The Doug Mcdermott Problem

[XxMisterFreakXx]

This comes to no surprise but the way Nate Mcmillan has used Doug Mcdermott in the offense has been awful i thought early on he was being used well and i had no complaints but right now he has been utilized so poorly in this offense it's not even funny.

He stands in a corner for almost the whole game gets about 1 play ran for him and 2 shots and that's it then people complain when he misses but you can tell when the ball goes up he's completely out of rhythm and flow. Doug could be used so much better and probably would average double digits if he got the attempts but he is under 4 ATTEMPTS A GAME for someone who can shoot the ball as well as he does i just don't know anymore with Nate Mcmillan.

We know he isn't a great defender but that's not really a surprise or why he is out there. Doug's out there for offense and the amount of usage he gets is downright laughable even a high school coach would tell you that. Nate doesn't know how to use players to their strengths and he's not even the only one who suffers from that with Turner, Young, Bogdanovich and etc who seem to suffer from the same exact problem.

The only player i would say has benefited from Mcmillian's offense is Sabonis mainly because he's a more traditional big everyone else the opposite but seriously at what point does Doug get fed up and wants a trade?

[Topofthekey]

The extent of the Pacers' offensive "scheme" thus far this season is basically:

1)"Ok everyone, move up the court"
2)"Now pass the ball to Vic"
3)"Myles/Domas, you go set a screen"
4)"Everyone else, make yourself useful, or something"
5)"Fingers crossed something happens"
6)"Got it? Ok, go"

I'm exaggerating of course, but you know that

[AussiePacer]

I'd like to see Doug move more off the ball. The Philly game and seeing JJ in action highlights the panic and space a good shooter running off screens can create.

Hopefully we see this build as the players become more familiar, and the coaches more confident in their ability to,execute.

[boomershadow]

The extent of the Pacers' offensive "scheme" thus far this season is basically:

1)"Ok everyone, move up the court"
2)"Now pass the ball to Vic"
3)"Myles/Domas, you go set a screen"
4)"Everyone else, make yourself useful, or something"
5)"Fingers crossed something happens"
6)"Got it? Ok, go"

I'm exaggerating of course, but you know that

I don't think you're wrong, though.

[8305]

I've seen instances when it looks like McDermott is coming off a screen. Even looks like we are trying to get him the ball. Doesn't seem like he is ever in the game long enough to get into any rhythm. Twelve minutes a game probably isn't going to get it done. Problem, you don't get Tyreke enough minutes as Vic's backup so he gets some work at the three. Factor in the minutes where we have Domas and Myles on the floor, gotta Leaf out there a little too. That doesn't leave much for McDermott. I don't think you can expect to get much out of a sub in 4 minute intervals. If the guy's contribution is simply energy short intervals probably work. Don't think that was the contribution we had in mind when we signed Doug.

[Pacers_Freak]

I mean I agree he has to be used better. The Pacers are too reliant on the P&R right now. But when they have run plays for him he hasn't shaekn loose. I watched him come off a double stagger screen the other night and when he caught it the guy was already up in his grill. Gotta be a big boy and get open too. It's a combo problem here. Nate certainly has some fault but when you get plays called for you get your butt open. Cut off the ball, etc. How many of Korver's 3s come off plays "for him." Dude doesn't stop cutting and running off screens. Douggie has his feet in concrete right now.

[pacers33granger]

I mean I agree he has to be used better. The Pacers are too reliant on the P&R right now. But when they have run plays for him he hasn't shaekn loose. I watched him come off a double stagger screen the other night and when he caught it the guy was already up in his grill. Gotta be a big boy and get open too. It's a combo problem here. Nate certainly has some fault but when you get plays called for you get your butt open. Cut off the ball, etc. How many of Korver's 3s come off plays "for him." Dude doesn't stop cutting and running off screens. Douggie has his feet in concrete right now.

Yeah I agree. It's partially on Nate for his schemes (or lack thereof), partially on guys for not getting him the ball, and partially on Doug himself for not shaking free. He also seems to have an issue with positioning. Either he's a foot or two behind the line or past the line when he's catching the ball and both are bad.

