The Butterfly Effect: How the Indiana Pacers Roster Came Together

Ian Mahinmi

This may be the Ian Mahinmi tree, but he is far from the most important figure. Who connects this entire mess? Troy Murphy.

Let’s start from the beginning…

On June 30, 1999, the Indiana Pacers traded their 2001 first-round pick (along with Vonteego Cummings) to the Golden State Warriors for Jeff Foster. Foster was a lifelong Pacer until 1999, but that wasn’t the last time we heard from Troy Murphy. He played with the Warriors until 2007 when Golden State traded Murphy, Ike Diogu, Mike Dunleavy, Jr and Keith McLeod to the Pacers for Al Harrington, Stephen Jackson, Sarunas Jasikevicius and Josh Powell (Powell was acquired along with Darrell Armstrong, Rawle Marshall in a trade for Anthony Johnson).

We’ll explore the Al Harrington branch here in a second, but let’s keep on the Murphy line for now.

Murphy was barely around a year before he was part of a four-team trade with the New Jersey Nets, Houston Rockets, and New Orleans Hornets that landed Darren Collison and James Posey in Indiana. Posey soon retired, but the Troy Murphy line would not die. Collison and Dahntay Jones were shipped to the Dallas Mavericks for Ian Mahinmi, where the line currently ends.

So long story short, there is no Mahinmi if the Pacers didn’t trade for Jeff Foster in 1999. Also, there is no Mahinmi if the Pacers never trade Al Harrington for Stephen Jackson in 2004.

Let’s start the way-back machine again…

On July 15, 2004, the Pacers and Atlanta Hawks swapped Harrington for Jackson. But Harrington ended up back with the Pacers on August 22, 2006, when John Edwards and Harrington were traded for a 2007 first-round draft pick that became Acie Law. Eventually, both Harrington and Jackson were packaged together with Jasikevicius and Powell in the trade for Collison and Posey, and that eventually leads up down to Ian Mahinmi once again.

We also have a now expired branch of this tree that should be mentioned. The Diogu-Dunleavy-McLeod led to Diogu and Dunleavy being packed in a trade along with Jerryd Bayless for Jarrett Jack, Josh McRoberts, and Brandon Rush from the Golden State Warriors in 2008. Rush was later traded for Louis Amundson (again, from the Warriors) in 2011. The branch ends with Amundson becoming a free agent in 2012.

Directly speaking, it took — at some point, in one way or another — Murphy, Jones, Collison, Harrington, Jackson, Jasikevicius, Powell, Armstrong, Johnson to get to Ian Mahinmi. But in all 23 players are involved as we get to Mahinmi through a total of nine trades, five draft picks, and three free agents to get to the current roster link.

Yeah, that’s a bit of a trip, but it is a perfect example of how pieces over time get traded along into different assets.

Next: Roy Hibbert