Best duos in Indiana Pacers history
NBA teams may put five players on the court, but oftentimes the magic really happens when two of them combine their superpowers to drive home victory upon victory. Game in and game out, they're like Batman and Robin or Han Solo and Chewbacca, a pair that scores big, defends hard, and makes fans cheer.
Throughout NBA history, we've had a basic understanding of how good players are by looking at their basic actions to see how much they contribute to the final score. From scoring baskets, throwing the perfect alley-oop, or blocking out the opponent to grab a rebound, we can make some determinations about excellence. However, the rise of analytics in sports has introduced a whole new level of stat-gathering, which gives a better understanding for just how phenomenally some basketball players work together.
Stacker compiled a list of the best duos in Indiana Pacers history using data from Stathead. Along with basic statistics like points, rebounds, assists, steals, and blocks per game (that's PPG, RPG, APG, SPG, and BPG), statisticians now also track more advanced measures that allow for more accurate data-based ranking.
Box Plus/Minus (BPM) -- which was used to make the list below -- measures a player's effectiveness when he's on the court. A positive score indicates the number of points by which his team outperformed the opponent. A negative number shows how much better the opposing team did while he was playing. While useful, BPM is only available for seasons from 1974 on, hence the lack of more recent seasons on this list.
Value Over Replacement Player (VORP) looks at how much value a player adds to the team versus someone coming off the bench.
Player Efficiency Rating (PER) looks at a number of mostly offensive actions, both positive and negative, that a player does when he's on the court to measure how good they are on a minute-by-minute basis. The average score across the NBA is 15.00, which allows for year-over-year comparisons.
Win Shares (WS) looks at a player's actions during an entire game to determine how much he contributed to a team's win.
Read on to see how well the data-driven duos meet your expectations.
#5. 1992-93 Indiana Pacers
- Reggie Miller: 4.3 BPM (#11 player in 1992-93)
- Detlef Schrempf: 3.3 BPM (#20 player in 1992-93)
- Total: 7.6 BPM (#8 duo in 1992-93)
#4. 2012-13 Indiana Pacers
- David West: 4 BPM (#14 player in 2012-13)
- Paul George: 3.8 BPM (#15 player in 2012-13)
- Total: 7.8 BPM (#6 duo in 2012-13)
#3. 2008-09 Indiana Pacers
- Danny Granger: 4.8 BPM (#7 player in 2008-09)
- Troy Murphy: 3.2 BPM (#22 player in 2008-09)
- Total: 8 BPM (#8 duo in 2008-09)
#2. 2017-18 Indiana Pacers
- Victor Oladipo: 5.8 BPM (#12 player in 2017-18)
- Darren Collison: 2.7 BPM (#35 player in 2017-18)
- Total: 8.5 BPM (#10 duo in 2017-18)
#1. 1997-98 Indiana Pacers
- Reggie Miller: 4.8 BPM (#9 player in 1997-98)
- Chris Mullin: 4.3 BPM (#14 player in 1997-98)
- Total: 9.1 BPM (#5 duo in 1997-98)
