The 2019-2020 Indiana Pacers will look a lot different than the team that took the court last season. With 7 players leaving and 6 coming in, there’s a lot to talk about.
The Indiana Pacers had around $30 million in cap space this season, which sounds like a good amount (and was, compared to other teams in the league). The issue with that number, however, is that Indiana needed to try to re-sign some of their own guys with that money and couldn’t throw all of it at a single star player. This made for a very interesting off-season, especially coupled with the changes to the free agency format.
For those who weren’t aware, NBA free agency used to start at midnight on July 1st. Once the clock hit 12:00am, teams could start verbally agreeing to deals with players. This year, however, the start of free agency was moved to 6pm on June 30th. This ended up providing us with the most hectic and exciting NBA free agency that we’ve ever seen.
40% of all players in the league were eligible to sign new contracts, and superstars from around the league switched teams. The Pacers were right in the middle of it, and our hero President of Basketball Operations Kevin Pritchard was wheeling and dealing right from the get-go.
We’ll start off today by going over each of the players who left for other teams (or left the NBA altogether). Then, over the next couple of days, we’ll look at the newest Pacers, and wrap it up at the end with a look at the team’s future.