A lot of teams say they want to play faster, but saying it and doing it are very different things. Just ask the Chicago Bulls, whose executive vice president Arturas Karnisovas said during media day, "We’re looking to play faster. We’re going to try and move the ball better."

The Bulls – and I point this out not to pick on them specifically but only to make a case – rank dead last in pace this season.

Then there’s the Indiana Pacers, who haven’t decided to play fast so much as they are compelled to by their star player, Tyrese Haliburton. Ask players and coaches about their priorities, and pace is at or near the top of everyone's list. They practice pushing the tempo and search film for chances to get up the floor faster.

So it's not surprising that the Pacers lead the league in pace and are blowing the doors off opponents for 123.6 points per 100 possessions. 

If it holds, it’ll be the most efficient offense in league history – one they’ve built over the last year-plus starting with the February 2022 trade for Haliburton. 

“First game he played for us, it was clear we needed to develop a system built around his abilities,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said.

Perhaps he didn’t envision this when the Pacers made the trade, but Carlisle knew he wanted to play faster. Before trading All-Star center Domantas Sabonis to the Sacramento Kings for Haliburton and Buddy Hield, the Pacers ranked 18th in pace. In Haliburton’s first game, the Pacers played at a pace of 100.7, which would have ranked third that season.

This is not to say there wasn’t some necessary adjusting. On Indiana’s third possession of that game, at home against the Cavaliers, Haliburton whipped up along the arc at a full sprint, took a Goga Bitadze handoff and kicked a pass to Chris Duarte. But Haliburton was moving at a different speed than everyone else. Duarte took three half-hearted dribbles and tossed the ball to Hield, who picked up his dribble where Haliburton had received the handoff a few seconds before. The possession ends with Hield passing to Bitadze, who clanked a 3-pointer off the back of the rim. Haliburton, to that point, had not brought the ball up the court. 

He took matters into his own hands on the next play. Haliburton rebounded a Dean Wade miss and hurled a full-court chest pass to Hield, who missed a jumper. Carlisle, on the sideline, snapped his head like he was watching a tennis match. By the start of the second half, Haliburton was running the offense. He finished the night with 23 points, six assists and six turnovers.

Today, Haliburton is averaging 26.9 points on 52.1% shooting and leads the league with 11.9 assists per game. He has finished with at least 25 points and 13 assists with zero turnovers – something that has only been done 48 other times in NBA history – three times in the last month.

The Pacers face the Milwaukee Bucks on Thursday for a chance to play for the NBA Cup. They are one of the league’s most pleasant surprises and toughest matchups.

“They’re not an easy team to defend,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said.

Added Heat guard Josh Richardson: “They play at a crazy fast pace, they shoot a lot of shots. They speed you up.”

The Pacers have reshaped the roster in Haliburton’s image. Haliburton is the quarterback. He just needs receivers to throw to.

“We’ve built our roster with trying to get better athletes, more shooting,” Carlisle said. 

Since trading for Haliburton, the Pacers have drafted Bennedict Mathurin, Andrew Nembhard and Jarace Walker, re-signed pick-and-pop center Myles Turner, traded for Obi Toppin and signed Bruce Brown. Mathurin, Walker and Toppin are all top-tier athletes who are at their best in the open floor. Nembhard is a Haliburton-lite backup point guard. Brown, coming off a championship run with the Denver Nuggets, is a versatile, two-way wing. 

In training camp, Carlisle kept pushing pace -- a key difference between saying and doing.

Despite coaching some of the league’s slowest offenses during his time in Dallas, Carlisle contends he prefers to play this up-tempo style.

“I like playing like this,” Carlisle said. “This is the ultimate form of free-flowing basketball. This is how I grew up playing.”

Carlisle played college ball at the universities of Maine and Virginia before getting drafted by the Boston Celtics in 1984. Under coach K.C. Jones, Carlisle didn’t get on the court much, but he got to watch the likes of Larry Bird, Dennis Johnson and Kevin McHale as the Celtics ranked near the top of the league in offensive rating and assists.

Carlisle eventually became a head coach and led the Mavericks to a championship in 2011. He earned a reputation as one of the top play-callers in the NBA, but his teams were more methodical than free-flowing. He bristled with point guards like Rajon Rondo, who fought for more control of the offense. But Carlisle, hired as Indiana's coach in 2021, trusts Haliburton to guide the Pacers. 

“It’s a system I believe in because, in today’s NBA, you look for situations to put trust in players,” Carlisle said.

“Coach allows my personality and who I am as a player to flow into our offense,” Haliburton said. “We lead the league in assists and that starts with me, but I think it’s everybody sharing the ball and wanting to see others succeed.”

Carlisle and Haliburton agree that if you don’t run, you’re not getting the ball. In addition to the starting point guard, backups TJ McConnell and Nembhard also make pushing the pace a personal goal.

While some teams talk about pushing the pace, the Pacers practice it. 

“We work a lot on our wing runs,” Carlisle explained. “In a lot of ways, we’re positionless on a lot of levels of the game so it’s just a matter of getting it in, getting it out fast and going.”

The Pacers on Monday scored 122 points on the Celtics to advance to the semi-final of the In-Season Tournament. The Celtics have looked like a juggernaut for most of the season and might be the favorites to win the championship, but they rank 21st in pace. Boston wants to use the shot clock to find the most efficient shots, then rely on its No. 2-rated defense to win the game. But in a single-elimination format, the Pacers caught the Celtics off guard and took control of the game.

“If we get caught up into a 120-, 130-range game, that’s their kind of game,” Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla said after the loss. “If we get up in the 90s and the 100s, that’s our style of game. So we’ve gotta fight like hell to dictate the pace of the game and play our way.”

Most teams do, but the Pacers by now are experts at making opponents play their style. And, if opposing players are honest, most of them enjoy playing a faster tempo, so maybe they don’t fight the turning tide.

“I do like it because it’s free-form basketball,” said the notoriously methodical Jimmy Butler after the Heat scored a season-high 142 points on the Pacers. “You got to make so many reads on the fly and that’s kinda what today’s game is like anyways. I guess we should play faster."

Once the Pacers get opponents to play their style, the bet is that they’ll be better at playing that way. This is partly because of the hours of logged practice time, but mostly because they have Haliburton. 

“They play at such a pace, and Haliburton reads the scheme and coverages probably just as well as any player in this league,” said Spoelstra, who coached Haliburton with Team USA last summer.

Of course, the problem with getting your opponent to play like an elite offense is that sometimes they become an elite offense. The Heat, prior to two games against the Pacers, ranked 19th in offensive rating. After? 12th.

The Pacers rank 28th in defensive rating, giving up just 3.5 points per 100 possessions fewer than their historic offense. On average, teams that play the Pacers score at a more efficient rate than the Sacramento Kings’ top-rated offense last season. 

To be taken seriously as a contender, the Pacers need to be closer to average on defense. Monday’s game against the Celtics, when they got some key stops down the stretch, was a step in the right direction. 

But personnel is also an issue. While the likes of Hield, Matthurin and Toppin give Haliburton explosive receiving threats, the team lacks high-level defenders. Brown alone isn’t enough, and finding more players who fit Haliburton’s style but can also defend is no easy task.

The Pacers figure to be aggressive around the trade deadline, but there’s also no rush. Haliburton is just 23 and has established himself as the centerpiece of what Indiana is building. 

“We still have holes to fill and so we’re nowhere near where we need to be," Carlisle said. “We’re not perfect, but we know who we are.”