Ladies and gentlemen, we are almost there. Indiana Pacers basketball returns tonight, Wednesday, October 23, at 7:00 PM Eastern time against the Detroit Pistons!
This will be the Pacers’ first NBA game since their May 27 loss to the Boston Celtics in Game 4 of the 2024 Eastern Conference Finals. That loss ended a Cinderella run of sorts and set some newfound expectations for the squad in blue and yellow.
After years of playoff disappointment, followed by years of missing the playoffs, a huge trade to start a rebuild, and a recent surprise run to the Conference Finals, the Pacers decided to stand pat this offseason. They made smaller moves around the margins, primarily focused on retaining their core players and relying on chemistry and growth from within.
Despite the lack of fresh faces outside of James Wiseman and rookies Johnny Furphy, Enrique Freeman, and Tristen Newton, Pacers fans still have plenty of questions for their team. While they made the Conference Finals seemingly ahead of schedule last season, most still consider the Pacers a work in progress, an unpolished statue, you could say. In fact, out of all the East playoff teams not named the Celtics, the Pacers may provide the most question marks among their fanbase and others.
Fluke run or real deal?
To some, Indiana’s playoff run was a sign of a team on the rise, no longer content with being happy to be there but instead hoping to add their first NBA Championship to their history books sooner rather than later. To others, the Pacers’ rise was simply a product of fortunate circumstances falling their way, primarily injuries and bad luck for other teams, and they should go back to being a middle-of-the-pack team before long.
This is the first question the Pacers have to answer: Are they for real? While the Pacers would not have made it to the Conference Finals off sheer luck alone, there is no denying they were helped by some timely injuries to playoff opponents such as Giannis Antetokounmpo, Julius Randle, and OG Anunoby. This has led to many labeling the Pacers as a “fluke team” and comparing them to the 2020-21 Atlanta Hawks, who had a similar playoff run, making the Eastern Conference Finals before ultimately regressing and falling out of playoff contention before long.
Barring the obvious differences in situations between these two teams, the Pacers want to avoid this comparison going forward. Sure enough, it has not gone unnoticed by Pacers players, namely Tyrese Haliburton, who spoke out multiple times during the offseason about the noise he heard from other teams and fans and how it motivated him and the team to get better and prove doubters wrong.
“The response and the view on us as a group, after having success last year and that kind of being looked at, as a little bit of like a fluke in some people’s minds is, I think, a big motivation and irritation,” Haliburton stated in his 2024-25 Media Day Interview. “”So I think for us as a group, I think we have a ton of guys who, you know, have chips on their shoulders for different reasons. Everybody’s been doubted one way or another. I think that everybody has different motivations, and I think that this just adds chips on our shoulders to everybody as a group, and I think that’s the exciting part because I think that’s why there was so much success and hunger last year, and that doesn’t change going into this year because we know what we’re capable of. We’ve always known what we’re capable of, and we don’t need to talk about it. We’ll just be it this year.”
Hidden in plain sight in this larger question of the Pacers being a serious contender is the matter of Haliburton himself. Following his superstar turn and success in the first-ever In-Season Tournament in the first couple months of last season, Haliburton suffered a hamstring injury and was not the same player for the remainder of the season and most of the playoffs. His shot was off; he didn’t look to shoot as much in general and seemed a step slower on the floor. After a summer rehabbing, spending time with Team USA in Paris, and winning a gold medal, Haliburton looks rejuvenated and ready to flip some of the criticisms on himself into praise.
“I’m coming into this year, and whether it’s the case or not, viewing it like everybody thinks my success in the first half of last season was a fluke, and I got to prove it again,” Haliburton told GQ Sports. “And that’s just who I am and that’s how I’m just cut that way. That’s the fun part about it for me: it’s just another chip on my shoulder, [added] to the thousands that are already there.”
Clearly feeling some type of way about how pundits reacted to his and his team’s success, Tyrese Haliburton seems motivated to put every doubt to bed and show the world that the Indiana Pacers are the real deal.
Defensive woes remain?
