Scouting one-pager: Indiana Pacers (IND)
2025-26 regular season · 82 games · 7,304 FGA. Auto-generated by scouting/build_onepager.py from public data; every number traceable to a gated pipeline in this repo. Shot pricing uses the 2023-24 shot-quality model, whose season-out transfer was validated in the backtest; shot-making is empirical-Bayes shrunk before it is allowed to drive a conclusion.
Terms
- PPS: Points per shot: total points on field-goal attempts divided by attempts. Free throws excluded.
- xPPS: Expected points per shot - the model's fair price of a shot diet: what an average shooter would score on the same attempts, judged from location and shot type alone, before knowing what went in.
- shot-making: Actual minus expected points per 100 shots: conversion above or below what the shot diet itself explains. Positive means making shots the model prices as hard.
- EB making: A player's shot-making after empirical-Bayes shrinkage: the observed number pulled toward the league mean in proportion to its sampling noise. The number to trust for projection.
- FGA: Field-goal attempts.
- RAPM: Regularized adjusted plus-minus: a ridge regression crediting each player with net points per 100 possessions while adjusting for the other nine players on the floor.
- net_100: Net points per 100 possessions: 100 x plus-minus / possessions; sits on the same scale as the NBA's published net rating.
- rush: Shots in the final four seconds of a period - the desperation window where both shot selection and execution collapse.
- empirical Bayes: Estimate the spread of true skill across the league from the data, then pull each individual's noisy estimate toward the league mean in proportion to its noise.
- shrinkage weight: The fraction of an observed number that survives empirical-Bayes regression: 1 means fully trusted, 0 means replaced by the league mean.
- CI: Confidence interval.
Keys
- Above-the-break three team: corners are only 23.8% of their threes (league 25.9%); their spacing lives higher on the arc.
- T.J. McConnell is a genuine shot-maker: +8.6 pts/100 above expectation after empirical-Bayes shrinkage; contest even the bad shots.
- Best shot diet: Jay Huff (1.19 xPPS on 611 FGA). The value is where the shots come from; deny the spot, not the release.
- Their most-used five that wins its minutes: P. Siakam - A. Nembhard - A. Nesmith - J. Huff - J. Furphy (+2.0/100 over 196 possessions).
Shot profile vs league
| IND | League | Δ |
|---|
| PPS (points per shot) | 1.066 | 1.091 | -0.025 |
| xPPS, the shot-diet price* | 1.084 | 1.097 | -0.012 |
| Shot-making, pts/100 vs model | -1.8 | -0.5 | -1.3 |
| Rim share | 27.1% | 28.4% | -1.3 pp |
| Mid-range share | 12.1% | 10.0% | +2.0 pp |
| Three share | 42.2% | 41.5% | +0.7 pp |
| Corner share of threes | 23.8% | 25.9% | -2.1 pp |
| Final-4s (rush) shot share | 1.6% | 1.8% | -0.2 pp |
* xPPS prices where they shoot from, independent of whether shots fell: the stable, scoutable part of the profile (year-over-year r ≈ .9).
Personnel (top 8 by volume)
| Player | FGA | PPS | xPPS (diet) | Making/100 | EB making | RAPM/100 |
|---|
| Pascal Siakam | 1,155 | 1.059 | 1.022 | +3.7 | +2.9 | +0.7 |
| Andrew Nembhard | 753 | 1.027 | 0.999 | +2.8 | +1.8 | -3.4 |
| Jarace Walker | 733 | 1.019 | 1.069 | -5.0 | -3.7 | -3.6 |
| Jay Huff | 611 | 1.147 | 1.194 | -4.7 | -3.3 | -0.5 |
| Aaron Nesmith | 512 | 1.033 | 1.072 | -3.9 | -2.6 | -0.3 |
| T.J. McConnell | 450 | 1.111 | 0.978 | +13.3 | +8.6 | -0.5 |
| Ben Sheppard | 387 | 1.085 | 1.133 | -4.7 | -2.8 | -1.6 |
| Bennedict Mathurin | 358 | 1.028 | 1.062 | -3.4 | -2.1 | -1.1 |
EB making = shot-making regressed to league mean by reliability: the number to trust. RAPM from the opponent-adjusted 2025-26 lineup model (±≈3/100 CI at a season of minutes; treat as descriptive).
Most-used lineups
| Lineup | Min | Poss | Net/100 |
|---|
| P. Siakam - A. Nembhard - J. Huff - E. Thompson - B. Mathurin | 96 | 197 | -8.1 |
| P. Siakam - A. Nembhard - A. Nesmith - J. Huff - J. Furphy | 95 | 196 | +2.0 |
| P. Siakam - A. Nembhard - A. Nesmith - J. Huff - J. Walker | 86 | 187 | +1.1 |