Gregg Doyel

gregg.doyel@indystar.com

INDIANAPOLIS – The Indiana Pacers are a lot more interesting than they were a year ago. More entertaining. More explosive. More fun.

More wins?

I didn’t say that.

What’s happening in the NBA is a race. Around the league teams are racing to catch up to the Golden State Warriors, who have transformed the NBA from slow and physical into something faster, prettier, better. The Pacers weren’t on the leading edge of that transformation, but President Larry Bird figured it out quicker than most and has spent the last 12 months trying to turn this tortoise into a hare.

On Thursday, the hare played its first game at Bankers Life Fieldhouse. It was only a preseason game, the Pacers’ second of six exhibitions before beginning the real 2016-17 season here on Oct. 26 against Dallas, but it was the city’s first look at Bird’s concoction. Meaningless? This preseason game wasn’t meaningless. It was instructive.

And here’s what we saw in the Pacers’ 115-108 victory Thursday night against the Chicago Bulls:

So much more scoring than a year ago. More possessions, more shots, more 3-pointers, more freedom, more playmaking, more dunks.

Less defense.

That’s the tradeoff Bird was always willing to make. For 12 months he has said a faster game will mean more opportunities at both ends, but just as he trusted his ability five years ago to put together a team that could win defensive slugfests, now he trusts his ability to put together a team that can win in the NBA’s home run derby.

Pacers keep scoring big in preseason

His Pacers are 2-0 this preseason. That number isn't easy to call relevant, given that starters aren’t playing starters’ minutes – Paul George has played exactly 24 minutes, the first and third quarters in other words, in each of the first two games – but this number seems important: 114.0. That’s how many points per game the Pacers have scored this preseason, this seven-point victory against the Bulls following a 113-96 rout on Tuesday at New Orleans.

A year ago the Pacers averaged 102.2 ppg, 17th in the NBA. This season they are aiming for 110 ppg, and they have achieved it in both games.

“We played at a pace we wanted,” first-year coach Nate McMillan said Thursday night, “but defensively in the first half ….”

Right.

Defensively, the Pacers were porous for 24 minutes. The Bulls scored 33 points in the first quarter, then 34 in the second. The Pacers were keeping pace – they scored 33 in the first quarter and 32 in the second, and trailed just 67-65 at the half – but McMillan doesn’t want to see the scoreboard lighting up for both sides.

Just his side.

The Pacers pulled away in the second half, in part because they have more and better talent, and in part because the Bulls played their starters even less than the Pacers played theirs. Bulls star Jimmy Butler played just 12 minutes. Dwyane Wade and Rajon Rondo played 22 minutes each.

So don’t read too much into this victory. Read instead into the way this game was played, the pace and the style, and understand that these Pacers are almost nothing like the Pacers under Frank Vogel. He wanted to play with pace, did Frank Vogel, but he also wanted to control the action. He called plays. He demanded certain actions involving two, three and four players in a given possession.

McMillan, known derisively at his previous stops as “Drill Sergeant,” is less about control.

More about scoring.

And so it was that Paul George felt empowered to grab a defensive rebound and dribble 90 feet until he was scoring at the rim at the other end. And so it was that Joe Young – Joe Young, of all people – went one-on-one with Bulls guard Spencer Dinwiddie for 70 feet before crossing him over and draining a 19-footer. Never passed the ball. Went one-on-one for 70 feet.

Joe Young.

But it worked, and it wasn’t a bad shot. It was a fast shot, but not a bad one, and that’s what McMillan is stressing. He wants the Pacers to play fast but smart, a delicate line to be sure, but one he trusts his mostly veteran team to handle.

The style is perfect for Rodney Stuckey, a bull in Frank Vogel’s china shop, but the ideal guy to bring instant offense to McMillan’s second unit. After scoring 11 points in 21 minutes against New Orleans, Stuckey on Thursday night had 20 points in 27 minutes against the Bulls. He dribbled 90 feet for one jumper off the glass in the first half. He dribbled 90 feet a few minutes later, getting again to the rim but leaving the ball this time for Al Jefferson, who is going to score a lot of easy points this season at point-blank range.

On the surface, Al Jefferson is not the right guy for this system. He’s 31 years old. He’s 6-10. He’s 289 pounds. He’s old and he’s not fast, but he won’t have to play crazy minutes, and he’s willing to run the floor while he’s out there. And this is what he learned in training camp, and is seeing reinforced after two preseason games:

“If I run the floor,” Jefferson was telling me after this game, “they reward the big man.”

Paul George says Pacers capable of scoring 115 points a night

Jefferson had a 15-and-11 double-double in 26 minutes against the Bulls, two nights after he scored 14 points in 18 minutes against the Pelicans.

But not all the news is good. Not all the news is even news. Who knows exactly what a preseason game means, anyway? A 2-0 preseason start? It’s better than an 0-2 preseason start, unless it’s not. We’ll know more when the regular season begins.

But what we know right now is the Pacers have a coach who is demanding their best, a coach who saw his team score 115 points and win its second game in three days and decided, afterward, that the most important parts of this game were the 67 points the Pacers allowed in the first half, and the 20 turnovers they committed for the game.

“We’ve got to tighten up,” McMillan said. “We’ve got to do better.”

Better would be nice. But fun is a start. And these Pacers, they’re going to be fun.

They’re going to be a lot of fun.

Find Star columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at@GreggDoyelStar or atwww.facebook.com/gregg.doyel