Indiana Pacers fans would erase everything from June 22, 2025, up until now if they could. I would erase the f-bomb I dropped in front of my family, a rare thing, but I had no other way to respond to the tragic and cruel timing of Tyrese Haliburton’s injury.
Everyone knew the 2025-2026 season was a glorified waiting period for the Indiana squad. While all hopes and intentions for the Pacers might have been to play for something, at one point they flirted with having one of the top 50 worst NBA seasons ever.
The Ivica Zubac trade was a subplot in the post-trade deadline portion of the season, a wise move but one that made Indiana’s lottery fate all the more perilous.
And of course, another cursing-worthy moment came when the lottery order was revealed. The Pacers fell outside the top 4 and sent the No. 5 pick to the Los Angeles Clippers sooner than they hoped. The hope was for a top-four pick and the chance of a generational talent. What Indiana got was nothing.
The No. 5 pick itself wasn’t going to change Indiana’s title chances, but an intriguing trade chip nonetheless. The lottery was salt in the wounds of a franchise and fanbase that has seemed to get kicked in the ‘nads whenever anything good seems to be happening.
The epilogue of Haliburton’s injury is that the New York Knicks are now NBA Champions. They didn’t have to face the Pacers, the team that has expelled them from the playoffs time and time again. That doesn’t make their title any less, but it only made the Lost Season that much worse for Indiana fans watching, if they could stomach it.
A championship this season would heal all those wounds, but it’s hard to know what to expect from Haliburton until we see him in games. A return to the Finals would mark two years from the moment when it felt like Indiana was going to rout Oklahoma City in Game 7 but instead turned into a tragically cruel moment for a fanbase used to them.
Now the Pacers are facing the fact that they don’t know exactly who they are. Myles Turner is out, though Zubac is an upgrade in all but three-point shooting. Haliburton is the obvious question mark but so is a team that was spiritually dead last season and now is two years older than the team that surprised many on their journey to the Finals.
The Journey
What hurts most about the current unknown for the Pacers is knowing the cost.
Fans would likely not trade the run in 2025 for anything but a title itself, but the Haliburton injury and any path to a championship this season represent three years of work and effort just to claw back what Indiana likely feels was theirs.
Three damn seasons for maybe one title. One painfully close. One nowhere near one. Now, one of uncertainty in everything but the goal.
Nothing is guaranteed, though, and the Eastern Conference has changed. Maybe the Knicks actually are better and didn’t just avoid the Pacers, but again, that merely plays back into the what-ifs of the Lost Season. The Raptors got a guy who merely wants to circumvent the salary cap, but a guy who is one of the best of his generation when healthy.
Oh, and LeBron James is back in the Eastern Conference… hooray.
It is also why there is so much pressure now.
Indiana knows any championship window they have is here and now. It doesn’t matter what led to this season or what was missed, it merely matters that the Pacers win this season. If it doesn’t happen this year, it isn’t hard to feel like the threads holding that hope of a title together will have frayed too far to repair.
Anything else may crush any optimism that Haliburton and this squad are the ones who will end the Pacers’ post-ABA title drought.
We know what Tyrese Haliburton would say to that.
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