The Pacers might be in for another season from hell.
It is tempting to hand-waive everything that has happened to the Indiana Pacers in the last year and a half as simply the work of some vengeful spirit, unfairly punishing an innocent fanbase who never did anything to deserve this kind of sustained injury catastrophe and lottery luck that would sink any franchise, in Indiana or on the Moon. And hand-waive we shall. But waive enough hands, and the cumulative effect of this bad luck will start slipping through our fingers unnoticed, like grains of sand piling up into a castle the size of the Gainbridge Fieldhouse, threatening to crush us all if we don’t make infrastructure improvements.
I was out on the Pacers coming into the year, though I never found the time to publish that take anywhere preseason with the NFL kicking off and the MLB headed for the World Series and then World War III. — you’ll just have to trust my editors that I’ve been talking about it. My concern lay on the fact that a 50-32 Pacers team in 2024-25 had ridden one of the most absurd stretches of clutch shot-making ever to Game 7 of the NBA Finals, lost Tyrese Haliburton to a torn Achilles in one of the most heart-wrenching injuries in NBA history, lost said Game 7, lost Myles Turner to some Bucks stupidity and then went 19-63 (yes, that is nineteen and sixty-three) the following year with a roster I thought … was not that bad.
Every Pacers take I heard last year from people in NBA media more connected than I started and ended with the same two words: “gap year.” This 19-63 record was, of course, intentional, as the team tanked for a top draft pick to play when Haliburton was back the following season. But then they made a splashy move, wagering that draft pick on a bold 50-50 with the Clippers for Ivica Zubac, protecting that pick in a specific way that meant if it fell out of the top four, they would lose it. Well … it did, and their 19-63 record netted them nothing in one of the most stacked top fours we’ve ever seen. Once again: heartbreaking.
Then the actual 2026 season rolled around, and their roster looked solid; at the very least, it would be competitive, if not actually a Finals contender in my mind. And it was going reasonably well for about seven minutes until Haliburton suffered a hamstring injury (like are you serious right now) and the rest of the team got injured along with him. Now 3-6, last week’s lineups would make you think they were tanking again.
Their actual players will slowly make it back in time, but the question must officially be asked (no, not “is this team injury prone?” that’s a stupid question): do the Pacers have the roster to cope with even one injury, and can this group survive a wide-open but packed Eastern Conference, one with aspiring playoff teams popping out of drawers? Betting markets aren’t really sure what to think, with Indiana holding the ninth-best odds in the East at 18-1 on FanDuel. They’re squarely out of the top group of Boston, New York and Philadelphia, and not even really in the second group of Toronto, Detroit and Cleveland either.
These are trying realities, and beg one concerning question: even fully healthy, are the Pacers a contender in the first place?
The argument for Indiana coming into the year was basically that Tyrese Haliburton was one of the five most important players in the league, if not actually one of the five best. Sure, there was tanking last year, but many of Indiana’s NBA Finals roster played a decent number of games in 2025-26 and they still couldn’t get to 20 wins. Unless this was the single most coordinated, organizationally coherent tanking job in history, with unprecedented buy-in from … Pascal Siakam, the only explanation for the 19-63 record was that Haliburton was basically Michael Jordan-level important for Indiana.
And he definitely was the linchpin of everything they did. But none of the advanced stats suggested that the team would literally evaporate without Haliburton. He’s not some kind of Net Rating god, and I repeatedly found myself confused as to how the Pacers were losing every game despite a noticeable talent advantage on other teams in their tanking bracket.
That’s a long way to say that I don’t think that roster was actually that good, and the Finals run was more of an out-of-control party of unrepeatable clutch ridiculousness than it was the actual quality of Indiana basketball. If you accept that (you may not, but just … accept it for now so the grammar of the next clause works), your opinion of this Pacers team in 2026 comes down to how you feel about their upgrades — Kelly Oubre Jr. is a fine depth wing, but Ivica Zubac is the money question. Is he actually better than Myles Turner was in 2024?
With Tyrese Haliburton, I think he can be. Haliburton is a one-of-one elite table-setter for big men, and Zubac needs him on the floor to elevate his offensive game beyond simple, prodding interior hoops. Sidebar: I saw a Pacers fan complaining on Reddit that he doesn’t feel like Zubac even looks to shoot the three-pointer even when he’s wide open, which I find hysterical since he has made one singular 3-pointer in his 11-year career. But hey, he’s open.
So far, though, Zubac has been uninspiring on the Pacers, and he hasn’t been a particularly special defender in a few years like Turner was in his prime (yes, that is me declaring Myles Turner’s prime over, have you watched a Bucks game recently?). Zubac must be a walking double-double for the Pacers to raise their ceiling.
Without Haliburton, this is all completely moot. They’re in survival mode right now, needing to stack wins wherever they can find them until they can bring back a competent roster nightly. But even with Haliburton, I think this roster might just be bringing a squeaky plastic hammer to a knife fight. Like, you might be able to block some slashes and win hand-to-hand combat, and nobody in the eastern conference has a gun … but we have a squeaky plastic hammer. And right now, it has a hole in it.