Why Obi Toppin's return should signal consolidation (Patreon)

-- eventually 

By: Caitlin Cooper I @C2_Cooper

Turns out, Obi Toppin won't be listening to offers from any other teams, as the restricted free agent reached agreement on a four-year, $60 million deal to stay with the Pacers just hours before the start of free agency, reports ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski.

To a certain extent, this is a no-brainer for the Pacers. As the first player in team history to finish a season with at least 100 completed dunks and 100 made threes, Toppin is a natural extension and, oftentimes, highly efficient endpoint of the team's identity in the open floor. For the season, his effective field-goal percentage of 66.1 percent ranked second in the league despite the fact that he attempted over 200 threes (i.e. Grayson Allen was the only other player to place among the top-10 while hoisting that volume of shots from deep), and he was the recipient of 71 advance passes from Tyrese Haliburton, which was more than the centers on the roster combined for (54).

As such, on the league-leading team in average time to shoot, Toppin was a key contributor off the bench for the Eastern Conference Finalists -- not only with the way he advanced himself in front of the offense, but also with how he advanced the ball in the half-court with his quick decision-making. And yet, what stood out most about his performance from two specific closeouts games during the playoffs also stands in front of the Pacers as a potential fork in the road moving forward.

At one end of the spectrum is Game 6 against the Milwaukee Bucks, in which he led all scorers for the Pacers with 21 points, stepping into threes in transition, leaking out for runouts, finding nylon on a push-shot in the lane as the roll-man, and even dribbling uphill to make a one-handed pass with his left! On the whole, with the Bucks transitioning from cross-matching Brook Lopez onto Pascal Siakam in Games 1 and 2 to planting the seeds of the agrarian economy of buckets that would be grown by Tyrese Haliburton and Myles Turner against drop coverage and blitzing through the middle portion of the series to eventually switching everything, the stage was set for the role players to deliver for the Pacers, with the ball hopping both in the open floor as well as between actions, and Toppin was arguably majestic -- exceeding even the most optimistic expectations of how he would come to fit with the Pacers.

Unfortunately, the same could not be said in the reverse, when the Pacers needed to switch in Game 4 against the Celtics. For that game, after Al Horford made more threes (7) than the entire team for Indiana in Game 3 (5), the Pacers switched on 46.2 picks per 100 possessions in that game compared to 20.7 over the prior three games combined and 5.4 during the entirety of the Eastern Conference Semi-Finals against the Knicks. In that setting, with Myles Turner managing a bad back, Toppin revealed the extent to which he builds out the team's strengths but doesn't necessarily address their weaknesses.

With 3:54 to play in the fourth quarter, Indiana attempted to go small with Obi Toppin at the five next to Pascal Siakam. For the next two-and-a-half minutes, the Pacers were held scoreless, and the Celtics converted two shots -- both with Toppin attempting to defend in space.

In that regard, while it is certainly notable that Siakam wasn't assigned to Tatum or Brown for that game, he generally isn't quite as limited with his containment switching out to the ball. In fact, according to Second Spectrum, the Pacers gave up just 0.813 points per chance with Siakam switching out to the ball as the screener defender in the postseason, compared to 1.136 with Toppin. To be fair, the Pacers outscored opponents by 9.1 points per 100 possessions in 95 minutes with Toppin at nominal five in lineups with Siakam during the regular season, and that number likewise stayed above sea level in the playoffs (+4.5) over nearly the same sample size of playing time (94), but it was largely propped up by just that... outscoring opponents.

If that combination proves viable over a larger sample size in spot minutes, then the fact that Jalen Smith turned down his player option will be more palatable, as will the possibility of finding playing time for all of Andrew Nembhard, Bennedict Mathurin, Ben Sheppard, and Jarace Walker --- though doing so would likely chip into Isaiah Jackson's role as back-up five.

Otherwise, if they prefer to play with a traditional center on the floor at all times, Walker's progression as a shooter suggests that he could potentially be shoehorned into playing at the three, as opposed to solely competing for minutes at power forward. To his credit, after shooting a combined 14-of-62 (22.5 percent) on jump-shots at Summer League and during preseason action, Walker made quick adjustments to his shot in the G League, eliminating the hitch that was visible in Las Vegas while dealing with his elbow injury and also reining in his tendency to drift to his left on his release. By comparison, he connected on 39.4 percent of his jump-shots in the G League, including shooting 41 percent on guarded threes. Granted, not very many of those attempts are coming off any type of dynamic movement, such as slipping out into space as the ghost screener or rising and firing off screens or out of hand-offs, but he's made enough tweaks to think that he could be a standstill floor-spacer in addition to what else he adds as a connector and with his touch on the offensive end of the floor.

In that scenario, after starting two games in the Eastern Conference Finals and cracking the eight-man rotation consistently throughout all three rounds of the playoffs, Ben Sheppard would most likely be on the outside-in looking in -- which, to this point, wouldn't exactly be justified as it pertains to his ability to play to scheme on both ends of the floor, barring significant strides from Walker in Las Vegas this summer. And, therein lies the rub. When thinking back to how Game 4 ended against the Celtics, the idea of who Walker could be as a defender provides the likeliest in-house solution on the roster, but that isn't who he is yet. As someone who went from a hyper-aggressive defensive scheme in college to a far more conservative system with the Pacers, he needs time to earn playing time on a team that, after advancing to the Eastern Conference Finals, is focused more so on the here and now. It's possible that Walker will appear more ready to be part of the team's present at Summer League; however, even if he does, that again means that another young player won't be playing.

To that point, the fast-paced play-style of the Pacers, which Toppin arguably epitomizes, lends itself to playing more bodies, but T.J. McConnell even started the season outside of the rotation due to the difficulties of trying to play 10 deep. If the starting lineups remains the same, with McConnell, Mathurin, Toppin, and Jackson rounding out the top-nine, that leaves one spot for Sheppard or Walker, not counting the three players the team just drafted in the second round.

All of which is to say, there's a case for the Pacers running back largely the same roster and banking on internal development, but only if there's time for the players who, in theory, could eventually address what needs to be addressed on the defensive end to develop. If not, while there certainly doesn't need to be a rush to make a change as they continue the evaluation process, Toppin's return as a key contributor on a four-year pact should arguably signal an eventual consolidation move with some of the developing players on the roster -- not only to search for what they still need to find in the immediate at the defensive end, but also to avoid the potential for Toppin to become in Indiana what Julius Randle was as a logjam to him in New York.