Doyel: Yes, the Pacers have superstars. And they have two more who don't actually play

Indianapolis Star

2 days ago

These Indiana Pacers — sorry, these 2025 NBA Finalist Indiana Pacers — are said to have two stars, superstars, franchise players, whatever you want to call Tyrese Haliburton and Pascal Siakam. And that's true, if we're looking only at the roster.
Haliburton has been an NBA All-Star twice, and earned third-team All-NBA recognition this season for the second consecutive year. Siakam has been an NBA All-Star three times, twice has earned All-NBA recognition, and was named MVP of the 2025 Eastern Conference Finals. They are stars, franchise players, max contract guys. Whatever you want to call them.
But the Pacers, these specific Pacers — this team headed to the NBA Finals, which begin Thursday at Oklahoma City — have two more stars, superstars, whatever you want to call them. Don't scan the roster for the names because they aren't there, and I say that with all due respect to Myles Turner, Andrew Nembhard and Aaron Nesmith. And to elite bench players Bennedict Mathurin and T.J. McConnell.
These two guys were here before almost everyone on this roster. They were here before Haliburton and Siakam, in particular. And before Nembhard and Nesmith, and Mathurin and McConnell.
The stars, the original stars, of the 2024-25 Indiana Pacers are the executive who put this team together, Kevin Pritchard, and the coach who will put that team on the court Thursday night against the Thunder, Rick Carlisle.
How about we give them their flowers now, huh?
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This is the team of Pritchard's dreams, the team he has been trying to craft since he took over for Larry Bird as Pacers president in 2017.
Pritchard is not your typical NBA executive, in part because he's not overseeing your typical NBA franchise. He doesn't have an unlimited budget, and even if he did, it wouldn't matter. History has shown that the very best of the very best – past, present and future MVP candidates – don't come here as free agents. And because players of that ability can dictate where they want to play, those guys don't arrive here in trades, either.
Some franchises can money-whip a roster into shape, just put as many stars on the court as possible and see what happens next. That's been the story in Philadelphia and Los Angeles — Lakers and Clippers — and even in recent years, Golden State with the please-take-me additions of Kevin Durant and Jimmy Butler. Miami also has done it that way, with success. Brooklyn and Phoenix have tried it, without.
Pritchard has always seen his ideal starting five not as one or two superstars — and whoever else can fit around the salary cap — but as five fingers forming a fist. Look at some of the Indiana teams of recent years that fell short of this season's success, or any success really, but would've had power-packed starting fives had injuries not ruined things.
That's one hallmark of a Pritchard team, as we're seeing this season with Haliburton-Siakam-Turner-Nembhard-and-Nesmith. But there's another hallmark, and I'll call it the Kumbaya factor.
Pritchard is an idealist, a romantic at heart, and sometimes it has cost him. He sees the best in people, in players, and was burned when Paul George turned out to be less of a building block than a mercenary. The unraveling of Victor Oladipo was less about Pritchard's idealism, and more about the brutal injury Oladipo suffered in 2019, months before he expected to receive a max contract extension. Whereas Paul George was changed by his rise to stardom and his visions of self-important grandeur, Oladipo was changed — understandably so — by that career-altering injury.
But this team? These Pacers? They've been built in Pritchard's double-vision of depth and decency — and we are seeing the result.
Earlier in the Eastern Conference Finals, before Game 1, the New York media was asking Carlisle about this team's secret sauce. Here was one of Carlisle's most telling comments:
'A group of guys that have high character,' he called his roster.
What does that mean? It means Bennedict Mathurin, who came into the league as the No. 6 overall pick in 2022 and immediately compared himself to LeBron James and then averaged an eye-popping 16.7 ppg as a rookie, has gone to the bench for the good of the team. Nesmith needs to start, for defense and the way he runs alongside Haliburton and moves the ball, so Mathurin accepted a role as a primary scoring force on the second unit. But along the way Mathurin has noticeably — I mean, obviously — become more of a defensive presence, in particular working so hard on his occasional assignments on stars Donovan Mitchell of Cleveland and Jalen Brunson of the Knicks.
What does high character mean? It means Andrew Nembhard, who showed during the 2024 Eastern Conference Finals against Boston just how productive he can be if given the chance — 21 ppg, with Haliburton injured — willingly going back to his supporting role when Haliburton returned. Nembhard averaged 10 ppg this season.
What does high character mean? It means center Myles Turner sharing minutes with Domantas Sabonis for years, never making a peep, never asking out. And when it was time to decide which center to keep, Pritchard let Sabonis go to Sacramento at the 2022 trade deadline — knowing the Pacers needed a point guard more than a ball-dominant post player, and knowing Turner would excel in a supporting role to the point guard Pritchard acquired from the Kings: Tyrese Haliburton.
