Indiana Pacers: 3 players facing most pressure in 2019-20

Can Sabonis play his way to a huge contract?

According to a stat called Wiggins Factor (which I explain in this piece at Pace and Space), Domantas Sabonis has one of the most team-friendly contracts in the entire league, as the ratio between his salary in dollars and his Win Shares per 48 minutes show the very best that a rookie contract can yield from a team’s point of view.

Sabonis’ Wiggins Factor is 28.91. Andrew Wiggins, the guy the stat is named after, turned in a score of 3,283 (and like in golf, lower is better.) Giannis Antetokounmpo, the MVP, scored 138.11.

But Sabonis becomes a restricted free agent after the 2019-20 season. If he puts up another year of .197 WS/48, he’s going to be paid handsomely by some team that notices that Sabonis’ advanced stats make him essentially a Lithuanian version of Montrezl Harrell.

His floor is as a spot starter and perpetual Sixth Man of the Year.

His ceiling is finding a role as a center who can rebound and do amazing things around the rim on offense (Sabonis’ field goal percentage in the restricted area was .741 in 2018-19; for perspective, Antetokounmpo posted a .769 mark from that range.)

The Indiana Pacers are talking about trying Sabonis and Myles Turner in a lineup together, but the last time a “twin towers” lineup worked in the NBA, David Robinson was still playing alongside Tim Duncan.

When the season starts, we’ll see that Sabonis is playing to get the bag for himself.

Either he gets a big-money extension from the Pacers and renders Turner as trade bait or he follows in the footsteps of Bojan Bogdanovic, whose huge season in 2018-19 landed him four years and $73.1 million from the Utah Jazz.

The three guys the Pacers return for continuity just happen to be the guys with the most pressure on them. This is still their team and they are still the faces of the franchise.

Forty-eight wins won’t be good enough this time. Fans are ready for a next-level leap.