Two seasons ago the Indiana Pacers’ transaction trees were a tangled mess, but now they have gotten a lot less complicated.
Before Ian Mahinmi left the Indiana Pacers this summer for the Washington Wizards, he was the last remaining part of a long, tangled, complicated, and confusing web of transactions that were all connected to the Frenchman.
In all, 22 players in the Pacers’ past were linked to Mahinmi.
But with his departure, the Indiana Pacers transaction trees got a lot less weird.
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For those of you not familiar with the idea of transactions trees, the concept is pretty simple. It is just looking at a player’s history and seeing how they were acquired, what moves made that happen, and how it all is connected to the present.
For a player to be considered a direct part of a transaction tree he is the product of the same linked sequence of trades or acquisitions. A player can be drafted or traded and as long as the series of moves is connected. If you don’t understand how the trees work, it will become clear once you start looking at them.
It is a family tree of sorts. Maybe Dale Davis has almost no direct effect on Rakeem Christmas, but if you follow the chain of transactions, you’ll see the two are linked through Indiana’s history.
We’ll work our way through the different trees, beginning with the simpler (and newer) ones and trace our way back to the oldest and most complicated — which is the Rakeem Christmas’ tree, and I swear to you that pun was not on purpose.
So let’s start with the draft picks…
Next: The Draft Picks
The Draft Picks
These ones are pretty simple, as they are all the draft picks of the Indiana Pacers.
The oldest is Paul George, who was taken with the 10th pick of the 2010 NBA Draft. Six seasons and three All-Star selections later, it is clear that the Pacers made the right choice with that selection.
Last year’s draft gave us Myles Turner (1st round, 11th pick) and Joe Young (2nd round, 43rd pick), with Turner looking more and more like a steal.
Georges Niang (2nd round, 50th pick) impressed at Summer League this year but still has a way to go to make the rotation. But for a second-round pick, any contribution is gravy.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about this group is the lack of further company. Looking back on the team’s recent draft history, there are names that are still in the NBA (Miles Plumlee, maybe Lance Stephenson, and Solomon Hill, to name a few), but Indiana has either traded them away or let them walk. Sure, no one is regretting Tyler Hansbrough’s absence, but it at least seems to me to be surprising that a lot of the guys are gone.
That being said, this may also be another reminder of how hard it is to hit draft picks outside of the top 10 in a given year.
But that’s enough about the draft picks, let’s move on to another group of simple transaction trees: Free agents.
Next: The Free Agents
The Free Agents
These ones are only hard to see because there are so many — click on the above image to take a closer look — but like the draft picks the are a simple line from the year the Pacers signed them to the present.
C.J. Miles and Rodney Stuckey have the oldest trees in the group, as they both were signed in 2014 as the Pacers were retooling after a disappointing exit from the Eastern Conference finals.
So far they’ve had mixed results, but as bench players and occasional starters, they fulfilled their roles. As far as their contracts, both have player options at the end of this season.
The summer of 2015 brought along Glenn Robinson III and Monta Ellis as the Pacers hoped to finally ‘have it all’ on offense.
Monta’s numbers have dropped since joining the Pacers, but he’s also been transitioning into a different role with Indiana. There are still questions about his style of play and how it will fit in with the rest of the Pacers this season, but for now, he’s the starting shooting guard.
Robinson is more of a long-term project for the Pacers, but he did have his moments last season and showed potential in the Orlando Summer League this year.
This offseason the Pacers added Al Jefferson as their big free-agent signing to help fortify the bench, while Aaron Brooks was added recently to hold down the backup point guard role if Joe Young doesn’t take a step forward in his development.
Now that we have the direct lines out of the way, let’s take a look at one of our first trees that has more than one branch.
Next: Thaddeus Young
Thaddeus Young
Thaddeus Young starts us off with one of the first trade trees with a little bit of history.
Thanks to Larry Bird packaging a future protected 2nd round pick and the No. 20 overall pick in this year’s draft, the Pacers got a reliable starter in Thaddeus.
As far as the transaction goes, technically the Pacers drafted Caris LeVert in the 2016 draft and then paired him with the second round pick, but we know it was a draft night deal that sent the two players headed in their respective directions.
Next: Jeremy Evans
Jeremy Evans
The story of Jeremy Evans’s tree begins not with himself, but with Stanko Barac and Marcus Thornton.
The pick that would become Thornton was moved for Barac, but Stanko’s draft rights have seen more action in the NBA than he has.
