Why Pacers’ Aaron Nesmith and his ‘toe tap’ top conference finals X-factors

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INDIANAPOLIS — A funny scene plays out over and over in Indiana Pacers games, especially during these playoffs. Act I is fairly mundane: Aaron Nesmith getting an open catch-and-shoot 3-pointer and knocking the shot down.

Act II, shortly thereafter, is Pacers reserve T.J. McConnell getting up from the bench and stamping his right foot repeatedly into the ground, as if he’s either putting out a flaming ember or improvising a jig.

Those two acts collide for viewers when Nesmith ends up making a corner 3 in front of the Pacers’ bench:

It all gets back to something called a “leave it,” a shooting cue assistant coach Lloyd Pierce developed with Nesmith, and McConnell has enthusiastically joined in on the fun.

Nesmith has a habit of tapping his right foot when he gets an open shot.

“Something I do subconsciously, when I catch the ball if I’m wide open, I tap my right foot three to five times,” he said. “Before I really set my feet and shot my jumper.”

So when Nesmith came from the Boston Celtics three years ago and began working with Pierce, they developed a mantra: “Leave it.” Once he’s done toe-tapping, plant that right foot into the ground and have enough force to get his shot up and away.

And thus, when Nesmith does this successfully and McConnell starts cigarette-stomping on the sideline, you’ll also see him yelling, “Leave it!” in the general direction of Pierce.

“They have this thing where [Pierce] always says to ‘leave it,’” McConnell said. “So when his foot hits the ground he shoots it and leaves it, so then I start tapping my foot and then scream ‘leave it.’ Just to get LP energized, and it’s a mind and errands thing to say now.”

Here’s an example of that trademark toe tap, by the way:

One thing Nesmith and the coaches all agree on: When he has enough time to toe tap, it’s cash. “When I tap my toe, it’s good,” Nesmith said. “They know it’s going in.”

Nesmith has had a lot of reasons to dance lately, be it tap or otherwise, as he has been one of the key performers during the Pacers’ run to a second straight Eastern Conference finals and arguably, at this point, one of the league’s most underrated players.

His slow, steady ascent in Indiana after two nondescript seasons in Boston has caught almost everyone unawares. This past season he joined the NBA’s prestigious “50-40-90” club, shooting 50.7 percent from the field, 41.3 percent from 3, and 91.7 percent from the free-throw line.

While those numbers came in a half-season (45 games) thanks to an early ankle injury, it’s not like it was a wild outlier: The previous season, he shot 49.6 percent from the field and 41.9 percent from 3, and he’s a career 82.8 percent foul shooter.

He’s dialed things up further in the playoffs, registering an impressive 17.3 PER and 67.2 true-shooting percentage in 10 postseason games.

That would be impressive in any role, but Nesmith is doing this while also taking on most of the toughest defensive assignments, including harassing the Cleveland Cavaliers’ Donovan Mitchell for much of the Pacers’ second-round upset win over the Cavs. In the upcoming conference finals against the New York Knicks, he’ll likely be tasked with guarding either Karl-Anthony Towns or Jalen Brunson and might find himself toggling between the two depending on game situations.

A high-effort grinder when he’s not toe-tapping 3-pointers, Nesmith has already made several of the most significant hustle plays of the playoffs.

This put-back dunk of a free throw against Cleveland was a game-changer in the Pacers’ dramatic Game 2 comeback win.

Nesmith flies in for the putback off the missed FT 💪

Close one down the stretch in Game 2 🍿 pic.twitter.com/JFdXU1CKG4

— NBA on TNT (@NBAonTNT) May 7, 2025

Seconds later, he got in front of Mitchell in the backcourt and took an elbow to the head for a key offensive foul that regained possession for Indy. And in Game 1, his full-court ball pressure forced this eight-second violation from the Cavs’ Ty Jerome:

“It’s just a will thing, reading the game,” Nesmith said. “You can kinda tell when there’s a lull in the energy and you need a play to pick your  guys up; it’s just one of those things where you just gotta make something happen to try to change the course of the game.”

The interesting dichotomy, people around him will tell you, is that Nesmith is an angel off the court who then turns into a bulldog once he’s inside the lines.

When a Pacer PR rep told me, “he’s the best person ever,” I figured it was hyperbole … except I got told the same thing, unprompted, when I talked to people from Boston, and again from one of his coaches at Vanderbilt.

Coming to Indiana from Boston in a trade for Malcolm Brogdon three years ago, Nesmith was just looking to establish a firmer foothold in the league after two seasons of sporadic playing time with the Celtics. He had Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown blocking his way in Beantown, but Indiana presented a new opportunity.

