One team will take home Victor Wembanyama in this draft. Besides the lottery winner, nobody has more on the line than the Indiana Pacers. After reluctantly tanking for 18 months, the Pacers have a budding young core, three first round draft picks and a mandate to win again. The 2023 draft might be the Pacers’ only shot to build a championship contender.
The direction of the Pacers franchise changed last February when they traded Domantas Sabonis, Justin Holiday and Jeremy Lamb for Tyrese Haliburton, Buddy Hield and Tristan Thompson.
The trade marked a shift in strategy for the Pacers.
They went from a franchise still clinging to first round playoff exits to a team accepting a real rebuild.
By officially accepting the tanking strategy in early 2022, the Pacers brass chose to end a stretch where the Pacers made the playoffs 9 of the past 11 seasons.
It was the right choice.
The Pacers had made 9 playoff appearances, but hadn’t advanced past the first round since 2013-14 Eastern Conference Finals appearance. Shoutout Roy Hibbert!
Indiana had five straight first round exits and a play-in game exit prevented the franchise from having a sixth.
The current model was not working for the Pacers.
The Front Office, lead by President Kevin Pritchard, ended the fractured two big system with Sabonis and Myles Turner and shifted the team’s timeline to a younger core with the trade for Haliburton.
The Front Office Adapting
Pritchard and the Pacers have tried hard to cling to regular season success and developing “homegrown talent” over the years to stay in the playoff race every season.
After falling short to the Big 3 Heat for three straight seasons, the front office overhauled the roster realizing the combination of Hibbert, David West, Lance Stephenson, George Hill, and Paul George wasn’t enough.
Over the next two years, the Pacers brass shipped out all four starters and retooled around Paul George. George, who the Pacers selected 10th in the 2010 NBA draft, had developed into an All-NBA, MVP candidate player in Indiana.
The Pacers tried everything to build a contender around him. Including names like Ian Mahinmi, Monta Ellis, Al Jefferson, Jeff Teague, Thad Young, Myles Turner, and even a second Lance Stephenson stint.
Nothing worked.
After a not-so-quiet trade request before George became a free agent, the Pacers traded PG13 to Oklahoma City for an underachieving Victor Oladipo and rookie big Domantas Sabonis.
The trade was a shock as no rumors of this had surfaced and it seemed like the Pacers didn’t get enough in the trade. This trade, like the Haliburton trade, was a move to get younger and build a new core.
However, it was not a rebuild because Victor Oladipo was immediately awesome for the Pacers. Oladipo was third-team All-NBA in his first year and the Pacers earned the 5 seed after winning 48 games. Sabonis was awesome too going from 5.9 points a game to 11.6 and the Pacers eventually developed Domas into a multi-time All-Star too.
Indiana and Oladipo even took Lebron and the Cavs to 7 games in the first round of the Playoffs that season.
Sadly, from that point on injuries derailed Oladipo’s superstardom.
Similar to the PG13 era, no matter what configuration of players and coaches the Pacers brought in made the team a real playoff contender. They tried Tyreke Evans, Caris LeVert, Bojan Bogdanovic, Malcolm Brogdon, both of the average Holiday brothers, etc. None of them moved the needle.
So that’s the path that lead them to once again move towards a new younger core and a new centerpiece.
Tyrese Haliburton is the new centerpiece in the same vein as Paul George and Victor Oladipo before him. The Pacers continued their development streak as Haliburton earned his first All-Star selection this season, his first full one with the team.
However, the difference is Pacers’ fans know this time around Haliburton isn’t the guy.
Haliburton is awesome and should be a yearly All-Star type player, but he still projects as the 2nd best player on a true championship contender.
After this year’s tanking season and a can’t miss number 1 pick in Victor Wembanyama, the Pacers have a shot at really building a championship core.
How to win as a Small Market team
To better understand what the Pacers are up against, let’s go over the how Champions from Small Markets of the past three decades were able to win it all…
Milwaukee:
- Have 14 people pass on Giannis Antetokounmpo
- Draft Giannis
- Hope because he is foreign, he loves the Small-Market city and doesn’t have the LA or NY mentality other NBA players have
- Have James Harden pull his hamstring
- Have Kyrie Irving get hurt
- Work with Nike to make sure Kevin Durant’s shoe is one inch too long
- Play against Chris Paul in the Finals
Cleveland:
- Have LeBron James be born close to your franchise’s city
- Win the lottery LeBron is apart of
- Draft Lebron James
- Win the Lottery 3 of the 4 years after he leaves your franchise
- Hope he feels a duty to return to Cleveland and win one for his “hometown”
- Make sure Draymond Green loses his temper and is suspended in the Finals
San Antonio:
- Hire one of the best three coaches ever
- Win the lottery and draft a top 10 player ever in Tim Duncan
- Have both of them be humble and patient enough that they are cool with staying in San Antonio for multiple decades
- Grab two fringe All-Star, foreign players who are also cool with San Antonio, Texas
- Have the Pacers trade you Kawhi Leonard for George Hill
Detroit:
- Draft Isiah Thomas and build a defensive identity on a concept that no longer is accepted by NBA rules
- OR
- Have a guy like Chauncey Billups slip thru the cracks on four other teams before becoming a star on your team
- Have Rasheed Wallace keep it all together for two straight years
- Have the best defender in the NBA in Ben Wallace (in an era where his free throw % doesn’t make him unplayable)
- Have two fringe all-stars in Tayshaun Prince and Rip Hamilton around them
- Make sure the best team in the league was fighting themselves after three straight titles in a very weak NBA
None of these options are very replicable.