Stanko’s draft right’s have bounced around with the Sacramento Kings, Utah Jazz, Orlando Magic, Miami Heat, Pacers, and now the Dallas Mavericks. It is important to say ‘draft rights’ because Barac hasn’t played a minute in the NBA. The 7’1 center from Bosnia and Herzegovina has never suited up at all as he’s been more trade chip than player as far as the NBA is concerned.
Like Emir Preldzic, the other player in the final deal, their draft rights get moved so a trade actually has a player involved. Money is what really made the deal happen (and salary cap relief for the Mavericks), and that’s how Evans ended up with the Pacers.
Evans was productive in what little time he saw the court last season with the Dallas Mavericks, but he spent plenty of time in the NBA Development League as well. It is hard to see him doing more than the 2.4 points and 1.8 rebounds a game we saw him do last year, but he’s effective in those few minutes he’s played.
Next: Jeff Teague
Jeff Teague
Jeff Teague’s tree is full of European players that never played in the NBA, as well as the infamous and often mischaracterized George Hill-Kawhi Leonard trade.
Leonard (or at least the draft pick he would become) was packaged with the draft rights to Erazem Lorbek and Davis Bertrans for George Hill. The Pacers picked the two-time defensive player of the year with the 15th pick of the 2011 draft and were later sent George Hill and the rights to Lorbek and Bertrans.
Of course, they were picking for the Spurs, not themselves, as they had Danny Granger at the time playing small forward.
It is a fun ‘what if?’, but ultimately is mostly misrepresented as some sort of obvious mistake made by the Indiana Pacers. But I digress…
Hill played five seasons with the Pacers, helping them to four playoff appearances (barely missing out on them two seasons ago), and was the Hometown Hero until he was swapped this summer for another hometown hero in the form of Teague.
Teague gives Indiana its first ‘pure’ point guard in ages, but there are still questions about how the team will perform as a whole with his arrival. But he is an All-Star-level point guard who knows how to distribute the ball while still finding ways to score for himself.
Next: Lavoy Allen
Lavoy Allen
Lavoy Allen came to the Indiana Pacers in a trade that still irks some Pacers fans. He was attached along with Evan Turner in the Danny Granger trade.
If it weren’t for the fact Turner did nothing for Indiana and only made team chemistry worse during The Struggle, it might have been easier to watch one of the few bright spots in the post-Brawl Pacers be traded away.
By being part of a trade that seemingly did nothing for Indiana while sending a fan favorite player away, Allen has always been tainted by things outside of his control.
While his 5.4 points and 5.4 rebounds a game are fine, unless he finds a way to make a bigger impact he’s always going to be overshadowed by how he got here.
Next: Rakeem Christmas
Rakeem Christmas
The trade for Rakeem Christmas is still mostly overlooked as he’s made an impact with the Fort Wayne Mad Ants but yet to play a major part for the Pacers.
The tree is the oldest on the current Indiana team, starting with Dale Davis being drafted in 1991 and playing for the Pacers until 2000.
His time with Indiana ends when he’s traded for Jermaine O’Neal and Joe Kleine of the Portland Trail Blazers. O’Neal sticks around until 2008 when the Pacers package him with Nathan Jawai and sent them to the Toronto Raptors for a group of players including Marceo Baston, T.J. Ford, Rasho Nesterovic and most important, Roy Hibbert.
After a few playoff runs, All-Star appearances, and plenty of blocked shots, the Pacers send Hibbert to the Los Angeles Lakers for a 2nd round draft pick in 2019. They didn’t hold on to that pick for long as they traded it to the Cleveland Cavaliers for the final move on the Christmas’ tree.
Here’s to hoping Christmas can make the transition from the D-League to the NBA.
So what does the whole thing look like?
Next: History Leads To Now
The Indiana Pacers
With the exception of the Christmas tree, the Indiana Pacers have made most of their moves to build this roster in the past 10 seasons, and for the most part, really in the past five or six.
On a much more practical level, it is easy to forget Paul George is now the longest-tenured Pacers player as he heads into his 7th season.
Everyone else with signed as a free agent, traded for or drafted in the past three years. Larry Bird has been trying to create a new identity for the team once David West and Roy Hibbert left, and at least looking at these trees, it seems obvious those smash-mouth teams (or at least the players) are now long gone.
Next: NBA Schedules Released, Indiana Pacers Have 82 Games
The trees are much less confusing this season, but they still give a look into the past and all the moves it takes to build a roster.