Aaron Nesmith discusses his shooting adjustments
Aaron Nesmith scored 12 points in the Pacers’ preseason opening win over Minnesota on Tuesday.
Without Tyrese Haliburton and Myles Turner, the Pacers have lost significant 3-point shooting; here’s how they could compensate for itThe rest of the Pacers were primarily catch-and-shoot 3-point shooters, that will need to changeThe Pacers host the Oklahoma City at 7 p.m. Saturday in a preseason game
INDIANAPOLIS — Aaron Nesmith caught a pass at the left elbow in the first quarter of Tuesday’s preseason game against the Timberwolves and found Minnesota forward Naz Reid ready to contest.
A season ago, Nesmith’s first thought might have been to pass and keep the ball moving to find an open man, but a quick scan of the floor showed there wasn’t a Pacer on the floor with any more space to operate than he had. So Nesmith decided to create more space by feinting to his right then taking one dribble to his left before he pulled up for 3. Reid bit just hard enough on the fake to be late on his attempt to contest the shot and Nesmith splashed a 24-footer for his second 3-pointer of the night.
It was a simple move and it only took about two seconds, from catch to release, for Nesmith to execute it, but it provided one of the first clues for how the Pacers will look to adapt their approach with the loss of All-Star point guard Tyrese Haliburton for the season with an Achilles tendon tear and the more permanent loss of center Myles Turner to free agency.
The Pacers have clearly signaled that they will approach 2025-26 with the same overarching theory as 2024-25. As coach Rick Carlisle said last season, their physicality will come from their persistence. They will lean into their conditioning and trust that they will be able to exhaust teams by pressuring the ball the length of the floor and getting the ball up the floor as fast as possible to try to play advantage basketball on offense.
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Still, there are math and geometry problems to solve as the Pacers have to find a way to make up for 25.8% of their points from 2024-25 and 34.6% of their 3-pointers, which Haliburton and Turner combined. They need to make shots and they need to create gravity. One way they can do that is by having their best shooters increase their volume by creating shots off the dribble and taking shots that are a little more contested than they’re used to. Over the last two seasons, Nesmith, Pascal Siakam, Obi Toppin and others have largely let 3s come to them with the Pacers exquisite ball movement creating open catch-and-shoot opportunities. With Haliburton out, however, those might not be as easy to come by, but the Pacers still need the 3-ball.
Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said the team hasn’t been explicit about charging Nesmith, All-Star forward Pascal Siakam and others about looking to shoot off the dribble, but acknowledged the Pacers’ shot profile could include more of those shots. Nesmith and Siakam combined to score 26 points playing 14 minutes each in the first half of the game and were 5 of 9 from 3-point range, and each of them took shots off the dribble.
“In general, things this year are going to look a little different,” Carlisle said after practice Thursday. “It’s not something we specifically talked about, those guys taking more off the bounce. But those are shots those guys work on. We’ve gotta generate the best shots that we can and we always want to generate good-looking 3s. I like the shots that they took.”
With Haliburton healthy, the Pacers had a number of methods of generating good-looking 3s as he is both an elite-level creator and shooter. He could bring the ball up and create his own shot off the dribble, get off the ball for catch-and-shoot opportunities himself or get the ball popping around so that it eventually found a wide-open man. Wings were — and still are — instructed to sprint to the corners to start every possession which often led to open 3s in transition, but even in the half court, Haliburton’s gravity often drew two defenders and got opponents in rotation that there was usually someone open. And if Haliburton was single-covered, he was exceptional at creating and knocking down step-back 3s, especially in late-game scenarios.
According to NBA.com’s tracking data, 2,050 of the Pacers’ 2,934 3-point attempts last regular season (69.9%) were taken without a single dribble. That included including 780 of their 1081 made 3-pointers (72.2%). Haliburton was responsible for than half of the 3-pointers made off the dribble and nearly half of the attempts off the dribble himself. The Pacers were 301 of 884 from beyond the arc off the dribble as a team. Haliburton was 155 of 414, recording 51.5% of the made 3s and 46.8% of the attempts.
Haliburton was one of just two players in the Pacers’ rotation who took more 3s off the bounce than catch-and-shoot 3s, knocking down 63 of 146 catch-and-shoot attempts for a team-leading 218 total 3s on 562 total attempts. The other was Bennedict Mathurin, who was 52 of 127 on zero-dribble 3s and 46 of 161 off at least one bounce. The rest of the Pacers’ key players’ 3-point attempts were overwhelmingly catch-and-shoot.
Siakam finished third behind Turner with 126 3-pointers on 324 attempts. Only 11 of the makes and 30 of the attempts were off the dribble. Nesmith — who missed 35 games with an ankle injury but led the team at 3-point shooting percentage at .431 — hit 72 catch-and-shoot 3s on 161 attempts and just 11 of 32 attempts off the bounce. Toppin hit 99 3s on catch-and-shoot and 11 off the bounce. Even Andrew Nembhard, the secondary ball-handler, hit 39 catch-and-shoot 3s to 12 off the dribble.
Ideally, the Pacers would still get a healthy number of clean 3-point looks on catch-and-shoots, but they are prepared to create more for themselves with Haliburton gone. It’s clearly important for Nesmith to continue to get chances to shoot after he hit 60 3-pointers in the playoffs — the most of anyone in the 2024-25 postseason — at a 49.2% clip. He hit 8 of 9 3-point attempts including six straight in a 30-point effort in the Pacers’ remarkable comeback win over the Knicks in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals.
“I think every year I’ve taken more and more (off the dribble),” Nesmith said. “I don’t think it’s any different. Every year, just getting a little bit better, a little more comfortable, working on that part of my game, expanding my game. Opportunities will go up for me to take those kind of shots. I have to be ready to make them.”
Nesmith has been working on his handle throughout his time in Indiana to be able to shoot off the bounce but also to attack closeouts with drives. He’s made steady progress and said he’s feels confident increasing his scoring load in general. He averaged 12.0 points per game on 8.4 field goal attempts per game including 4.3 3-pointers per game.
Nesmith said he and others also have to be willing to hit more shots within range of defenders like the one he hit over Reid. Last season, 62 of his 84 3-pointers came when there wasn’t a defender within 6 feet of him according to the NBA.com tracking data. Another 20 came when the closest defender was 4-6 feet away. He was 2 of 5 on attempts with defenders closer than 4 feet away.
“We have to shoot a little bit more contested shots,” Nesmith said, “but that’s nothing I’m not comfortable with.”
Siakam is likely to have more of those opportunities as well because he’ll be operating as a secondary ball-handler, something he did at times with the Raptors as well. If he shoots off the bounce when bringing the ball up, he could also draw more defensive attention, which could lead to ball movement that creates more open shots.
“I know that I probably have to get more 3s but I’m not super-focused on it,” Siakam said. “It’s about what the defense gives me. … I know I can be another supporter for Drew as a guard. Somebody who can get us into whatever we want to get to or break down the defense. Naturally, you’re going to get gravity based on what I can bring.”
All told it’s going to make for a different shooting dynamic, and the Pacers themselves aren’t even sure what it’s going to look like yet, but they do know they have to make up for a lot of shot creation.
“We’re going to be an aggressive team,” Carlisle said. “We’re gonna play on our front foot and we’re gonna have to have a fearless attitude.”
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