The Indiana Pacers managed to send shockwaves to the NBA community after hiring Rick Carlisle. The ex-Dallas Mavericks head coach, which recently parted ways with his former team after rounds of tumultuous guesswork, will be coming back to help lead a franchise in a current state of flux after a disappointing 2020-21 campaign.
ESPN’s Tim MacMahon broke the news, reporting that Carlisle and the Pacers agreed to a four-year, 29 million contract, a relatively lucrative deal for the franchise.
Sources: The Pacers are hiring Rick Carlisle as head coach. He will sign a 4-year, $29 million contract.
— Tim MacMahon (@espn_macmahon) June 24, 2021
The hire came as a surprise to many, especially with the veteran and highly-respected coach linked to other star-studded teams with similar coaching vacancies. While his connections and history in Indy made him a popular choice among pundits and fans alike, traction between both parties was as quiet as it could be.
Carlisle, who already won a championship with Dallas in 2011, reinstalls himself on a Pacers squad itching to not only get back to the postseason after a one-year hiatus, but also make postseason noise—a goal that has been quite elusive for Indiana, with their last playoffs series win coming in 2014.
On the surface, the front office and the ownership made a bold move, but overall, given the team’s needs and deficiencies which were exacerbated this season, Rick Carlisle leading Indiana should give fans a lot of things to be hopeful about. Here are three immediate reactions to the coaching hire.
The Indiana Pacers want to win—now
The ever-present argument for the Indiana Pacers to avoid riding on the coattails of what-ifs-driven hope that has powered the franchise in recent years and do a major reset became even stronger this year. After a turbulent season derailed by injuries, coaching malfunctions and un-Indiana-like off-court issues, rebuilding seemed like a very viable route to take.
However, hiring Rick Carlisle effectively extinguishes all talks of a rebuild in the foreseeable future. It’s doubtful that the franchise, notorious among local circles and the NBA intelligentsia for its rather conservative spending mechanics, hands out lucrative money for a coach that is expected to man a rebuild. Carlisle, for all his pedigree, will not come back to Indiana for a rebooting cause.
It remains enigmatic for the team to accurately gauge the potential of its core due to the maelstrom of injuries hampering the franchise on a yearly basis, but at full strength, there’s little reason to believe why the Pacers can’t hang with the best that the league has to offer. As constructed, this is a roster slated to be defined by the sum of its parts, and Rick Carlisle may just be the coach that takes Indiana up a notch—in utmost immediacy.
The Indiana Pacers seem likely to ride the current roster next season
While the Indiana Pacers have a couple of important free agents entering the market in the offseason, the entire starting lineup is safely in the vault next year. With a strong bench and an intriguing crop of projects with young players, including the team’s selection in the upcoming draft, the roster will banner a lot of talent next season.
Naturally, complicit with a failed season is the call for a shake-up. The Pacers seem destined to do just that while they were in the coaching hunt, but now that they acquired Rick Carlisle, a sense of direction is already given a blueprint—and a good one at that which leads to, well, a noticeable liking to continuity, for better or for worse.
The Pacers want to win now, that’s inarguable. However, they may not be too impatient with shaking things up, especially with the franchise seemingly curious as to how much juice their current group has and how much Carlisle can force them to pump out even more from their indeterminable tank. Bank on the Blue and Gold trying out the current roster for at least another year.
The Indiana Pacers appear ready to spend big money—finally
Close followers of the Indiana Pacers are probably not only surprised by the abrupt news of hiring Rick Carlisle. They are probably also be shocked by the fact that the franchise actually spent a lot of money for a coaching hire.
With his reputation, Carlisle is easily worth more than seven million per season. However, the realistic projection for the Pacers with their coaching hunt was that they would be inclined to hire a veteran coach for a reasonable amount of money— reasonable on pure, numerical basis of “how much” which, given Indiana’s precedents, is not too lucrative.
That the management handed out such sizeable money to Rick Carlisle may have been out of control, especially with his pedigree demanding lofty money, but it should also signify that the team franchise is starting to not cave to spending big anymore, which has streamlined their roster-building capacity for years already.