Indiana Pacers: 3 bold predictions for 2019-20 season

The Pacers will finish in the bottom 5 in offensive rating

Here’s the problem with the Indiana Pacers’ offense. Coach Nate McMillan still runs sets that were obsolete in 2009.

At that time, the Portland Trail Blazers had a run with McMillan as coach in which a talented roster consistently underachieved, getting smoked in the first round of the playoffs for three straight years.

And sure, Portland was a top-10 offense consistently back then. The problem is that the league has evolved and the Pacers haven’t evolved with it.

There are plans in place to try and put Domantas Sabonis and Myles Turner together in the same offense. Unless they’re trying to turn Sabonis into Giannis Antetokounmpo and surround him with shooters, what this will mean in practice is a twin-towers lineup, something that hasn’t worked since Tim Duncan and David Robinson were both still playing.

The talent they’ve got out on the wings includes Malcolm Brogdon, who is an excellent (42.6 percent last year) 3-point shooter, along with (in theory) Turner at 38.8 percent, Jeremy Lamb at 34.8 and T.J. Warren at 42.8.

That should, if it’s managed right, be enough for a huge offensive outburst. There’s just one problem:

McMillan is pathologically allergic to modern pace-and-space basketball and the Pacers were second up from the bottom (ahead of Gregg Popovich’s equally mired-in-the-Dark-Ages Spurs) in 3-point attempt rate, taking just 29.2 percent of their shots from out there despite being the fifth-most accurate team from that range.

So instead we’re going to see a clogged toilet in the low post and lots of second-unit sets with Doug McDermott (40.8 percent from 3 last year) standing around wide open on plays not designed to get him the ball for an open look.

The bottom is going to fall out of the offense and they will struggle to score points all season long.