How T.J. McConnell became one of the toughest Pacers to cover and one of the NBA's top subs

INDIANAPOLIS -- In the final two months of the Pacers' season, Tim McConnell saw a version of his son that even he had never really seen before.

The last time T.J. McConnell viewed scoring as a major part of responsibility, he was playing for Tim at Chartiers Valley High School in Bridgeville, Pa., a suburb to Pittsburgh's southwest. At that point, as undersized as he was, his combination of speed, skill and court vision were too much for opponents in Class AAA of the famed Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League to handle and he could get whatever shot he wanted when he wanted it.

But as T.J. McConnell grew older and his opponents got bigger, stronger and faster, he leaned into his other strengths and scoring became a secondary concern. At Duquesne and Arizona in college and then for most of his first nine NBA seasons with the 76ers and Pacers, the 6-1, 190-pound McConnell believed that the key to achieving his dreams was to be a facilitator and distributor on offense and a pest on defense. However, now at age 32 in a season that began without him having any certainty that he would be a part of Pacers' rotation much less a key piece to it, he just finished the best scoring season of his professional career with an offensive repertoire that has evolved far beyond what he used to blow past Western Pennsylvania high schoolers 14 years ago. His brand of attack is unique in the modern NBA with its emphasis on 3-pointers and dunks, but NBA defenses filled with taller and longer players who can play much higher above the rim than he can haven't been able to stop him from getting to his spots to score.

"In high school, he knew he had to score," said Tim McConnell, who retired from coaching in 2023 after 30 years as one of the most decorated high school basketball coaches in Western Pennsylvania history. "When he went to college, it wasn't that way. He became a pass-first point guard. And in the NBA for eight years, he was a pass-first point guard. And for just some reason this year, especially after the All-Star break, I mean, I'm not even sure I'm watching the same kid. I sit there in the stands or I watch it on TV and say, 'Who is this guy?' Because he never cared about scoring. It's not that he cares now, but I think he knows to help the team, he has to give them production off the bench."

McConnell's production off the bench has been such an indispensable part of the Pacers' 47-35 season and their first playoff berth since 2020 that it's hard to imagine where they would be without him. He enters their playoff series against the No. 3 seed Bucks in Milwaukee on Sunday as one of their most important offensive weapons.

He averaged fewer minutes in 2023-24 -- 18.2 per game -- than in any other season in his career, but he averaged 10.2 points, which blew past the career high of 8.7 per game last year. He shot 55.6% from the field on a career-high 8.4 field goal attempts per game. He took few 3-pointers, but made 18 of 44 (40.9%) and posted the second-highest effective field goal percentage of his career at .572. His distribution numbers didn't fall off either as he averaged 5.5 assists per game. His per-36 minutes numbers were even better as McConnell averaged 20.3 points and 10.9 assists per 36 minutes, both career highs by a substantial margin. He's one of just 12 players in NBA history with at least 500 minutes in a season to average better than 20 points and 10 assists per game. Most of the other 11 have done it multiple times but a number of them are also current or future Hall-of-Famers including Magic Johnson, Isiah Thomas, LeBron James and Russell Westbrook.

McConnell has been especially effective since the All-Star break and he's had to step up production since early March when 2022-23 All-Rookie pick Bennedict Mathurin suffered a torn labrum, costing the Pacers' second unit their most versatile scorer. Knowing he's been the Pacers' best and really only second-unit option to create for himself and others with dribble penetration, he's averaging 14.5 points and 5.8 assists in the last 15 games with Mathurin out, ranking fourth among the Pacers behind All-Stars Tyrese Haliburton and Pascal Siakam and veteran center Myles Turner in that period. He enters the playoffs having scored in double figures in his last five games, 15 of his last 16 and 21 of 26 since the All-Star break.

"When you lose a guy like (Mathurin) you have to have people step up," McConnell said. "Not just me, but everyone’s stepped up in a good way to fill his void. ... (Pacers coach) Rick (Carlisle) is always saying, 'Create a problem.' If you lose a guy who is able to get to the paint and break people down, you have to have people do it twice as much. I’ve been trying to be aggressive and get in the paint and take what the game brings me."

