The 2024 NBA playoffs were a conquest for the educated and an education for the untrained. The Indiana Pacers lost games 1, 3 and 4 by a total margin of 11 points. Silver lining merchants (read: me) will call their Conference Finals loss to the Boston Celtics a “competitive sweep.” But it was also an object lesson in the proximity and distance of the championship.
The Pacers entered the season with just a chance to make the playoffs, but somehow they ended it just four days away from June. Injuries eased their path to the Eastern Conference Finals, but the process behind their arrival is less relevant than the fact that they experienced it. The series, playoffs, and season as a whole were an opportunity for the Pacers to find out how they stacked up as the competition intensified. Tyrese Haliburton started the season thriving with a sure-fire number. 1 option and ended up exceeding expectations in his first playoff run and pushing the limits of his selflessness.
The season ended in disappointment, and the memory of endless critical errors late in games would haunt them throughout the summer. But the Pacers have learned a host of important lessons about how they play best and what they look like at their worst, going through multiple iterations and evolving at a frenetic, exciting, Haliburton-like pace, and absorbing the type of information that some young teams need. half decades to acquire.
“I know people think Indiana wasn’t a good team or anything, but I thought they were as tough as anyone we played all season,” Jaylen Brown said after Game 4. “They were physical, they were fast, they put a lot of pressure on us. So shout out to them and respect them.
The Pacers have played 22 players this season, adjusting to two midseason trades as their star played in and out of a hamstring injury and their younger players moved in and out of the rotation, following the curve of messy, rewarding, non-linear progression. The arrival of Pascal Siakam raised their ceiling. Giving up Buddy Hield for draft picks allowed them to regain some flexibility. By unloading Hield, all 3s and no Ds, they sacrificed firepower for long-term momentum in hopes that player development would help them rebuild the lost offense. Andrew Nembhard, who had 56 points and 19 assists in the last two games against Boston that Haliburton missed, helped Indiana make that bet. Now, the Pacers enter the offseason equipped with the full non-taxpayer mid-level exception, a plethora of picks and young players begging you to fall in love with their potential.
The Pacers’ schedule accelerated with the emergence of Haliburton. “He changed our thinking a little bit,” Pacers general manager Chad Buchanan told reporters after the trade deadline. “Part of it depends on our style of play, the type of players you’re looking to put around him, but also his elevation to where he’s taken our team in such a short period of time. We want to have young people who are developing, but we also have to have veterans who help us win now because this team has shown that it can be competitive with the best teams in the league.
The Siakam-Haliburton duo is a natural match on paper; they have both similarities (flourishing in a fast, happy style) and differences (one prefers to stay inside the arc, the other outside). But without a training camp to practice, they had to acclimate on the fly. The Pacers also traded Hield, Haliburton’s longest-tenured teammate and his favorite drive-and-kick target, and stuck Nembhard in the starting lineup for good. The new starting five, which surrounded Haliburton with four good defenders, allowed just 107 points per 100 possessions during the regular season. But as Haliburton spent the second half of the season dealing with a hamstring injury, two trades and a new spacing reality, the Pacers’ once high-octane offense began to waver.
At its best, Indiana’s new offense played quickly in both the half-court and full-court, allowing pick-and-rolls to seamlessly transition into post-up mismatches for Siakam and Myles Turner, who were developing a booming high-low game. But it wasn’t until the playoffs, when the Pacers’ starting lineup played a league-high 288 minutes together (and posted a healthy 14.1 net rating), that that view became clear.
In Game 4, Siakam moved to an immediate counter when the Celtics took away the post-up, screening rookie Ben Sheppard, who nailed a wide-open 3 in the opposite corner:
It was a great demonstration of tactical progress through problem solving, a proof of concept that the young Pacers can take into the next phase of their development, when they will need to evaluate their potential (Sheppard shot 38 percent from 3 in the playoffs) without falling in love with it (all his attempts in the playoffs were either “open” or “wide open”).
Throughout the playoffs, Rick Carlisle prioritized development over short-term gains. No one benefited more from being thrown into the fire than the 24-year-old Nembhard, who was forced to take over Damian Lillard and Jalen Brunson, overly aggressive jump shooting fouls be damned, along with big, ferocious forwards like Brown and Jayson Tatum. We could even, in this context, forgive Carlisle for the timeout that was never called at the end of Game 3 against Boston, leading Nembhard to commit a season-ending functional turnover against Jrue Holiday. It may be an exaggeration, but in the cold light of a sweep, I like knowing that Nembhard will have to carry the weight of his mistake this offseason, alongside the high-voltage experience of running a playoff offense playoffs in critical times. If all goes well, Nembhard will have the means to call the timeout himself next time, whether on the final possession of the game or on an inbounds play.