The Celtics didn’t feel great about trading him, feeling his work ethic and skill set would eventually translate, but needed him in the deal to get Brogdon. That part worked out: Brogdon won Sixth Man of the Year for Boston’s conference finalists in 2023 and then was parlayed into Jrue Holiday a year later. (Fun tangent while we’re here: Nesmith’s draft year came during the pandemic; Boston flew a staffer to work him out in his hometown of Charleston, S.C., and verified his height with a good old-fashioned tape measure.)

But Nesmith made Indiana’s half of the trade turn out well, too. He showed up wanting to work right away, including an unusual request by a third-year lottery pick to play in Las Vegas.

“He came in a trade in early July and asked if he could play in the summer league with us,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. “And that was unexpected. And we said, are you in shape? And he said, oh, no, I’m in shape. So he came out to Vegas and he played with the team for two or three games. We just wanted to get into it, start being a part of it. That was the beginning of the work.”

“My whole game just took off when I got here,” Nesmith said. “I got the opportunity to make mistakes and learn from them.”

It wasn’t instantaneous, especially in a Pacers offense that worked very differently than Boston’s. His first year in Indiana saw him get a lot more run than in Boston, but only to the tune of a 10.5 PER and a minus-3.0 BPM.

But eventually, he figured out how to find his shots around Tyrese Haliburton and McConnell and settled into his role as a 3-and-D energizer.

“He’s gone from a different style in Boston to our style, which is more random and faster,” Carlisle said. “He’s just really worked at it.”

“It really was just finding my role here,” Nesmith said. “Energy, effort, defense, making open shots, that’s what we needed from me in order to win games. Every year, I’ve just gotten a little better at the little things.”

Those little things have added up into a much bigger profile for Nesmith, both on and off the court. While he remains underrated in small-market Indy, he’s no longer quite as anonymous — he now gets recognized on the road, and not just in Charleston and Indianapolis. The 25-year-old is likely looking at a big pay raise when his $11 million per year deal expires in 2027 (until then, the Pacers are winning bigly on the contract extension they signed with him in 2023).

That renown may further expand during the East finals, when his Pacers renew their rivalry with the Knicks in front of a national audience. Nesmith’s shooting, hustle and defense make him one of the biggest X-factors of the postseason.

But he’s not alone. Let’s look at a few others for the Eastern and Western conference finals:

Mitchell Robinson, New York

One of the biggest stories in New York’s run to the conference finals has been Robinson’s re-emergence after missing nearly the entire season due to injury. The 17 games he played at the end of the season probably should have garnered more notice, as Robinson did his usual Robinson things — grabbing every rebound and blocking shots at a high rate — and some unusual Robinson things (he shot 68.4 percent from the line, believe it or not).

That set the stage for the playoffs, in which Robinson’s presence has solidified the Knicks’ frontline despite fairly regular foul trouble from Karl-Antony Towns and given them a desperately needed playoff-level performer to round out a paper-thin rotation. His return even allowed New York to tinker with monstrous double-dig lineups at times.

Robinson has always had a knack for blocking perimeter shots, but in these playoffs he’s operated with more discipline and less abandon at the defensive end, resulting in him holding up much better in switch situations.

That level of play culminated in one of the great defensive sequences of the season in the Knicks’ Game 6 rout of the Celtics. Robinson tracked three Boston players around the perimeter and then crossed the court and closed out so quickly — but under control! — on a startled Jaylen Brown that a seemingly wide-open catch-and-shoot 3 turned into a surrender in the corner.

It’s not just defense: Robinson leads all playoff performers in offensive rebound rate and gives the Knicks a rim-runner at the offensive end that they otherwise lack.

The only negative has been his free throws, which opponents have tried to use against New York by using a hack-a-Mitch strategy. It’s an interesting ploy because his 52.2 percent career mark suggests it’s a bad percentage play … except that Robinson is only making 39.1 percent in the playoffs (18-of-46).

In general, you would trust his career regular-season mark over his career playoff maker, given that the sample is more than 10 times larger, but playoffs are all about small samples. If Robinson misses a couple and then the Knicks pull him out of the game, it’s a win for the opposition.

(This situation, incidentally, also contributed to a quietly hilarious playoff moment — the Celtics twice intentionally fouling Robinson and only Robinson with 2:42 left in Game 2 to get the Knicks in the bonus and force them to take Robinson out of the game … even though they could have fouled anybody since it was a non-shooting situation.)

New York has also become smarter about minimizing this strategy, playing Robinson for long stretches at the start of the second and fourth quarters when the Knicks aren’t in the bonus. Indiana’s potential use of this strategy is one of the wildcards to watch in Game 1.

