Doyel: Pacers did surprisingly well to add Monta Ellis

Monta Ellis is not perfect for the Indiana Pacers. He's not perfect for anybody, really, unless there's an NBA team seeking a high-volume shooter and a medium-volume scorer who isn't a good defender or big enough to be molded into one.

No, the Pacers' biggest offseason acquisition — and that's him, Monta Ellis — isn't perfect for this team. You know who would've been perfect for the Pacers? LeBron James would've been perfect. Anthony Davis. Kevin Love, Jimmy Butler, LaMarcus Aldridge … I can keep going.

Must I?

You're seeing the point, I hope — and if you're not, Pacers general manager Kevin Pritchard delivered it with an exclamation mark. Here's what Pritchard said before the 2015 NBA Draft, a startlingly honest assessment of where the Pacers fit into the current NBA landscape of teams that either are (A) in an enormous media market or (B) near an ocean or (C) employing LeBron James or (D) everyone else.

"You try to (draft) the best player you can because in a small market, it's your only chance to get special," Pritchard said. "We're not a complete draw for free agents. We're not New York and we're not L.A., so to get the special (player), you've got to try to get it in the draft."

Free agency isn't fair, in other words. It's not a level playing field. Few NBA franchises can compete with teams able to re-sign their own stars to max contracts (eliminating targets like Davis, LeBron, Butler, more), and even if they could attract star players, the Pacers cannot afford to add enormous contracts given the money already devoted to Paul George and, ahem, Roy Hibbert.

But the Pacers cannot attract star players. Humble Indianapolis gets in the way for folks — not for smart people like us who love it here, but for the typical NBA star who values the nightlife and superficial status that certain zip codes offer more than ours.

Not a complaint. Not feeling sorry for anyone here, least of all our city, but these are the facts to consider when faced with the acquisition of a piece as imperfect as Monta Ellis. He has flaws. You can see them in his stats; he shot 28.5 percent on 3-pointers last season, with an effective field-goal percentage (47.5 percent) that is lower than what the Pacers had as a team (48.4 percent). When your biggest offseason acquisition brings down your offensive efficiency, and offense is the only part of the game he excels at, that's a flawed addition.

But enough of the negative. Seriously, no more of that. The Pacers did absolutely as well as they were going to do in free agency. Matter of fact, let's go a step farther and be startlingly honest here, like Kevin Pritchard was the other day:

The Pacers did surprisingly well with this acquisition.

Monta Ellis? The guy's a pure scorer, the likes of which the Pacers haven't had — outside of pre-injury Paul George — since Danny Granger, and then Reggie Miller before that. Now, listen. Ellis isn't as good, isn't nearly as good, as those three guys. But as far as natural-born scorers go, he's better than anyone else the Pacers have had in years.

Rodney Stuckey is a scorer. C.J. Miles is a scorer. Monta Ellis is a better scorer. He has averaged 19.3 points per game in 10 NBA seasons, with 13,107 career points. Keep that up, and he'll approach the magical 20,000 mark in the final year of a deal said to be worth $44 million over four years. There are scorers, and there are scorers. Ellis is in the second category.

Now, he's not what you'd call a defender, a defender or even a "defender," though I like Pacers coach Frank Vogel's track record of getting the best out of players on that end of the court. Ellis will give the Pacers what they've lacked, a consistent 20-point threat to support Paul George, and the Pacers will help him summon the defensive presence he has lacked. He won't be a great defender, obviously. Chicken salad doesn't come out of chicken, er, wings. But he'll be better with this coaching staff. That's the track record here.

As for the on-court recipe being thrown together by Pacers president Larry Bird, there is no track record for that. Not here anyway, not with this (evolving) roster and coach. Bird and Vogel are going smaller, faster, willing to trade a little less defense for a little more scoring. You'll see lineups with Ellis (18.9 ppg, 4.1 assists in 2014-15) and George Hill (16.1 ppg, 5.1 apg) in the backcourt, wings C.J. Miles (13.5 ppg) and Paul George (17.4 ppg the three seasons before last year's injury) in the frontcourt, and someone protecting the rim. Myles Turner was drafted to do that, and he can run more than the guy he was drafted to replace, Roy Hibbert.

This Pacers remake got interesting when plodding power forward David West opted out of the final year of his contract, then more so on Thursday with the addition of Ellis. If Hibbert is traded soon to a team that values his expiring-in-2016 contract — if not his useless-in-2015 skill set — this Pacers remake would hit a whole new level, one that could set them up as one of the Eastern Conference's top threats to LeBron and the Cavaliers.

But that assumes the Pacers can convince a special free agent to accept some of their money. And as Kevin Pritchard says, special free agents aren't coming here.

So we're back to Monta Ellis, who might not be special but who absolutely makes the Pacers a better team. Maybe that's a small victory. Maybe that's the only kind we were going to see around these parts.

Find Star columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at@GreggDoyelStar or atwww.facebook.com/gregg.doyel