Going back to his years in Seattle and Portland, Nate McMillan’s teams have almost always played slow. Unable to consistently create space and pressure through speed, the Pacers never ranked better than 18th in pace during his tenure — a stark contrast to Dave Joerger’s final season in Sacramento, when the Kings skyrocketed from dead-last in possessions per game the previous year to third in 2018-19.
And, here’s the thing: With a league-high 20 percent of their shots coming from between 22 and 18 seconds on the shot-clock, Joerger’s Kings didn’t just rely on stops to establish their tempo; they busted it up the floor off of makes, too.