Tyrese Haliburton's production significantly dropped after his injury return. Since All-Star Weekend, the Indiana Pacers have been doing their best to stay afloat in the Eastern Conference standings. While they do have a six-game advantage over the Chicago Bulls, Coach Rick Carlisle still has to make adjustments to get out of the play-in race. One NBA G League player could be of help. He goes by the name of Kendall Brown.
The Pacers have to get some points on the board whenever Tyrese Haliburton is having a bad night on offense. This is why they elected to convert Kendall Brown's contract to a three-year deal, per Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN.
The standout has been serviceable when it comes to scoring buckets. He has started and played for 18 games in the NBA G League and was given 33.4 minutes to do his thing per contest. This netted him 16.9 points on an astounding 50% clip from all three levels of scoring. An improvement that Coach Rick Carlisle's Pacers coaching staff could help him is with knocking down his three-point shots. On 3.5 attempts per game, he only manages to sink 23.8% of them which leaves a lot to be desired.
The Pacers' new guard project
However, the new Pacers guard does have a lot of all-around upside. Whenever Brown is assigned to be the floor general, he often delivers. This gets him 2.7 assists on a nightly basis in the NBA G League. He can also get in great positions under the rim to battle for boards. Brown gets 4.1 total rebounds because of this with 1.1 of them coming from the offensive side of the floor.
Offense is not the only facet of the game where he is developing a lot. Brown has shown flashes of being a scary defensive presence for the Pacers. He gets 0.8 steals and most of them come from stripping the ball out of the ball-handler's hands. His 0.4 blocks per game also show his insane vertical prowess to prevent shots.
Brown is a fairly raw player at 20 years old. However, the Pacers need all the help that they need to secure a playoff spot this year despite Haliburton's production taking a nosedive. If they get lucky and notch two more wins, the Pacers might even go as high as the fourth seed in the Eastern Conference.
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