Cason Wallace, Oklahoma City Thunder

I was going to put Alex Caruso here until Game 7 against the Denver Nuggets happened; welp, I’d say he’s a pretty well-known X-factor at this point, with multiple paeans to his defense appearing in the last 48 hours.

So instead, let’s talk about Wallace, who has emerged as the seventh man in an eight-man Oklahoma City rotation, and still may move up in the world depending on how these last two rounds go. You’ll notice that Wallace was second on the Thunder in minutes in the first half of Game 1 against the Minnesota Timberwolves on Tuesday, playing 18 despite coming off the pine, and also earning extended fourth-quarter run that brought his total to 33.

There’s a reason for that. First of all, how about him packing this left-handed dunk home on Nikola Jokić in the third quarter of Game 7 on Sunday?

More importantly, Wallace has proven to be a playoff-level energizer off the bench for the Thunder, especially when they’ve gone to small lineups such as the unit with Caruso at center that wrong-footed the Nuggets in Game 7. He also had 11 points and five rebounds in the crucial Game 4 win in Denver that swung the series back in the Thunder’s favor, playing half the fourth quarter before the Thunder went back to their big lineup to close.

The 21-year-old second-year pro doesn’t provide much half-court shot creation, but having a rotation option like this — a pesky defender who can make an open 3 and get some easy buckets in transition — is likely to matter even more against a Minnesota team with three high-usage guards in the rotation … and one of the league’s highest turnover rates. Wallace had the league’s third-highest steal rate in the regular season, so his pilfering could be a difference-maker in this series. His passing in short rolls and transitions is notable too; among his seven assists in Game 1 were multiple lobs for dunks.

That’s particularly true if a struggling Lu Dort can’t find his mojo in the conference finals. Mark Daigneault has stuck with him through a choppy first two rounds, and it paid off when Dort made three triples in the fourth quarter of a crucial Game 5 win against the Nuggets. But Dort has gone 18-of-70 from 3 in the postseason aside from that game and has only made nine 2-point baskets the entire postseason. Dort’s point-of-attack defense is likely to be needed against Anthony Edwards, but if his offensive struggles continue we might again see Wallace out of the bullpen in fourth quarters.

Jaden McDaniels, Minnesota

While Julius Randle deservedly gets his flowers for his standout performance in the Wolves’ second-round win over the Golden State Warriors, I’m a bit surprised McDaniels isn’t getting more shine for his work as a two-way force in this postseason. Though noted more as a defensive specialist, he hung 25- and 30-point games on the Los Angeles Lakers in the opening round and hit double figures in all five games against Golden State.

He’s been able to maintain an offensive role as a secondary creator and shot maker while filling it more efficiently than he did in the regular season. McDaniels’ playoff usage rate though the first two rounds was the same at 16.3 percent (most role players will see a postseason dip as the stars soak up more minutes and shots), and he’s shot the ball far better, converting 62.7 percent of his 2s in the playoffs.

Though not a pure scorer by any means, McDaniels has some tough shot-making chops, with a third of his shots this year coming between 3 and 15 feet and making a respectable 46.5 percent of them. That might not be ideal for shot-chart purists, but in a bogged-down game (something Minnesota has been known to play occasionally) his ability to get a tough bucket can make a difference … such as the two pull-up jumpers he hit early in Game 1 for the Wolves.

Throw in his work as a defensive force against the likes of Luka Dončić and Jimmy Butler in the postseason, and he’s been one of the most unsung heroes of the postseason.

His profile might get a lot larger, too, as he’s likely to be Minnesota’s primary defender on Oklahoma City’s MVP candidate Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. He fouled out in 24 minutes trying to stop him in Game 1, but not before harassing the Thunder star into a miserable first half that featured several dramatic stops by McDaniels. Check out the footwork to stay with Gilgeous-Alexander’s spin and swat away his attempt at the rim.

Look at the defense from Jaden McDaniels.

[image or embed]

— Steve Jones Jr (@stevejones20.bsky.social) May 20, 2025 at 9:43 PM

While other Wolves players — particularly Gilgeous-Alexander’s cousin Nickeil Alexander-Walker — also figure to get extended reps guarding the slithery superstar, McDaniels’ ability to hound the Thunder’s star is likely to be the most critical for Minnesota’s defense. If he can maintain his offensive output, avoid the foul-trouble bugaboo, and make SGA work for his points, the Wolves’ upset hopes ratchet up toward realistic.

(Photo:  Trevor Ruszkowski / Imagn Images)

This news was originally published on this post .

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