What does high character mean? It means, and it starts, with Haliburton playing a joyful style that insists everyone on the floor eats — often before he does, to his detriment. Haliburton, who averaged 6.3 assists per game in his 1½ season with Sacramento, has averaged 10.1 apg in 3½ seasons with the Pacers. Haliburton, a really nice Robin to De'Aaron Fox's Batman in Sacramento, has come to the Pacers and proved to be the better of the two: the All-NBA player, the U.S. Olympian, the author of postseason heroics.
'Sometimes,' Haliburton was saying Saturday night after the Pacers eliminated the Knicks in Game 6, 'I think (Pritchard and Co.) saw more in me than I saw in myself.'
Pritchard does that. If I'm another NBA team's executive and Kevin Pritchard is on line one to propose a trade, I'm grabbing a pen and some paper, because I'm about to learn which player on my team is better than any of us had realized. Pritchard has done that, for previous Indiana teams and this one, with stars (Oladipo, Sabonis, Haliburton) and starters (Nesmith) and role players (Obi Toppin, Jalen Smith, Oshae Brissett).
And the one time he didn't do it, when he saw something in Denver's Bruce Brown that didn't quite translate — Brown came here as a free agent in 2023, and proved to be the same player even with a bigger opportunity — Pritchard realized it right away. Brown played just 33 games with the Pacers before Pritchard packaged him in the deal that brought to this team…
Pascal Siakam.
Take a bow, Kevin Pritchard. These flowers are for you.
But we have one more bouquet to give.
Rick Carlisle, like Kevin Pritchard, received zero respect this season. That's a literal statement, in this way:
Thirteen front-office leaders received votes — all 30 franchises had a vote — for 2025 NBA Executive of the Year. Kevin Pritchard? He received zero.
Six coaches received votes — from 100 media members — for 2025 NBA Coach of the Year. Rick Carlisle? He received zero.
That's a statement about the timing of those votes in particular, because while we (probably) didn't need the Thunder's NBA Finals run to realize Shai Gilgeous-Alexander deserved MVP, the Pacers' run to these same NBA Finals has been instructive, to say the least. First, about the roster Pritchard put together (with help from Chad Buchanan, Ryan Carr and Kelly Krauskopf).
But also about the coaching job of Carlisle. Put it this way: Carlisle is changing the game. Not just the Pacers are changing it — but Carlisle. He's the one employing depth and pace as weapons, and around the league, folks are noticing. After being eliminated in the second round by the Thunder, Nuggets MVP candidate Nikola Jokic noted the growing trend of deeper teams, and shouted out the Pacers before shouting out Oklahoma City, the team that eliminated the Nuggets.
Put it another way: The best adjustment made during the Eastern Conference Finals by famously stubborn Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau, the one that allowed the Knicks to win Game 3 and force this series to a sixth game?
He copied Carlisle.
After sticking with his seven-man rotation — 7½ players, tops — Thibs went nine-deep or even 10-deep the rest of the way. The media kept asking him about the Pacers' pace and depth, and while Thibodeau avoided the question entirely before Game 5 — 'It's been a hard-fought series,' he said, 'a couple possessions (apart)' — he tried to counter Carlisle's bench by discovering a bench of his own.
That depth allows Carlisle to demand a fast pace from his players, and that pace has allowed the Pacers not only to wear out other teams over the course of 48 minutes — how many historic comebacks have the Pacers had this offseason? — but to maximize the greatness of Haliburton. Another acknowledgement from Thibs, this one spoken, came when he was asked about the Pacers' offensive pace. Specifically, he was asked: During a typical possession do the Pacers tend to get to their second and third actions quicker than most teams?
Not really, Thibs said, in the most flattering way possible.
'More often than not it's the primary action,' he said before Game 5. 'It's the kick ahead. There's no second or third actions. You've got to make sure you're getting back and taking care of the primary action.'
Indeed, Haliburton probably gets more 40-foot assists than anyone but Jokic, and Andrew Nembhard devastated the Knicks with several such passes in Game 6.
Carlisle describes 2025 Indiana Pacers basketball in a way that underscores the special nature of this team, from roster to coaching staff to front office.
'As we've put this group together around Tyrese,' Carlisle said before Game 1, 'we've had to make adjustments to develop a style that was effective for us — and it's a difficult style. It's physically demanding, takes a tremendous amount of wherewithal as an athlete, and then you have to be super unselfish and be willing to do a lot of hard things.'
The Pacers have that kind of Kumbaya roster, that depth of talent, those two star players — Haliburton, Siakam — and then those other two central figures. Stars, superstars, whatever you want to call Rick Carlisle and Kevin Pritchard.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Threads, or on BlueSky and Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar, or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar. Subscribe to the free weekly Doyel on Demand newsletter.