How the Pacers did better in giving the Bucks their best shot(s)

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By: Caitlin Cooper I @C2_Cooper

Before Tyrese Haliburton sprinted into the shot of the year for the Pacers, falling out of bounds to his left as he drained a three and got fouled for a miraculous, four-point play that sealed a 115-114 critical, late-season win over the Milwaukee Bucks, the game seemed as though it might end in nearly the same manner as it began.

On the very first possession, Haliburton flipped around as the supposed first screener in a stagger to come off a down screen from Myles Turner, flowing into stack pick-and-roll.

Except, this wasn't any ordinary stack pick-and-roll, in which a ball-screen (normally from a big) is combined with a back-screen from a guard or wing for the picker to roll toward the basket. Rather, although the ball-screen was set by Turner, Indiana's starting big man was the player who slipped out to the perimeter, while the guard, being Andrew Nembhard, darted in the direction of the rim.

That role reversal, in combination with the fact that the ball-screen was set at an angle, with the action developing at the wing as opposed to the middle of the floor, effectively served as a shot across the bow in the form of a shot above the break. As Brook Lopez was hopping around the back-screen from Nembhard and motioning for the guards to switch (they didn't!), Haliburton was dribbling toward the sideline, stringing out the defense in one direction, at the same time as Turner was drifting along the arc in the other. Put simply, almost as if they were splitting a wishbone, the Pacers were applying as much tension as possible on Lopez to defend in space, while also providing themselves with a baked-in counter. After all, if the guards for Milwaukee had switched, Turner could easily shoot over the top of Damian Lillard, just as he could also shoot before Lopez could get out to contest.

Well, the only problem is, the Bucks got their wish.

Turner missed, just as he also missed on six of his other seven attempts from deep, including in a similar scenario when the Pacers were clinging to a three-point lead with 2:40 to play in the fourth quarter. Again, Haliburton dribbled in an east-west orientation to increase the distance from Turner, who likewise released from the pick on a curve in an east-west orientation to increase the distance from Haliburton.

With Nembhard in the dunker spot, where he often takes up residence in order to create wider gaps on the perimeter while also forcing a guard to protect the rim, the Bucks were left wishing again -- either relying on Lopez to recover, removing Giannis Antetokounmpo from his post around the basket (where he had off-ball switched with Lillard), or taking a chance on rotating Lillard's smaller frame away from Pascal Siakam to contest against Turner at the top of the key.

Well, wish granted again. Turner missed, just as the rest of the Pacers did over roughly the next two minutes (until they didn't!), going 0-of-3 from deep while also committing a turnover as Haliburton came up empty on a step-back three to his preferred right against a switch from Lopez, with Nembhard also misfiring twice on open spot-up attempts from nearly the same spot but much closer range than where he brought the Pacers back from the brink by firing from way behind the brink against the Knicks in the second round of the playoffs.

"As a group, we missed a lot of open ones," Tyrese Haliburton told reporters of the team's 13-of-39 shooting on threes after making the biggest and toughest shot of the game. "We feel really comfortable. We got a lot of good looks, like a lot of good looks. There's probably an advanced stat that Caitlin will write about."

As to what degree they underperformed their shot quality, as tracked by Second Spectrum, he added: "I would bet that we rank tonight probably ... the biggest differential in the league this year. We got a ton of good looks, we just didn't make them."

It wasn't the biggest differential in the league this season, but the Pacers were comparatively better at giving the Bucks their best shot(s). Here's how both teams fared relative to their shot quality, with the difference in expected effective field-goal percentage versus actual effective field-goal percentage shown in parenthesis.

Expected eFG% vs. Actual eFG% (Difference)

• Bucks: 54.95 - 58.33 (+3.38)

• Pacers: 55.39 - 50.00 (-5.39)

As Haliburton predicted, the numbers reveal that the Pacers underperformed their expected rate by 5.39 percent, while also deriving more expected value out of their threes. Generally speaking, defenses have much more control over the volume and location of opponent threes than they do over conversion rate. Still, there's plenty of evidence that the Pacers generated "a ton of good looks" that they "just didn't make."

When Milwaukee took a 48-47 lead with 4:26 to play in the second quarter on a dunk from Giannis Antetokounmpo, the prior two possessions for the Pacers saw Aaron Nesmith misfire from the top of the key without anyone within arm's reach of the free throw line, let alone his release.

The same was the case for Nembhard on the next possession.

And for Turner in the immediate aftermath of Antetokounmpo's dunk.

