Indiana managed to be competitive last year until they gave up on the season and embraced tanking by making some trades. Despite having one of the best coaches in the league, the Pacers couldn’t execute down the stretch and lost several close games. They ended the season with a 3-14 record in games decided by three points or fewer – by far the worst record in the league.
Midseason, Indiana decided to trade Domantas Sabonis, Justin Holiday and Jeremy Lamb to Sacramento, Caris LeVert to Cleveland and Torrey Craig to Phoenix. The player with the most upside that they received from these trades was Tyrese Haliburton from Sacramento. He really filled the stats sheet in the 26 games he played for Indiana last season with 17.5 ppg, 50.2% FG, 41.6% 3pts, 84.9% FT and 9.6/3.2 A/TO ratio. Even though the team was playing at an insanely fast pace during that time, with little to no defense, while losing a bunch of games, Haliburton showed that he can be the team’s playmaker going forward.
2022/23 Outlook:
Indiana had a busy offseason. They traded Malcolm Brogdon to Boston and used their #6 pick to draft Bennedict Mathurin, their #31 pick to select Andrew Nembhard in order to give them backcourt depth and they acquired the #48 pick from Minnesota to get some wing reinforcement with Kendall Brown.
The Pacers also tried to sign DeAndre Ayton, but Phoenix matched their contract. So far, both Myles Turner and Buddy Hield remain with the team even though they were involved in a lot of trade rumors and will probably get traded sooner or later, depending on how many games Indiana wins early in the season.
Besides Haliburton, Jalen Smith also took advantage of the minutes he got last season. He was basically given away by Phoenix but showed he has potential to be a solid role player in Indiana. On the other hand, the Pacers need Chris Duarte to have a bigger impact on offense than the one he had in his rookie season.
Indiana without Myles Turner would surely be one of the worst defensive teams in the league and it’s really not a good idea to depend so much on a player who will probably be traded sooner or later. Considering all of these factors, it doesn’t seem like this will be Indiana’s season at all…