One reason why the Pacers need to prove themselves ties into the second big question they will need to answer this season: Are they serious on the defensive end? In the first half of the 2023-24 season, before the Pascal Siakam trade, the Pacers gave up an average of 123 points per game, barely edging out their 125 points scored, making for the fourth-worst defensive rating in the league.
These early-season defensive woes led Rick Carlisle to drop one of the most memorable quotes in recent Pacers history on New Year’s Eve 2023. Speaking to the press before the New Year, Carlisle stated, “Being historically great on offense is fun, but even dating a pretty girl gets boring after a while if she can’t guard anybody.”
Apparently, this analogy was exactly what Indiana needed to tighten up a bit. Following the Siakam trade, progress was made on that end, as the Pacers allowed an average of 117 points in the second half of the season and “improved” to the ninth-worst defensive rating in the league, finishing with the seventh-worst defensive rating in the league through all 82 games.
In the playoffs, Indiana’s defense again improved to allow slightly under 113 points per game, giving them the fourth-worst defensive rating among playoff teams. It wasn’t ideal, but not nearly as bad as they fared before the Siakam trade. Prior to the Siakam trade, combining their defensive woes with Tyrese Haliburton missing time due to his hamstring injury and being a step behind once returning, there was a serious chance the Pacers could have fallen out of the playoff picture and slid into the Play-In, or worse, missed the playoffs altogether.
The Pacers are not exactly short on defensive talent. They have established defenders such as Aaron Nesmith, Myles Turner, and Pascal Siakam, along with young up-and-coming pests such as Jarace Walker, Ben Sheppard, and Andrew Nembhard. The question is if they can use these players’ talents to their advantage and devise schemes that can get them timely stops if their all-time great offense is not producing.
For now, all we have as a reference is the 41-game sample size of the post-Siakam trade portion of last season, the playoffs, and the 2024 preseason, where Indiana gave up 121 points per game and ranked sixth-worst in defensive rating. However, it goes without saying that preseason defensive effort should be taken with a grain of salt, and the objective evaluation should start on the first game of the season.
It is not like the Pacers are without motivation on this end, either. Former president Barack Obama (yes, that Barack Obama) told Tyrese Haliburton on a podcast episode of The Young Man & the Three (formerly Old Man) that Indiana needs to improve its defense based on what he’d seen from them the previous season.
If a man with those credentials tells you that you need to pick it up, it’s safe to say that you need to, and that’s exactly what fans are hoping the Pacers do starting Wednesday.
Improvement against bad teams?
Finally, the Pacers must improve against bad teams to be taken seriously, which ties into their first regular season game.
In the 2023-24 NBA season, despite finishing with a 47-35 record and 27 wins against teams above the .500 mark, good for second in the East, the Pacers finished with 14 losses against teams below .500, leading playoff teams and finishing with four more losses than second-place Milwaukee. As a playoff team, you cannot afford losses to teams like the Trail Blazers, Bulls, Jazz, Wizards, Nets, and Spurs. When the season starts ramping up, and tiebreakers start coming into play, those losses will come back to haunt you, which is probably why the Pacers had to break out of a three-way record tie to get the sixth seed in the East.
For this reason, what should be an easy win to start the season against the Detroit Pistons becomes more of a test for how the rest of the season will go. The Eastern Conference is very competitive this year, with seeds two through eight able to go to any team, including the Pacers. Matchups like Wednesday’s against the Pistons should be seen as free spots on a Bingo sheet and no reason to slack off. Going into the 2024-25 NBA season, Indiana’s expectations are higher than they’ve been dating back an entire decade to the Paul George era, and fans will not settle for less than what they think this team is capable of.
To make a statement early on, Indiana must avoid falling into their old habit of slacking off in the first minutes against Detroit, leading to a large deficit that they will spend the rest of the game playing catch-up on. Instead, they need to prove to the Pistons and the rest of the NBA that they are a better defensive team, take matchups against inferior teams seriously, and are not the fluke other teams and fans think they are. Despite exceeding expectations in what was supposed to be the third season of a rebuild, Tyrese Haliburton said it himself: the number one goal for the Indiana Pacers going forward is to win a championship.
That quest for the gold begins against Detroit at 7 PM EST. Will you be watching?
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