Win-win situation: Pacers win tiebreaker to get 18th pick after beating the Hawks

Lady Luck was on the Indiana Pacers’ side as they won a tie-breaker drawing to get the 18th pick in the 2019 NBA draft.

The basketball gods reward the Indiana Pacers for not throwing a game at the end of the season, a move that could have cost them one or two positions in the NBA draft.

The Pacers picked up a somewhat surprising win in the 82nd game of the regular season by beating the Atlanta Hawks. The only possible downside of it was it put Indiana into a three-way tie for 18th place. That meant they would have to let luck decide who got the 18th-20th picks.

But, as it turns out, the Pacers were rewarded for not cravenly throwing the game against the Hawks when they were behind in the final seconds.

Indiana could have asked Edmond Sumner to miss two of the free throws and lose the game, locking them into the 18th pick. Instead, they let Sumner be clutch as he knocked down all three free throws to give the Pacers the lead.

The Pacers decided to mini-tank for the final game by resting so many of their rotation players. That’s fine, but when teams go as far as to completely throw games — losing even when they should win — that just feels dirty.

It’s one thing to let the younger guys get valuable game experience while letting the starters rest. It just feels too craven to completely throw a game. It feels wrong asking players to lose games. If the roster just can’t win on a given night, so be it.

But not trying to win and purposefully lose winnable games just feels antithetical to what we value watching sports. Running down the clock to hold on to a win may not be the bravest thing in the world, but it isn’t going against the very idea of what sports should be.

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I understand the logic and why teams would consider tanking on various levels, but if you are, it should be because the team isn’t good enough to. Even though there’s a little bit of pusillanimousness to that, at least the loss was created before the game even began, not by telling players to do their job worse.

It was the perfect way to end the regular season. The Pacers youth looked good regardless of the outcome, but not losing any draft position in the process was an added bonus.

Instead of considering chaos theory or the butterfly effect if the player drafted before the Pacers pick at 19 or 20 had they lost the tiebreaker. It’s now up to Kevin Pritchard and the front office to scout and make the right choice with the pick.

The Pacers were rewarded because they didn’t ‘F’ with the game.