Off to the Races || Indiana Pacers (2K23)

[ShamWowNY]

Setup
System: Xbox Series X
Game: NBA 2K23
Roster: CelticLG Attention to Detail
Sliders: Custom, based on ShadyMike (gameplay), Schnaidt/ATD (MyNBA)
Setup: 30 team control, 41 games played/41 games simmed each season

WARNING: Some formatting may break on mobile - view on desktop for the best experience

---

2022-23 Season
October 29, 2022 - Game #1, Off to the Races
November 21, 2022 - Rookie Ladder
November 30, 2022 - Indy Cornrows Q1 Review
December 5, 2022 - Standings
December 16, 2022 - KD Trade Request with Bill Simmmons & Ryen Russillo
December 26, 2022 - Christmas Power Rankings
January 1, 2023 - KD, Myles Turner traded to the Pelicans
January 9, 2023 - The Ringer: Midseason Awards
January 23, 2023 - Standings
February 9, 2023 - Trade Deadline
February 21, 2023 - Post-Deadline Power Rankings

[ShamWowNY]

[ShamWowNY]

[ShamWowNY]

Last season: 25-57; 16th in offense, 28th in defense
Key additions: C Daniel Theis, SF Aaron Nesmith
Key subtractions: PF T.J. Warren, SG Malcolm Brogdon, SG Lance Stephenson, SG Duane Washington Jr.
Draft picks: SG Bennedict Mathurin (sixth), SG Andrew Nembhard (31st), SF Kendall Brown (48th)

Well, that was a rather abrupt shift in strategy.

The Indiana Pacers went from win-now to win-later in the blink of an eye, suddenly switching gears midseason in 2021-22 after spending most of the previous half-decade trying to max out a flawed but decent team. Coming off the heels of a 2021 offseason where they hired a 61-year-old coach with a championship on his résumé and drafted a 46-year-old because he could help right away (OK, a 24-year-old, but still), it came across as quite the record scratch.

That doesn’t mean it was the wrong strategy. The pre-selloff Pacers were still fairly young but mostly tapped out on asset equity and were not particularly threatening to the upper echelon of the Eastern Conference. The best-case scenario was a “no bad players” depth model with five not-quite-All-Stars in the starting lineup, but that model was quickly shown to be wildly optimistic. A 9-16 start combined with periodic sad-trombone injury updates on T.J. Warren put the delusions of grandeur to rest quickly. Once the rest of the East improved to the point that you couldn’t just waltz into a sixth seed with respectable competence anymore, the pathway was clear.

The slow start was helpful because the Pacers saw the writing on the wall quickly. It couldn’t have been an easy pivot for a franchise with five straight playoff appearances before the 34-38 Nate Bjorkgren campaign in 2020-21 (I guess not everything with Bjork in it is awesome). But man, once they went in, they went all in. Domantas Sabonis was dealt for Tyrese Haliburton, Warren never came back, Myles Turner and Brogdon combined to play nine games after mid-January and the necessary losses quickly accumulated during an 11-38 blitz to the finish line that finished with 10 straight losses.

Despite the emphatic tank, Indiana only ended up in the sixth position in the draft, where it grabbed a good player but, historically, probably not somebody who can change the franchise by himself. Well, unless he’s the exception. Mathurin was arguably the best rookie in the NBA Summer League and looked great in preseason too. At worst, he looks like a long-term fixture as a starting wing. Nobody’s talking about him yet because it’s Indiana and five guys were picked ahead of him, but the Pacers might have hit a home run with him.

Unfortunately, that still leaves the Pacers in an odd position: They’re bad, yes, but are they bad enough? The irony is that the Pacers may end up being punished for doing some fairly smart things last season and end up missing out on the greatest fruits of the Victor Wembanyama tankathon.

Most notable is trading for Haliburton, a gifted passer and shooter who needs to only refine his instincts as a scorer to become an All-Star. He might be better off as the second star rather than the leading man — he has limitations as a creator against switches and needs to get comfortable playing with his left hand. For now, however, he’s easily the Pacers’ best player and, unlike Sabonis, he can be under team control for six more years once he signs an extension next summer.

The Pacers also scraped up some other treats last winter. They unearthed positionless League Pass cult hero Terry Taylor, siphoned an unwanted Jalen Smith from Phoenix and re-signed him to a favorable deal and may have something in second-year shot-blocking center Isaiah Jackson.

But Indy’s biggest issue heading into the season is that the teardown is incomplete. Turner is still in town with his trade value dying on the vine heading into his free-agent year. So are Buddy Hield, a veteran shooter inked for two more years; T.J. McConnell, a human gnat with three years left to run on his contract; and Theis, a serviceable rotation big who also has three years left to run on his deal. The only thing those guys can do for the Pacers this season is cause them to win just enough games that they pick 10th instead of in the top four of a loaded 2023 draft.

I wonder if the Pacers would also consider moving Chris Duarte, whose win-now utility from that 2022 draft is in the possession of a win-later franchise. (For instance, trading him for the player selected immediately after, Golden State’s Moses Moody, might work out well for both sides.)

The other part of this picture is that the Pacers still have an amazing $29 million in cap space entering the season, pending their inevitable trade for Russell Westbrook (just kidding … a little). The Pacers did make an effort to sign Deandre Ayton to an offer sheet, but that was always going to be a long shot. Otherwise, they opted to keep their powder dry and play things out during the regular season, with the obvious goal of getting draft equity in return for a salary dump.

Re-upping Smith was baked into their plans from the get-go, but that was Indiana’s only signing this offseason, and the Pacers only had 14 main-roster players as this went to press. (OK, not really “to press,” but just imagine there’s a giant printing press back here spinning wheels of paper and an impassioned editor yelling at people with their ink-stained sleeves rolled up.)