It's obviously tough given the Myles/Domas situation, but the solution may be to get KOQ some more minutes with him. He knows how to screen for him and the ball is going to continue to stick with Tyreke/Domas in the bench lineups so plays just aren't going to be run for Doug much.

I'm beginning to think that Pritchard, at least in part, signed him as a fallback plan if/when Bogie walks so we know we have a shooter at the 3.

[XxMisterFreakXx]

I mean I agree he has to be used better. The Pacers are too reliant on the P&R right now. But when they have run plays for him he hasn't shaekn loose. I watched him come off a double stagger screen the other night and when he caught it the guy was already up in his grill. Gotta be a big boy and get open too. It's a combo problem here. Nate certainly has some fault but when you get plays called for you get your butt open. Cut off the ball, etc. How many of Korver's 3s come off plays "for him." Dude doesn't stop cutting and running off screens. Douggie has his feet in concrete right now.

Yeah I agree. It's partially on Nate for his schemes (or lack thereof), partially on guys for not getting him the ball, and partially on Doug himself for not shaking free. He also seems to have an issue with positioning. Either he's a foot or two behind the line or past the line when he's catching the ball and both are bad.

It's obviously tough given the Myles/Domas situation, but the solution may be to get KOQ some more minutes with him. He knows how to screen for him and the ball is going to continue to stick with Tyreke/Domas in the bench lineups so plays just aren't going to be run for Doug much.

I'm beginning to think that Pritchard, at least in part, signed him as a fallback plan if/when Bogie walks so we know we have a shooter at the 3.

When Doug was in Dallas Rick Carlisle had no problem getting him open and all of them weren't set plays either most where just him coming off a down screen/screen and catching for 3 or cutting to the basket or just got the pass when he was wide open but Rick had him constantly moving whether it was moving off the ball with screens or just touching it just to keep him in rhythm and flow of the offense.

Rick had about 3 set plays for him and most of time or if not all he got open off those plays one play the ran they used 2 or 3 times a game cause he got open quite a lot off it. I think too that a lot of him getting open was the mavs players were able to execute the plays/screens and free him or just give him just enough room to set his feet.

All the time it's pick and roll and then Doug is off to the side in the corner i seen like about 1 or 2 plays a game from Nate Mcmillan and that's it and most of the time like granger said below Reke is so ball dominant with Sobo in the P&R that Doug is just gonna be used as a spacer in a corner off the bench he just won't get any shots and just won't play great off the bench with such a lineup of heavy P&R he needs to be moving to get the best out of him that's when he plays well he'll just get cold standing in a corner.

[lars_rosenberg]

The way Tyreke Evans is being wasted is the worst part in my opinion.
Memphis showed in which role he can make a difference and this is not what McMillan is using him for.

[boomershadow]

We all knew that McDermott could do this when the Pacers signed him. It is literally why the Pacers nabbed him at all. They wanted shooting. They went for JJ Reddick, but after missing out on him, they grabbed Mcbuckets. He fit a need the team needed to fill.

But the Pacers don’t seem to want to use him as a shooter. This seems obvious, but it deserves mention: you can’t shoot the ball unless it gets passed to you. Unfortunately, the ball is rarely getting passed to Doug McDermott.

McD is currently rocking a 12.6 percent usage rate, the second lowest number on the Pacers, only ahead of defensive specialist Cory Joseph. This marks the lowest usage of McDermott’s career, and by a pretty solid amount. It’s over a percent lower than his previous career low figure from his time in Oklahoma City and is 3.6 percent below his career mark. He’s just not getting the ball as much.

Tony East

https://8points9seconds.com/2018/11/11/doug-mcdermott-needs-ball-indiana-pacers/

[Wizop]

you can add Evens in here too. we've not figured out how to use either of them.

[pacers33granger]

One issue is Joseph has too much of a leash on offense. We don't need him to be a scorer this year at all, yet he's consistently holding the ball and taking long 2s. He should be just as much a target for threes as Mcdermott.

Another issue is Sabonis's play has just been so good that the bench tends to stand around and let him operate. No one is really moving once he has the ball and we're only getting open looks off of doubles.

