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INDIANAPOLIS – Their games are certainly different, but their minds are pretty darn similar.
And that’s vital for the Pacers.
Because if Malcolm Brogdon and Victor Oladipo were wired like the other top players in the NBA, they wouldn’t want to be in Indiana.
But Brogdon and Oladipo are the rare NBA talents, who actually want to try and build a championship team with the Pacers.
From a fit standpoint, when both guys are healthy, the Pacers are likely to use Brogdon at point guard, with Oladipo playing off the ball, knowing that both of them can be interchangeable in those roles for some stretches.
“I thought that point guard was the most important position to sign,” Nate McMillan says about this past summer. “To be able to bring Malcolm on board it feels like the perfect fit for this organization going into the future, getting this guard combination of Malcolm and Victor.”
While Brogdon played mostly off the ball during his three seasons with the Bucks, he feels like point guard is his best position.
“Just being able to make decisions, being able to influence what happens on the floor and bringing guys together and leading them to win, I think my IQ and my versatility which turns into winning games, I think those are my strong assets,” the 26-year-old guard says.
Calling Brogdon a ‘true point guard’ is probably a bit unfair, and the Pacers realize that.
And it remains to be seen how Brogdon will juggle those duties on a more frequent basis, while also being asked to carry a larger scoring burden and offer a huge defensive responsibility.
Upon making things official in signing with Indiana, Brogdon quickly headed out to Vegas to train with his new backcourt mate.
The two didn’t know each other that well before July, but that will change in a hurry.
“I’m looking forward to building a relationship with (Oladipo),” Brogdon says. “I think our games fit extremely well together. I’m not a guy that is coming in here trying to take over. This is Victor’s team. This is his franchise. I want to help Victor be an All-Star every year, to be a superstar. That’s important to me, to help this team win and to really make his job easier. That’s what I think I can do, as a point guard, as a guy that can be a point guard but play off the ball. He’s a guy that have the ball in his hands as much as he wants, but when he doesn’t want the ball, he can trust that his point guard will make the decisions and step up from it.”