The Pacers finished the season first in the NBA in scoring (123.3 points per game), assists (30.8 per game) and field goal percentage (.507), second in in offensive efficiency (120.5 points per 100 possessions) and pace (102.2 possessions per game). The Pacers' bench ranked first in scoring (46.8 points per game) and field goal percentage (.513) and third in assists (11.2 per game). McConnell probably won't be in the running for Sixth Man of the Year, but he finished the season with the 11th-most total points off the bench with 684 and the second most assists with 364 behind only Malik Monk's 370.

"He's been amazing," Haliburton said. "He's one of the best, if not the best backup point guard in the league."

Even LeBron James thinks so. At the beginning of a recent episode of his podcast with J.J. Redick, "Mind The Game," he called McConnell "one of my favorite players in the NBA right now."

So how exactly at this stage in his career has McConnell been able to pull this off? How did an undrafted defensive sparkplug who has never dunked in an NBA game and never made more than 31 3-pointers in a season suddenly become almost unguardable in his ninth year?

The answer comes from a career of being underestimated and of having to fashion a skillset out of different materials than the rest of the league's players, but also having the tools and the institutional basketball knowledge surrounding him to do so. In a hyperkinetic Pacers offense that plays to his strengths, McConnell’s blended all that into an offensive approach that few of the defenses in the world's greatest basketball league have been able to conjure an answer for.

"He's heard all his life he's not big enough, he's not fast enough," Tim McConnell said. "When he transferred to Arizona, people said he's not good enough, not fast enough, not strong enough, not tall enough. He made it to the NBA and people said he'll never last. That's what's really helped him is the naysayers, to try to prove them wrong, has helped him to show what he could really do."

'People couldn't stop it'

The McConnells are one of the most decorated basketball families in the football town of Pittsburgh, but that's in spite of the fact that none of them were blessed in the height department.

His aunt Suzie McConnell-Serio, Tim's sister, is still the most accomplished member of the family. She was an All-American at Penn State where she set Division I records in assists. She won an Olympic gold medal in 1988 and she starred in the WNBA in its infancy, and she did all of that while standing just 5-4. Mix her coaching and playing careers, and she won three state championships at Pittsburgh's Oakland Catholic High School, then coached the Minnesota Lynx in the WNBA and the Duquesne and Pitt women's teams.

Tim, who won nine combined WPIAL titles and a state title coaching boys and then girls basketball, was a 5-7 1/2 point guard at Waynesburg (Pa.) University, a Division III school. T.J.'s older brother Matty, who played at Robert Morris, grew to be 6-2. His younger sister Megan, who just finished her fourth season at Duquesne, is 5-7.

So when T.J. entered high school undersized as a 5-8, 125-pound sophomore, he was going to have to use the family basketball expertise to beat opponents with skill, court vision, perpetual motion and quick decision making. He worked constantly on his ball-handling and his shot but also on his ability to make reads and decide on the fly whether to pass, pull-up or go to the rim.

"We worked on that a lot," Tim said. "I mean, just driving. When we would work out just one-on-one and he would just be driving, as he's driving I'm telling him to get to the rim, but there were times when we'd say, 'Shoot.' Make them make a split-second decision and still be able to be balanced. When we worked out, we'd always talk about how, things aren't always going to work out the way you always want it to. That defender will take something away, so you have to be ready to do something else. That was one thing he did a really nice job of was being able to make that right decision on when to pull up, when to get to the rim, when to pass it to somebody else who was open for another shot."

Then-Duquesne coach Ron Everhart was so impressed by McConnell's hustle and basketball IQ that he offered him a scholarship when he was still a sophomore even though he looked like a middle school player because of his performance in a game against Jeannette High School, which included future Ohio State football star and Oakland Raiders quarterback Terrelle Pryor. After the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported the offer, a Duquesne fan wrote an e-mail to Everhart saying he didn't know the Dukes were "recruiting waterboys." Everhart showed the McConnells the e-mail for motivational purposes.

