A week ago, Pacers traded away their first-round pick. Why that move looks even smarter today

Indianapolis Star

5 hours ago

INDIANAPOLIS – The NBA draft starts tonight at 8, but the Indiana Pacers don't have a pick in the first round and that's probably a good thing on a number of levels.
The Pacers had the No. 23 pick in the draft, but traded it last week to the New Orleans Pelicans to recover the 2026 first-round pick the Pacers originally traded to the Raptors along with Bruce Brown and Jordan Nwora and two picks in the 2024 draft for Pascal Siakam. The Raptors traded the pick along with Brown to the Pelicans to acquire Brandon Ingram.
Trading the pick made sense at the time and it looks even better after Tyrese Haliburton suffered a torn right Achilles tendon, which Pacers coach Rick Carlisle acknowledged will likely force the All-Star point guard to miss all of the 2025-26 season.
The Pacers should still be able to put a competitive, playoff-caliber team on the floor with the rest of their starters likely to return, but it will be hard for them to match this year's 50-win campaign and NBA Finals run. That should mean next year's pick will be higher than No. 23.
"The fact that we traded our pick this year to get our pick back next year is pretty amazing foresight when you consider what happened to Tyrese," Carlisle said in a radio interview on Tuesday morning in 107.5 The Fan. "The fact that next year there's certainly a chance that will be a higher pick and it's good to have that in our pocket."
Even before the injury it still made sense because the Pacers have signed many of their key pieces to multi-year contracts and they've found it difficult to find playing time for young players the past two seasons during their runs to the Eastern Conference Finals in 2024 and the NBA Finals this season. Forward Jarace Walker, the No. 8 pick in the 2023 draft, played in just 33 games as a rookie in 2023-24 and 75 games this year with his role shrinking toward the end of the season when the Pacers were fully healthy.
Rookie Johnny Furphy, who the Pacers picked early in the second round with the No. 35 overall pick, got plenty of playing time in November and December when the Pacers had three players who play wing positions out with injuries — Andrew Nembhard, Aaron Nesmith and Ben Sheppard — but once they returned his playing time was largely limited to mop-up minutes. Furphy averaged 7.6 minutes per game in 50 outings.
If the Pacers re-sign Myles Turner, they'll have at least their top eight scorers from this season still under contract and could have more return depending on what they do at backup center. Plus they still have Walker, Furphy and Sheppard under contract, so anyone the Pacers would take in the first round would have a hard time getting rotation minutes and would most likely spend a lot of time in the G League in the inaugural season of the Noblesville Boom.
Haliburton's injury creates some incentive for the Pacers to jump back into the draft to look for depth at either center behind Turner or point guard behind Nembhard and T.J. McConnell, but they could also look for a veteran minimum free agent to fill those roles. They do have the No. 54 overall pick in the second round and will make that choice Thursday night. If they make that pick that player will most likely be placed on a two-way contract with the Boom.
Financially the trade also helps because the Pacers will certainly surpass the luxury tax threshold if they re-sign Turner and they could find themselves near the first tax apron which contains some restrictions on player movement. Avoiding a first-round rookie-scale contract would at least save the Pacers a few million dollars and keep them from getting further into the tax. if they fill the roster with veteran minimum deals, they could keep those to a year while rookie scale first-round deals generally go for four with a club option for the fourth year.