All in all, it's going to take some time. Beyond Evans/Mcdermott being new and Leaf being raw/terrible, our bench is adjusting to Sabonis having a bigger role and the coaching staff having to figure out how best to use that unit. Pritchard clearly tried to make the starters and bench similar in style, but each needs to be run a bit differently.

[jk31]

The Pacers offense in general is just so bad this year. Just look at the stats from basically everyone. Oladipo is good, Sabonis is playing well. Besides? Nearly everyone has a down year. Nearly everyone is shooting less threes than their career average. I think most players are just utilized completely wrong right now...

[Pacers_Freak]

The Pacers offense in general is just so bad this year. Just look at the stats from basically everyone. Oladipo is good, Sabonis is playing well. Besides? Nearly everyone has a down year. Nearly everyone is shooting less threes than their career average. I think most players are just utilized completely wrong right now...

Or the players need to start playing better. Probably Nate's fault that they are shooting 69% from the free throw line? Not saying he doesn't deserve some of the blame but goodness.... I think everyone can agree that he did a helluva job last year. Pretty sure he didn't forget how to coach over the summer.

[Topofthekey]

Not saying he doesn't deserve some of the blame but goodness.... I think everyone can agree that he did a helluva job last year.

I'm not too sure about that

I know it's an unpopular opinion, given how well the team did last season, generating a lot of unexpected feel-good vibe along the way, but in my opinion Nate did "OK" last season; in fact I felt he could have/should have done a lot better

Last season was kind of a contract year for him, so it was natural that he wanted to play for the W's, and indeed he got rewarded with a fat new contract after the Pacers finished with 48 wins

But I would argue that a) much of Pacers' success last season should be attributed to Vic, Nate had very little to do with it, and b) Nate took a win-now approach, at the expense of building for the team's future; in other words I felt like he placed his personal success as a coach higher than the team's success in the future

[Pacers_Freak]

Not saying he doesn't deserve some of the blame but goodness.... I think everyone can agree that he did a helluva job last year.

I'm not too sure about that

I know it's an unpopular opinion, given how well the team did last season, generating a lot of unexpected feel-good vibe along the way, but in my opinion Nate did "OK" last season; in fact I felt he could have/should have done a lot better

Last season was kind of a contract year for him, so it was natural that he wanted to play for the W's, and indeed he got rewarded with a fat new contract after the Pacers finished with 48 wins

But I would argue that a) much of Pacers' success last season should be attributed to Vic, Nate had very little to do with it, and b) Nate took a win-now approach, at the expense of building for the team's future; in other words I felt like he placed his personal success as a coach higher than the team's success in the future

Vegas and other pundits had our win total in the low 30s. The team last year exceeded every expectation that anyone had. I agree Vic was a big part of it. I choose not to take the approach that when we win its the players doing well and when we lose it is the coach's fault. There is give and take in both of those IMO. Not sure how Nate winning last year was the expense of the future unless you are of the opinion that Leaf should have played more? And he obviously wasn't ready. I personally think they over achieved last year and raised the expectations a bit high of what they would accomplish this year. My main point is guys like Collison and Bogey had career years last year. If that was all on the players and no help of the coaches then the players deserve the blame for the somewhat slow start this year as well.

[Topofthekey]

Vegas and other pundits had our win total in the low 30s. The team last year exceeded every expectation that anyone had. I agree Vic was a big part of it. I choose not to take the approach that when we win its the players doing well and when we lose it is the coach's fault. There is give and take in both of those IMO.

Yup, they definitely exceeded all expectations, smashed it to bits and then some

But the thing that stuck out was they went 0-6 when Vic was out. Of course, any team would suffer without its best player, but I'd imagine that they could have/should have at least stole a game or maybe two. I didn't watch all six of those games, but from what I remember watching, the offense was really tame, they were sort of passing the ball back and forth, as if they didn't really have a plan of what to do with it

Not sure how Nate winning last year was the expense of the future unless you are of the opinion that Leaf should have played more? And he obviously wasn't ready

It's hard of course to predict what could have been, but there were two things that I felt were lacking last season