McConnell committed to Duquesne that summer and ended up having one of the most spectacular high school careers in Western Pennsylvania history, scoring 2,404 career points including a WPIAL record 1,062 in his senior season when he averaged 34.0 points per game and led Chartiers Valley to a WPIAL Class AAA title before losing in the state championship game.

At that level, McConnell could shoot from distance. His 334 career 3-pointers put him second in WPIAL history. But his greatest weapon was his pull-up game.

"That was his bread and butter," Tim said. "He would drive and on a dime, just stop and pull up and people couldn't stop it."

McConnell found immediate success at Duquesne, but scoring became a little less of a priority even then. He was Atlantic-10 Freshman of the Year in 2010-11, but defense was becoming his calling card as he finished fourth in the nation in steals with 2.8 per game while averaging 10.8 points and 4.4 assists. As a sophomore he averaged 11.4 points and 5.5 assists and hit 2.8 steals per game again, finishing third in the nation.

After his sophomore year, Everhart was fired at Duquesne and McConnell decided he wanted to go somewhere that would give him a better chance at playing in the NCAA Tournament. He transferred -- even though it required sitting out a year then -- and chose Arizona, where he got to play for a fellow Pittsburgh area native in Sean Miller, who had played his college ball at Pitt and starred at Blackhawk High School in Beaver Falls. The Wildcats were loaded once McConnell became eligible with three future draft-picks in Aaron Gordon, Rondae Hollis-Jefferson and Nick Johnson, so McConnell bought in completely to the facilitator role. He helped lead the Wildcats to back-to-back Pac-12 titles and back-to-back Elite Eight runs, though he averaged a modest 9.4 points per game over two seasons to go with 5.8 assists and 1.9 steals.

"T.J. kinda grew up in a different era of pass-first point guards," Miller said. "He was developed as such where, 'I'm going to be the ultimate point guard. I'm a two-way player. I'm a high-steal guy. I'm a pest. I disrupt. I guard my position. I defensive rebound. And then offensively, I'm a master at finding others, making my teammates better. Pass-first. Unselfish.' At times, maybe to his detriment, he didn't look for his own scoring opportunities, especially from a shooting perspective. Inherently, if you put so many eggs in those other two baskets, unreal effort and concentration on defense, picking up full court, disrupting and steals, and then on offense you're so consumed with making the right read and keeping people happy and making the clever pass, at some point it doesn't matter how good or bad of a shooter you are, how good can that part of your game be?"

On some level, the scoring part of his game suffered, but the relentless defensive pressure he was putting on and the conditioning it required helped McConnell turn himself into a different kind of offensive weapon.

'Something I need to hang my hat on'

When the 76ers, still in the early stage of what they called "The Process" picked McConnell up as an undrafted free agent in the fall of 2015, McConnell found out fast that his full-court defensive pressure was his best NBA asset. He recorded 95 steals as a rookie, which put him 37th in the league and got him in the 76ers rotation with 17 starts. The next year he recorded 134, the sixth-highest figure in the league.

McConnell became a master of picking off inbounds passes in the backcourt and turning opposing ball handlers over before they reached the timeline and he figured out quickly that he could only count on continuing to make that his signature move if he was one of the best conditioned athletes on the floor.

"I think something I need to hang my hat on is never getting tired and playing extremely hard," McConnell said. "I focus on that a lot. It’s something I focus on in the summer and something I use to my advantage during the season."

That focus influences everything from his offseason workout regimen to his diet, and even comparatively among NBA players, McConnell is especially selective about what he puts into his body. He hired a chef to make sure everything he eats is designed to keep him in the best possible shape.

“I can't say that's something he did in high school because there were times that he lived on Sprite and tortilla chips, things that he loved,” Tim McConnell said. “Now, he very seldom eats junk, eats really healthy, takes care of his body and that's really helped his conditioning as well."

