INDIANAPOLIS — Patty Mills is richer now than he’s ever been. Four months ago he agreed to the financial deal of a lifetime, and he believes he deserved it.

“I was rewarded for the years before,” Mills said. “This is a fresh start. There’s no pressure to perform.”

Even though he has plenty of valid reasons to feel this way, that is not how contracts are supposed to work. The Spurs chose to pay him $50 million over the next four seasons not out of gratitude for what Mills already accomplished, but out of optimism about what he might do next.

Someday, those expectations might be fulfilled, and that faith might be rewarded. But on a Sunday evening at Bankers Life Fieldhouse when the Spurs continued to reap dividends from their other two big offseason investments, they kept waiting for their third to start paying off.

Mills is getting all of the shots he wants, and he’s shooting the ones the Spurs want him to take. In the final seconds of a 97-94 loss to the Pacers, they drew up a play for him to launch a game-tying 3-pointer at the buzzer, and they ran it to perfection.

But so far, the ball just hasn’t been going through the hoop for this wealthier version of Mills. His last-gasp shot Sunday - which he admitted was a bit rushed and a tad off-balance - missed the rim entirely, and it added to a growing list of misfires.

Through six games this season, Mills has made only 14 of 44 shots, and is 5 for 20 from outside the arc. His paltry percentage might not be noticeable if the Spurs weren’t relying on him to be a focal part of the offense for long stretches, but they are.

In back-to-back losses to Orlando and Indiana, only LaMarcus Aldridge attempted more shots for the Spurs than Mills’ 28. He made only eight of them.

Gregg Popovich didn’t single Mills out, but he noted what has been obvious to anyone who’s watched his team over the past few days:

The Spurs need their guards to make a jumper every now and then.

In Aldridge and Pau Gasol - the two other Spurs who signed lucrative deals this summer - have found a frontcourt tandem few teams in the league can handle. Aldridge, looking dominant and rejuvenated with Kawhi Leonard sidelined, has demanded the ball and almost always done something positive with it. Gasol looks more comfortable than ever working with his fellow big man in high-low sets.

All they really need is for someone to keep opposing defenses honest on the perimeter, and that someone was supposed to be Mills.

For the Spurs, it didn’t seem unreasonable to think he could do it. He’d filled that role for much of the previous four seasons, and had been one of the league’s best bargains in the process.

When Mills talks about his new contract as a “reward,” it’s easy to see why he thought he had it coming.

After all, he had been supposed to cash in during the summer of 2014, when he entered free agency just after he emerged as one of the breakthrough stars of the NBA Finals. That was when he should have struck it rich.

The only problem? That also was the summer he had rotator cuff surgery.

News that he’d played through an injured shoulder killed his market value, as teams that had been interested in making him a starting point guard were scared off by the medical reports. So he settled for a relatively modest three-year, $12-million deal to stay with the Spurs, and then consistently outperformed it.

So last summer, he wanted to find out what he really was worth.

“I owed it to myself to be able to see what there was, and go through every option the right way,” Mills said. “I wouldn’t take any shortcuts.”

What he discovered was that he had plenty of options, but none were quite as attractive as staying put. The Spurs owned his Bird rights, which meant they could offer him more money than anyone else could, and he had grown to embrace the idea of coming off the bench.

“We obviously had a good talk about it,” Mills said. “It would have been a lot different on a lot of other teams. But I’ve understood my role every year. You adapt and you grow. For me, it’s the same as always, I guess.”

The only thing different has been the results. His shot is gone, and his team needs it back.

Mills is richer than he’s ever been. Now the Spurs would like to start collecting, too.

mfinger@express-news.net

Twitter: @mikefinger