Opinion: Pacers trade deadline is an exercise in delayed gratification

I have never been very good at doing today what will have a greater benefit on my tomorrow. As a child, I was given a plethora of opportunities to choose the greater reward from patience over my immediate impulse. I rarely chose the greater reward.

I can remember being given the choice between the awesome transformers action figure I was asking for at the store and the PlayStation 2 for which my brother and I had been begging incessantly for weeks. The former I could have now, and for the latter I would have to wait for Christmas, but I certainly couldn’t have both. My future self was pretty disappointed with the choice I made.

As a pre-teen, I mostly chose to ride bikes around town with my friends over studying for tests. As a high schooler, I chose to eat pancakes as my pregame meal, and even now I need a slap on the wrist from my wife when I try to order a beer that my gluten-intolerant stomach can’t handle. Suffice it to say, were Walter Mischel to offer me any Marshmallows, I’d take the one I can have now.

As you can imagine, the Indiana Pacers trade deadline moves are forcing me, along with a large swatch of Pacers fandom, to flex a muscle usually left unused, and I’m already sore from the workout.

The NBA trade deadline has a particularly powerful ability to bring forth in us our most impulsive machinations. I, for instance, romanticized the team strengthening its weakest position- the forward spot- with exciting, expensive NBA talent. I was so captured by the thought, that I even wrote Valentine’s Day cards to the players who best satiated my hunger for immediate improvement.

The Pacers front office, thank goodness, are paid handsomely for their ability to think beyond the immediate and delay their gratification for more of it in the future. Yesterday, they did just that by opportunistically acquiring Jordan Nwora, George Hill, Serge Ibaka, three second-round picks, and cash for the rights to Juan Pablo Vaulet.

I have to admit that I feel discontented. Even if I’d accepted that the price for OG Anunoby was going to be too high, and even if I’d decided that a summer move for John Collins might make more sense, I’d begun to be excited by our strong links to Obi Toppinn, who would’ve fit like a glove in this Haliburton driven Pacers offense.

In the end, the Pacers stuck to their prioritization of long-term success. Kevin Pritchard has maintained his stance on team building- that they will be flexible and opportunistic with an eye on the future– throughout the season. It would’ve been a departure from his consistent messaging were he to have sacrificed the future for the immediate during this trade season, even if Pacers fans are left uninspired today.

Personally, I’m disappointed. But, having spent a night with these deadline moves as my bedpartners, I’m able to realize that my disappointment now is a symptom that will be forgotten in the pleasures of a greater reward later.

On a deadline day that saw handfuls of second-round picks become the most valuable currency, the Pacers took in three that can be used in the future to acquire a piece that fits perfectly in a squad that we know more about than this one. I was reminded yesterday that this team has only been playing together for four months. That’s easy to forget. There’s an immense amount of growth to come from this group. Yesterday, the Pacers organization decided that patience and flexibility would, while delaying it, bring greater gratification than an impulse move now ever could. That’s brave, and I for one am happy to root for an organization whose courageous patience consistently outlasts my impudent impulses.