Indiana will do something in-season to leverage all this cap room — it would be organizational malpractice not to — although it may wait until the trade deadline. The notion of a Westbrook trade with the Lakers won’t go away anytime soon, but we also should note that the Pacers don’t necessarily need to take on an expiring contract. Indiana has at least $50 million in cap room headed its way after this season, and it’s not using it on a splashy max free-agent deal.

Already, Indiana has put itself in a decent position to make this rebuild as painless as possible. In addition to having two major building blocks in Haliburton and Mathurin (confusingly wearing numbers 0 and 00, as NBA.com’s John Schuhmann pointed out), the Pacers are likely to have three first-round picks in the loaded 2023 draft, courtesy of trading Brogdon and LeVert.

Beyond Haliburton and Mathurin, Indy has a lot of fun/interesting types on the back end of the roster who should make this season a fairly painless variety of badness. McConnell, as long as he’s here, is must-see TV for his ball pressure alone. Jackson blocks shots, flies up and down the floor and might even be able to shoot. If he can stop fouling on every play (8.3 personals per 100), he could be a starting center. Taylor is a special arthouse flick, a 6-foot-5 non-shooter who is theoretically a guard but does all his damage in the paint. Goga Bitadze’s theoretical stretch-five game may yet come to fruition, and in the meantime, his attempts to set screens are good for at least one sequence of unintentional comedy per game. Nesmith also is here, running almost unopposed for a role as a 3-and-D small forward on a roster that is mostly centers and guards.

While they wait for the other shoe to drop, the Pacers are not good, certainly, but not abominably bad either. They’re more a pile of curiosities, a weird team with weird questions: Can Smith play power forward? Like, at all? Can Haliburton become a scorer? Does Taylor have a real position on a good team? Will alleged shooter Nesmith start making shots? Wasn’t Bitadze one of the bad guys in the second Bourne movie?

Indiana also drafted Nembhard and Brown in the second round, and both will likely see plentiful opportunities as the season goes on. While Nembhard was drafted higher, he probably projects as a don’t-kill-us backup guy at best. I’m more excited about the long-term upside of Brown, a raw one-and-done who could be a starting three in a few years. However, Brown’s offensive game may be too limited to earn much time for the varsity this season. He’s on a two-way after slipping to 48th in the draft and should probably familiarize himself with the Fort Wayne restaurant scene.

This is going to be an exciting team to watch even if it’s not very good, at least until it shuts down Haliburton with “back spasms” on Feb. 19 and doubles down on Wobbling for Wembanyama. However, the real action is off the court. If the Pacers can turn their 2022 cap space into some more high draft picks, get value in trades for Turner, Hield and McConnell and turn their 2023 cap room bounty into at least one good player (even if it’s not a splashy max contract All-Star), they might be back in the playoff mix relatively quickly.

In the end, the talent on the roster is sufficient enough that it could hurt the Pacers in the tanking sweepstakes. But based on last season, I suspect the front office is smart enough to “manage” Indiana into a record that gives it a decent chance on lottery night.

Prediction: 27-55, 14th in Eastern Conference

Sourced from John Hollinger at The Athletic

[SHaynes23]

Very excited for this. Being from St. Louis they are kind of my adopted home team as they are what plays on our regional sports channel. They are really fun to watch this year. Haliburton and Mathurin will be awesome to build around. Really excited to see what you can get in return for Buddy and Turner.

[ShamWowNY]

[ShamWowNY]

Quote: Originally Posted by SHaynes23

Very excited for this. Being from St. Louis they are kind of my adopted home team as they are what plays on our regional sports channel. They are really fun to watch this year. Haliburton and Mathurin will be awesome to build around. Really excited to see what you can get in return for Buddy and Turner.

Thanks! I picked the Pacers for a few reasons:

1. I chised with the Kings last year and LOVED playing with Hali
2. I was a big Mathurin coming out of the draft and think he can be a star
3. The Pacers have assets to move, but aren't that far off competing for the playoffs (especially with the development of the two guys mentioned above)

Appreciate your following!

[ShamWowNY]

No one expected a miracle, but tonight's effort from the Indiana Pacers was simply sad.

Coming off a surprising win over the themselves surprising Wizards last night, some sluggishness could be forgiven, but the Pacers looked completely lost on both sides of the ball in a 103-131 loss in Brooklyn.

From the opening tip, it was clear this game wasn't going the Pacers' way. It was a cold start from the field (0-10), and the team was shooting a grisly 37% at halftime. The Nets, meanwhile, seemed to be playing with a different set of rims, somehow, draining over half of their 32 threes in the game.

Even when they could put something together, the Gods of Basketball simply wouldn't cooperate. The end of this Nets possession says a thousand more words than I can write:

Shot clock running out, smothering coverage, ball rolling around the rim, still drops. Sigh.

The normally careful Tyrese Haliburton struggled with turnovers and poor shot selection, shooting 6-15 from the field with four turnovers. Bennedict Mathurin's strong scoring start to his rookie campaign continued, with 19 points (albeit on less-than-ideal 7 of 16 shooting).

The Pacers' early-season rotation experimentation continued, with Myles Turner ceding some minutes to Goga Bitadze and Isaiah Jackson. The minutes distribution on the wing continues to be a question mark as well, with Rick Carlisle trying to sort out how to utilize Aaron Nesmith, Terry Taylor, and Chris Duarte.

For the Nets, Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving did what they do best - score. KD posted 38-8-5, and was no slouch defensively with 3 steals and 2 blocks. Kyrie (30 points, 8 assists) and Royce O'Neale (15 points) torched the tired Pacers from outside, combining to shoot 11-18 from three.

Luckily for the Pacers, they'll get another shot at the Nets in two days. Here's hoping they get some rest between now and then.

---

Box Scores

Spoiler