The Indiana Pacers Offseason, the anatomy of rebirth

Steps of a Rebirth

There’s no one way to build a champion. None of the most successful teams in the last 27 years got that way by doing what Philadelphia or this current dumpster-fire pretending to be the Lakers are doing. It’s actually more similar what the Pacers are trying. I looked at this “rebirth” and came up with four key steps. Below are those steps and how the Pacers have tried to fulfill them.

Step 1: Get younger

The Pacers weren’t exactly old last year, but they weren’t getting younger either. A healthy portion of their roster was either in their primes or past it. This meant that there would be likely little room for internal improvement. A player in his late 20’s just isn’t as likely to make as much significant growth as a player in his early 20’s.

This offseason, Indy made large strides to get younger, the average age of their first eight new players (I’m excluding Damien Wilkins) was 23.5.

And in reality that number is inflated by Darren Collison, Bojan Bogdanovic and Cory Joseph. Collison and Bogdanovic might not even be in the Pacers’ future plans. If you average out the ages of the other five incomers, who are definitely affixed in the Pacers’ dreams, (Ike Anigbogu, T.J. Leaf, Victor Oladipo, Domantas Sabonis and Edmond Sumner), the average age drops to 21.8.

The trek to the fountain of youth has been successful, at least on paper.