With that conditioning McConnell’s seen even more value in perpetual motion. Few defenders can keep up with him, so he can take multiple passes at the basket, even outrun the rim and turnaround and come back for a shot and have defenders off-balance.

To maximize that ability, he studied the play of Steve Nash and how he'd utilize the baseline to put defenders in tough spots where they didn't know whether to expect a shot on the front or backside of the rim or a turnaround jumper after a drive.

"He did that at a high level," Tim McConnell said. "They call that Nashing. That’s what the phrase is called. You play along the baseline and I feel like he perfected, if teams would stay home, he would finish around the basket or get to a midrange or if they would come over to help, you’ve got options in the corner, if someone cuts from the slot. It may seem like you’re in a dead area, but I think there’s a lot of options going on on the baseline."

Haliburton considers that the most difficult part of McConnell's game to guard, and his improvement in that area has made him better around the rim. He made a career high 74.1% of his shots within 3 feet of the basket this season.

"He just works so well on the baseline," Haliburton said. "I don’t think that’s a comfortable spot for anybody in the NBA to play in. Every NBA player is well-natured to play on the middle of the floor. He prefers to play on the baseline, but when you push him to the middle of the floor, we’ve all done that our whole life. It’s easy for him. How good he is on the baseline is just different."

And McConnell can pair that with the pull-up game he's always had and that has become more effective over time. He's so hard to contain off the bounce that he can usually get within 8 feet of the bucket before pulling up and even with all that downhill momentum he generally has good touch on it. Plus he always has the option to pass, So he's frequently putting opponents in extremely disadvantaged positions. He made 52.7% of his shots from 3-10 feet this season, and forcing defenses to collapse on him for those shots created open shots and drive-and-dish opportunities on the perimeter.

"He has really good brakes," Haliburton said. "He does a really good job of playing a million miles an hour, and what he’ll do is attack you twice and finish with a layup, and now you’re thinking, ‘OK, I can’t let him get another layup.' That’s when he stops on a dime and shoots his mid-range, which I think is what he would prefer to get to. When he’s got it going, he’s a really tough cover for anybody in the league."

The 3-pointer isn't a strength for McConnell like it was in high school, but especially in the second half of the season, he's forcing himself to take it when he's wide open and getting better results. Before the All-Star break he made just 3 of 19 3-pointers. Since the break, he's 15 of 25.

The combination of all of those pieces of his game make him absolutely exhausting to chase around.

"I would tell him he’s not the most physically intimidating guy, but at the same time, you might think, ‘Oh, I get a rest.’" Haliburton said. "That’s not the rest guy. That’s far from the guy you get to rest with. He just is non-stop. The way you look at it is you’re either applying pressure or you get pressure applied to you. Offensively, T.J. is always applying pressure and that’s what makes him special."

That's what made him impossible to keep off the floor for the Pacers this year and what might keep him in Indiana for years to come, even though his contract for next year is only partially guaranteed.

When the season began, the Pacers had off-season signee Bruce Brown in the starting lineup and second-year guard Andrew Nembhard playing in the second unit in his natural position at point guard. Carlisle had what he said was an emotional conversation with McConnell the day before the season opener to tell him he wouldn't be a part of the rotation on Day 1 and he wasn't sure exactly when he would be. McConnell promised him then that he would still be a good teammate and professional and be ready when his number was called. He was more than ready and even though he took several early season DNPs, McConnell made clear almost every time he took the floor that the Pacers were a worse team without him. The trade that brought the Pacers Pascal Siakam sent Brown to the Raptors and opened up a place for Nembhard to move back to the starting lineup, creating a settled spot for McConnell to have the best year of his career.

"He's a terrific player," Carlisle said. "He's tenacious, he's aggressive. He brings his strengths into the game. His strengths are he makes it a 94 foot game on defense and offensively, it's speed. He's always been special. This year is no different than any other year. He's always fought his way into the fray to become a factor for the team somehow."

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: How T.J. McConnell had the best offensive year of his NBA career