First one, there didn't seem to be a concrete effort/direction on developing Myles last season. Granted, he was out for some time with niggling injuries, but they just didn't seem to really focus on his development on the offensive end. You could see it in the games where Myles would hit a few quick buckets at the beginning of the game, and then for one reason or another he'd disappear for the rest of the game. They would have continued looking for Myles if Nate wanted to focus on developing Myles, I think, but he chose to go with other more proven players, or someone with the hot hand. That, to me, indicated that Nate was playing for every single W he could get, instead of player development. The end result was everything revolved around Vic, and we saw how Cavaliers disrupted the entire team's offense just by doubling Vic. It feels as if the moment Nate found out how good Vic was, he was content to just sit back and let Vic carry the team the rest of the season

Second thing, for some reason Nate chose to run a tight 8 man rotation right out of the gates. The team had some young players last season, like Poythress, GR3, Joe Young. Granted, none of them were what you would exactly call a blue chip prospect, but for a team that just lost its best player, with no other clear talent to fill the void, I thought the best approach to take was to give all these young players a chance to prove themselves. Instead they were all sort of kept on a short leash, with Nate favouring the more established vets, again as I said probably in order to chase after every single W possible. Leaf wasn't ready, but he probably would have benefitted from some degree of exposure and experience playing against NBA teams instead of spending most of the season in the G league

I'm not saying that Nate was wrong to prioritize winning, but actively developing Myles and giving the team an extensive look at the younger players would probably have been a better route long term. Sure, if he did that the team wouldn't have accumulated 48 wins, but even if they ended up with, say, 40 wins (losing games due to mistakes or poor play by the younger players), I think most people will still feel really happy with the season, given how as you said people were expecting the team to win like 30 games or so. Also, if the team had won 40 games or something, sure they probably would have narrowly missed the playoffs, but the flip side is that they would have drafted in the high teens, or if lucky, we could maybe even have a Trae Young on the roster now

[pacers33granger]

Not saying he doesn't deserve some of the blame but goodness.... I think everyone can agree that he did a helluva job last year.

I'm not too sure about that

I know it's an unpopular opinion, given how well the team did last season, generating a lot of unexpected feel-good vibe along the way, but in my opinion Nate did "OK" last season; in fact I felt he could have/should have done a lot better

Last season was kind of a contract year for him, so it was natural that he wanted to play for the W's, and indeed he got rewarded with a fat new contract after the Pacers finished with 48 wins

But I would argue that a) much of Pacers' success last season should be attributed to Vic, Nate had very little to do with it, and b) Nate took a win-now approach, at the expense of building for the team's future; in other words I felt like he placed his personal success as a coach higher than the team's success in the future

So Nate doesn't get credit for any success but gets the majority of the blame for failures? Also odd to say that Nate had little to do with winning, yet it was his taking a win-now approach that got some of those wins.

He's still the guy who put Vic in the position to excel, had multiple guys have career years under him, managed minutes well enough to get everyone a good amount of floor time, and got the entire team to buy in.

I'm not sure what he could have done differently to build for the future either. Play Leaf more? All our other young guys got their share of minutes, except GRIII who got injured and then sucked when he came back late in the season.

[Pacers_Freak]

Vegas and other pundits had our win total in the low 30s. The team last year exceeded every expectation that anyone had. I agree Vic was a big part of it. I choose not to take the approach that when we win its the players doing well and when we lose it is the coach's fault. There is give and take in both of those IMO.

Yup, they definitely exceeded all expectations, smashed it to bits and then some

But the thing that stuck out was they went 0-6 when Vic was out. Of course, any team would suffer without its best player, but I'd imagine that they could have/should have at least stole a game or maybe two. I didn't watch all six of those games, but from what I remember watching, the offense was really tame, they were sort of passing the ball back and forth, as if they didn't really have a plan of what to do with it

Not sure how Nate winning last year was the expense of the future unless you are of the opinion that Leaf should have played more? And he obviously wasn't ready

It's hard of course to predict what could have been, but there were two things that I felt were lacking last season

