nate McMillan is on discredited dinosaur ball.

His offenses have terrible spacing, lousy movement, way too many long 2-point shots and not enough good looks from beyond the arc and just generally lend themselves to McMillan being outcoached.

Indiana was fifth in the league in 3-point percentage, but had the second-lowest 3-point attempt rate, ahead of only the similarly afflicted offense of Gregg Popovich in San Antonio — which, to be fair — led the league in 3-point percentage, using the 3 as a sniper rifle rather than the machine gun the Rockets and Bucks use the weapon as.

But then again, San Antonio didn’t do squat in the playoffs either, losing to a Denver team that didn’t play as well but was more efficient by design, enough to steal a seven-game series and put the final nail in the coffin of this notion that you can win in the NBA in the playoffs with an offense straight out of 2002.

McMillan got outcoached by Tyronn Lue in the 2018 playoffs. That should have been the end of his coaching career right then and there. The Pacers blew a winnable series against LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Then, a year later, Brad Stevens took two late regular-season contests to fine-tune the way the Celtics would attack the Pacers’ weak offense and ended up leading Boston to an easy sweep.

McMillan got outcoached in the playoffs in Seattle and Portland too. Serious questions remain whether the Pacers should be, rather than sticking with a guy who’s friends with the front office, moving on to a guy who is more like Mike D’Antoni or Mike Budenholzer — the latter of those two being a guy Indiana could have hired had they had the courage to make a major move to get better after that 2018 playoff debacle.

So if the Pacers can make twin towers great again, if they can stay healthy, and if their coach can stop playing checkers while the rest of the league plays chess, they could make a deep playoff run.

If not, this team might struggle to win 30 games.