Pacers offense reaches new level vs Bulls with 49 assists, and who is this Ben Sheppard?!
Pacers passing and Ben Sheppard hit new highs vs Bulls.
CHICAGO – Less than 15 seconds after tipoff in Pacers vs Bulls on Wednesday, Jay Huff found himself at the top of the key with the ball. He spent a beat surveying, then realized Pascal Siakam slipped to the rim after action on the left wing and was wide open. Huff fired the ball to his All-Star teammate, who finished an easy basket at the cup.
It was an assist for Huff and simple points for the Pacers. And it was foreshadowing of the night to come for the Pacers – they kept passing, cutting, and scoring with comical ease as they pummeled Chicago.
The Pacers had six assists less than four minutes into the game, then 10 after 7.5 minutes. Their lead was six at the time. By the end of the first quarter, the Pacers led by a half dozen and already had 39 points. They tossed out 16 assists, a remarkable number for one quarter.
"Played with great tempo from the very beginning," head coach Rick Carlisle said postgame of his team's offense.
Tony East
The second quarter was nearly identical. The Pacers made 16 shots and 14 of them were assisted. The ball movement, regardless of who started a possession or how things got going, was sublime. At halftime, the Pacers had 30 assists, already an above-average number for a full game. They eclipsed 80 points and were ahead by nearly 20 points at the break.
Carlisle shared that the first-half assist number was the most in any half by any team this season. And his team was without Tyrese Haliburton, Andrew Nembhard, and T.J. McConnell. It was a remarkable half, and no individual had more than five assists (Pascal Siakam).
"I feel like that's just Pacer basketball," two-way contract guard Ethan Thompson said. "Playing unselfish, playing fast, and trying to keep the advantage. And then, we were hitting shots, so we got a lot of assists from that."
Chicago's defense did little to slow the Pacers. They gave up advantage after advantage and didn't have the size or power to adjust their matchups. Pacers' guards had easy lanes into the paint all night. Siakam could shoot over almost anyone – the few he couldn't were too slow to stay in front of him.
That led to more passing, and more scoring, in the second half. The Pacers lead reached a game-high 28 early in the fourth quarter, and they kept pushing towards the franchise assist record.
The best-ever mark by the Pacers is 50 assists in one game, a number they hit in January of 2024. On that night, Haliburton had 18 assists and McConnell had 10. Two point guards ran the show and initiated offense.
That wasn't the case for the Pacers on Wednesday, yet they still were in hot pursuit of the record. Kam Jones and Quenton Jackson, who are both better scorers than distributors, were the leading initiators for the Pacers in Chicago.
But the entire team kept moving the ball and creating good shots. By the end of the night, the Pacers fell short of history and finished with 49 assists, just one shy of the record.
Yet they still put together their highest-scoring game of the season (145 points) and one of the best passing nights ever seen. And they did it without a single player reaching eight assists. Jones had seven. Kobe Brown and Jackson ended with six. Siakam, Thompson, Ben Sheppard, and Jalen Slawson had five. Micah Potter tossed out four. Jay Huff and Obi Toppin each finished with three.
It was a remarkable, total team effort. Their movement and pass-heavy style maintained for 48 minutes, and it led to a dominant 19-point win.
"I just thought it was just willingness to move the ball, run, commitment to running and getting to the spacing," Siakam said of the special assist night. "Moving without the ball and making the pass."
The win, the Pacers third in five games, improved their record to 18-58. They will officially not finish this season with the record winning percentage ever by a team that made the NBA Finals in the previous season. And the Sacramento Kings won on Wednesday, too, so the Pacers still have a two-win gap in the inverse standings. They currently hold the top odds despite the win, and their impressive passing night made it all happen.
Ben Sheppard was ballin'
Late in the first quarter, Sheppard caught the ball on the right wing heading toward the top of the key. He drove in slightly toward the basket, went behind his back with a dribble to beat a defender, then finished a crafty reverse layup for his second in-close finish of the night.
It was one of many driving layups Sheppard hit in the game. The third-year guard is not known for his ability to produce rim pressure, but on this night he looked dynamic and threatening with the ball.
Sheppard was off from distance, hitting just one of his five three-point attempts. Yet he still finished 6/11 from the field and added five assists thanks to one of his best nights attacking the paint in his entire career.
"He's quick, man. So I think sometimes, he doesn't realize it," Siakam said of Sheppard. "So he's just gotta keep attacking the paint."
Five made two-point shots ties a career high for Sheppard. He's shown some extra pop toward the cup this season, but it hasn't been consistent and it's never been as obvious as it was in Chicago. The Belmont product was a trusted weapon.
I asked Carlisle about Sheppard's drives and floor game in general. "Got on his ass about it," he said. I followed up and asked why. "Well, just that he can be more aggressive. He has some unique abilities to get places with the ball," he said. "The whole thing about being a successful player in this league is you have to be a threat."
Sheppard has mostly been an off-ball threat or shooter during his career. But the next step is adding more plays like the ones he had against Chicago, and particularly doing so versus stronger defenses. For one night, he showed the coming steps in his evolution as a player.
It gets him out of his comfort zone for the better of the team. "It's super helpful coming from a coach like him, just a little bit of that belief in you," Sheppard said. "So I've just got to go out there and execute and just do what the coach wants me to do. It's cool having him in my corner just trying to get me to progress and just grow as a player."
Sheppard thinks it feels natural to attack like he did on Wednesday night but acknowledged that when he's playing with Siakam, Haliburton, Nembhard, and others of that nature his job as a role player changes. But in this one game, the Pacers needed him to attack and he did it well.
Those mini moments of growth are what the Pacers season is all about at this point. And in this instance, it led to a win.
Thank you for reading and sorry for the slowness of this dispatch from Chicago. Between driving home, multiple radio hits and podcasts, my own birthday, and the WNBA expansion draft I've had quite a busy day(s). Subscribe to have these stories sent right to your email inbox.
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