First one, there didn't seem to be a concrete effort/direction on developing Myles last season. Granted, he was out for some time with niggling injuries, but they just didn't seem to really focus on his development on the offensive end. You could see it in the games where Myles would hit a few quick buckets at the beginning of the game, and then for one reason or another he'd disappear for the rest of the game. They would have continued looking for Myles if Nate wanted to focus on developing Myles, I think, but he chose to go with other more proven players, or someone with the hot hand. That, to me, indicated that Nate was playing for every single W he could get, instead of player development. The end result was everything revolved around Vic, and we saw how Cavaliers disrupted the entire team's offense just by doubling Vic. It feels as if the moment Nate found out how good Vic was, he was content to just sit back and let Vic carry the team the rest of the season

Second thing, for some reason Nate chose to run a tight 8 man rotation right out of the gates. The team had some young players last season, like Poythress, GR3, Joe Young. Granted, none of them were what you would exactly call a blue chip prospect, but for a team that just lost its best player, with no other clear talent to fill the void, I thought the best approach to take was to give all these young players a chance to prove themselves. Instead they were all sort of kept on a short leash, with Nate favouring the more established vets, again as I said probably in order to chase after every single W possible. Leaf wasn't ready, but he probably would have benefitted from some degree of exposure and experience playing against NBA teams instead of spending most of the season in the G league

I'm not saying that Nate was wrong to prioritize winning, but actively developing Myles and giving the team an extensive look at the younger players would probably have been a better route long term. Sure, if he did that the team wouldn't have accumulated 48 wins, but even if they ended up with, say, 40 wins (losing games due to mistakes or poor play by the younger players), I think most people will still feel really happy with the season, given how as you said people were expecting the team to win like 30 games or so. Also, if the team had won 40 games or something, sure they probably would have narrowly missed the playoffs, but the flip side is that they would have drafted in the high teens, or if lucky, we could maybe even have a Trae Young on the roster now

I think one thing to keep in mind is that the Simon's want as many wins as possible. The more games they win the more butts that are going to be in the seats. Don't necessarily disagree with your overall assessment but that is one important thing to keep in mind. That win as many games as you can mantra came straight from the top. It is a business and they do not have the luxury of being in a big market and sacrificing W's for development. The cost of tickets for Pacer home game in 2017-2018 spiked significantly on Stubhub etc as the season went on. That means the Pacers were selling more tickets and spiking the secondary market. That is the bottom line for the Simon's. I'm going to guess last year was their best $$ year since the ECF teams.

[Topofthekey]

I think one thing to keep in mind is that the Simon's want as many wins as possible. The more games they win the more butts that are going to be in the seats. Don't necessarily disagree with your overall assessment but that is one important thing to keep in mind. That win as many games as you can mantra came straight from the top. It is a business and they do not have the luxury of being in a big market and sacrificing W's for development. The cost of tickets for Pacer home game in 2017-2018 spiked significantly on Stubhub etc as the season went on. That means the Pacers were selling more tickets and spiking the secondary market. That is the bottom line for the Simon's. I'm going to guess last year was their best $$ year since the ECF teams.

Yup, I didn't think they should be tanking or anything like that as well, but there was just an over reliance on vets

For example, Trevor Booker played 17 games, averaging about 15.8 mpg. For Al Jefferson it was 36 games, 13.4 mpg. Even Damien Wilkins played 19 games, 8 mpg. Contrast that to the younger players: Poythress 25 games, 4.2 mpg, Leaf 53 games, 8.7 mpg. I'm not saying the minutes should necessarily come at the expense of the 8 main rotational players, and I do enjoy watching vets like Al Jefferson do their thing, but even when scrapping the bottom of the barrel, Nate went with vets over the younger players; I think the younger players would have benefited from the playing time instead

And I remember Darren Collison missed a good number of games last season, but I don't remember Joe Young seeing that much playing time either other than sporadic action here and there (I think Nate instead went for a mixture of Vic/Lance/CoJo for both guard spots)

You're right that ultimately the NBA is a business though, and Nate was perhaps just carrying out what he was possibly mandated to do (get as many W's as possible), but I still think a balance could have been struck, like favouring the younger players over the 3rd tier vets, or actively trying to develop Myles instead of defaulting to the hand hot every game