Over the course of the playoffs, Indiana’s playbook evolved to accommodate Nembhard’s burgeoning attacking ability and consequently became more complex. In the regular season opener, Nembhard’s ability to draw attention during a Spanish pick-and-roll with Haliburton as the screener would have been negligible. In Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals, the threat of a downhill attack from Nembhard was enough to tip over the rim protection and allow Turner to make an easy layup:
After Haliburton went down, Nembhard discovered new depths in his bag, bumping, bruising and faking his way to the rim and decelerating to create openings. He shot 51 percent on pull-up 2s during the playoffs and opened Game 4 with two of them. The comparison to Brunson — a second-round pick who became a star thanks to heroic playoff performances in the absence of the team’s best player — is appealing on a tactical, aesthetic and narrative level. Hoping that Nembhard turns into Brunson is also betting on a miracle. For every Brunson arc, there is a Caleb Martin descent.
It is on this tightrope that Indiana will spend the next few years. Almost every young Pacer has streaks that make you want to believe they can answer every question the team will face. There’s Aaron Nesmith, Indiana’s most physical defender, perfecting his closing attacks. There’s Isaiah Jackson, already an athletic marvel with excellent hands for lobs and 50-50 balls, who makes measured closeouts, intuitive help spins and running floaters. And there’s Obi Toppin, a free agent this summer, who is perfecting his 3-point shot and grabbing valuable possessions in the playoffs to guard Tatum.
Physicality, at times, unmoored the Pacers. They held their own and outlasted the scrappy Knicks, matching them on the glass, but then disintegrated in a series of chaotic errors against the Celtics: Haliburton made critical turnovers in Game 1, late in regulation and in overtime; in the fourth game, Turner coughed up the ball in the face of defensive pressure, resulting in a brief feud with Brown; Siakam drove and kicked to no one in the final five minutes of Game 4. In total, Indiana turned the ball over on nearly a quarter of its clutch possessions against Boston. He lost three games in which he had a 90 percent chance of winning in the fourth quarter.
The size and physicality the Pacers need, especially on the wing, could already be on the roster. Bennedict Mathurin, who underwent season-ending shoulder surgery in March, and Jarace Walker, last year’s No. 1 pick. Pick 8 who was too green to get minutes might be the answer. Or maybe they could be bundled into a deal for someone else. Indiana can also shed its surplus of eight future second-round picks (three in this draft) and two future first-round picks. The Pacers won’t trade Nembhard (whom they wouldn’t give up for Siakam), so they’re probably missing a few pieces to make a deal for a star like Mikal Bridges, but they can certainly spring for elite roles like Ayo Dosunmu, Alex Caruso, Tari Eason or even Jerami Grant, even if the latter would break their cap. Judging by Kevin Pritchard’s story, there’s probably a secret trade we haven’t thought of yet. Who pushed the Pacers to replace Paul George with Domantas Sabonis and Victor Oladipo, or Sabonis with Haliburton? Indy got Siakam for Bruce Brown, a calculated free agent acquisition last summer; two non-rotation plays in Kira Lewis Jr. and Jordan Nwora; two picks in a weak draft; and a top-four protected pick in 2026. Indiana can also move up to the non-taxpayer mid-tier this offseason. That’s probably not enough to keep Kentavious Caldwell-Pope or Malik Monk away, but Bruce Brown, ironically, could be an interesting target if he hits free agency. Aaron Wiggins and Isaiah Joe are both extension candidates. Maybe Indiana could steal one from the Thunder.
The Pacers capitalized on their own player development abilities when they traded for Siakam. The All-Star forward turned 30 in April, but his age is deceiving. He entered the NBA at age 22 and didn’t play full-time starting minutes until he was 24. At the start of his 10th season, he will have played fewer career minutes than Karl-Anthony Towns, Aaron Gordon, Nikola Jokic or Tatum. Considering Haliburton is 24 and Turner is 28, it’s safe to say this iteration of the Pacers’ window could be as long as Siakam’s next extension.
All this to say: Like Haliburton when he jumps onto the field with the ball in his hands, Indiana has options and just enough time to watch the play develop and take what the play gives them.