The Pacers might have their title path by landing Wembanyama.
The Pacers have a 6.8% chance of getting the number one pick. It is much less likely to build a championship team with a pick that nets Jarace Walker or Cam Whitmore.
Even if they nail the draft, OKC drafted KD, Russell Westbrook and James Harden in back to back to back drafts and still never won the title.
OKC is now trying their own version of how to win a title in a Mid-Market by grabbing 72 of the next 4 first round draft picks.
The Pacers don’t have the luxury.
The Front office scrapped the team and now they have their pick, Cleveland’s pick (26), and Boston’s pick (29) to build their core.
Boom or Bust Draft History
The most important thing to be successful as a small market team is to draft well.
When you are constantly in the playoffs like the Pacers, you have to draft outside of the lottery. That can lead to mixed results. The Pacers have had some home run draft picks and some big strikeouts.
The Pacers have had some big wins in the draft like Danny Granger (17th pick, 1x All Star), they traded for Roy Hibbert right after the draft (17th pick, 2x All Star), Paul George (10th pick, 8x All Star), and Myles Turner (11th pick). We aren’t going to talk about how they drafted Kawhi Leonard outside of the lottery and traded him for George Hill.
But when you pick that far back in the draft you also have some real duds.
They struck out on picks like Tyler Hansborough (18th pick, UNC), Miles Plumlee (26th pick, Duke), TJ Leaf (18th pick, UCLA), Goga Bitadze (18th pick, International).
Huh, almost all of them were white guys from Blue Blood college programs. The funniest draft pick would probably be if the Pacers draft Gradey Dick and he becomes Greg McDermott 0.5 for them.
In between the big hits and the big misses, the team drafted some solid role players like Lance Stephenson, Solomon Hill, Georges Niang, Aaron Holiday, etc.
The Pacers recent draft history under Pritchard has been pretty good. Bitadze was a massive miss, but they have rebounded with Chris Duarte, Andrew Nembhard, and Bennedict Mathurin. Duarte and Mathurin made 1st or 2nd All Rookie teams and Nembhard missed second team by one vote.
Mathurin, Duarte, and Nembhard are the backbone behind Haliburton that the young core is based off of. Myles Turner is the veteran presence and anchor for the defense. All five of those guys can really shoot the basketball.
The Pacers have built a fun, fast-paced, offensive team. They’re weak at the forward/wing position. One of Buddy Hield, Mathurin, Duarte, or Nembhard at some point will likely be traded to fill out the roster more evenly. This draft also provides some options at their position of weakness.
Wembanyama could slot in next to Turner and the Pacers would become maybe the toughest team to score in the paint against.
Jarace Walker out of Houston is a big physical PF who might be the best fit for the Pacers if they don’t move up the draft. Smaller wings like Ausar and Amen Thompson, Cam Whitmore out of Villanova, Gradey Dick, and Taylor Hendricks out of USF are all potential options for the Pacers to fill the need.
However, none of them really scream superstar.
The Pacers also have Boston’s pick courtesy of the Malcolm Brogdon trade and the Cavs pick from the Caris LeVert trade. Both picks unfortunately fell into the late first round at 26 and 29.
The Pacers should take some swings with all their picks. It is their best shot at landing a star.
Almost certainly one of the picks will be a bust. One will likely just be a role player. Yet, one could be the next Paul George or better.
The Pacers ownership won’t allow the team to continue tanking. There is no ‘trusting the process’ in Indianapolis.
The Pacers most likely will not land Wembanyama. They have a pretty good shot at moving up and maybe Brandon Miller or Scoot Henderson can be the guy next to Haliburton.
Indiana has picked inside the top 10 twice in the past twenty-five drafts. Those picks were Bennedict Mathurin and Paul George.
The Pacers have never had the number one pick. It could alter the franchise in a way that LeBron and Tim Duncan altered the Cavs and Spurs if they landed this number one pick.
Still, Milwaukee won a title with the 15th pick in Giannis and Detroit won with no. 2 overall pick Isiah Thomas and no. 3 pick Chauncey Billups as the best players.
Kevin Pritchard and the Pacers front office took a gamble by trading for Tyrese Haliburton and entering a tank with trades of Malcolm Brogdon and Caris LeVert.
At the draft lottery on Tuesday night, they hope that their gamble pays off, and they land the guy to pair with cornerstone Haliburton moving forward.