Three possessions, three practice shots. Granted, Nembhard is having a down season as a shooter, converting just 32.6 percent of his catch-and-shoot threes, but the Bucks didn't intentionally leave him open. In each case, the wide open looks were either preceded by a paint touch or dribble penetration that broke the free throw line, putting the broken down defense into rotation.

With Haliburton's gravity dribbling off ball-screens serving as the impetus for two of those attempts, it was quite the contrast from what transpired in the second of two recent losses to Atlanta, when the Hawks jumped out to a 17-point lead late in the second quarter as the Pacers isolated on three possessions in a row against Onyeka Okongwu. First, with Bennedict Mathurin taking a 20-foot jumper against the big man even as Myles Turner was being guarded by Caris LeVert. Then, with Nembhard launching a long bomb against the same switch at the end of the shot clock. And finally, with Pascal Siakam getting his shot blocked after going straight at that match-up and hoisting up a floater without making a single pass.

Of course, Haliburton wasn't available for that two-game miniseries. In his first game back after being sidelined for three games in a row due to a left hip flexor strain, the Pacers were contested on a lower percentage of their three-point attempts than in any game this season, with just 66.67 percent being launched with a defender making an effort to bother the shot. To put how many "good looks" they generated into further perspective, Milwaukee's average closest defender distance in this game was 9.589 feet, which is not only the highest average posted against the Pacers this season but also the highest average posted by any team in any game this season. As such, Haliburton didn't just knock down the dagger three, he also basically hit the nail on the head with his postgame synopsis.

Turns out, the closest defended three that anyone put up in this game for either team was Haliburton's miracle shot, with Antetokounmpo's distance from Haliburton logged at just 1.595 feet.

That said, the brilliance of that football-style play, which was discussed here at length with assistant coach Jenny Boucek, is that it creates a catch-and-shoot three-point attempt with everyone running toward the basket as a credible shooter, making it incredibly difficult to foul up three before the shot or avoiding fouling on the shot, as Antetokounmpo found out.

There's been tweaks over time to perfect the timing. In Portland, which was the first time the Pacers ran the play in an end-of-game situation, coincidentally, in what was Pascal Siakam's first game after being traded to Indiana, Haliburton got a shot off from that same corner. Here, with the Blazers hanging back closer to the three-point line, note the difference with how early Myles Turner takes off to run the middle route by comparison to how he brushes Antetokounmpo against Milwaukee.

Likewise, whereas Buddy Hield and Haliburton cross in front of Mathurin in Portland as a trailing release valve, Haliburton circled behind the chaos against the Bucks, with Siakam running almost in tandem as a blocking team with Nesmith. As a whole, the league has posted an effective field-goal percentage of just 22.77 percent on threes attempted with four seconds or less remaining in the fourth quarter or overtime of games with a score differential of three points or less. For Haliburton to get a shot off the catch in this situation as the team's best movement shooter is an accomplishment in and of itself. For him to get a shot off the catch as the team's best movement shooter and actually make it while getting fouled is a triumph, not only against the odds but also perhaps his own tendencies.

Siakam was masterful, particularly during the start of the fourth quarter when he scored or assisted on 11-straight points for the Pacers in a span of three minutes, as he dabbled in nearly every play-type, spotting up from deep, zigging-and-zagging with his staccato play-style as a driver for a dunk, and dragging out a double team in the post to pass open Myles Turner as a cutter. And yet, even as Siakam made big plays in a big game while also being tasked with guarding Antetokounmpo in contrast to his usual defensive role as sweeper, Haliburton was at times perhaps too quick to find him, passing out of a potential floater for an open shot in the corner.

Then again, with Antetokounmpo rotating to the basket away from Siakam as a 41.3 percent shooter on corner threes, that's also another example of the many "good looks" that the Pacers manufactured that they "just didn't make."

Both teams have flubs they can point to on defense. The Pacers may want to rethink going overboard with overs on screens at half-court with Myles Turner up to a touch or above the level, as they too often left themselves no room for error when Antetokounmpo and Lillard had plenty of room to punish their errors with odd-man advantages. On the flip side, the point of attack defense for Milwaukee looked quite a bit different when Andre Jackson wasn't shadowing Haliburton the full-length of the floor, as was the case in the November loss. Likewise, the Bucks will probably also find that, in addition to that particular match-up change, taking some bad shots contributed to why they got obliterated 31-3 in fast-break points.

Even so, while changes could potentially lead to the next game (or next series) being played differently, there's reason for the Pacers to "feel really comfortable" in how much comfort they had from three, as it was somewhat miraculous that they even needed a miracle.