What Next For Indiana? Three Possible Scenarios for the Pacers’ Off-Season
By Mueez Azfar
Scenario 3: The Nightmare Scenario for Indiana
And this is the part where I take you, the reader’s heart out of your chest and stomp it into a million pieces. I apologize in advance for what I’m about to make you read.
Firstly, I have to preface this by saying that I don’t hate Gradey Dick at all. As a matter of fact, I think he’s a fine player and he’ll be a great addition to any NBA team. What I do have a problem with, is Indiana taking him with the potential 8th pick of the draft and passing up on some potentially better prospects. Do I think Gradey Dick is a good player? Absolutely. Do I think he’s lottery worthy? Probably, yeah. But 8th pick worthy with guys like Cam Whitmore, Jarace Walker, and Taylor Hendricks potentially left on the board? Absolutely not. If we somehow fall to around the 11th or 12th pick in the draft, then I’d be fine with us taking Dick, as he’d probably be the best player available at that point, but not with the 8th or 9th pick, which is the pick we are expected to land.
Another thing that would make this a nightmare scenario is Indiana trying to spend big on okay-ish free agents, a la Torrey Craig in 2021. I think Craig is a fine player and was kind of excited when we picked him up, but I soon realized he didn’t fit with our team at all, and I was very glad when we traded him back to Phoenix for Jalen Smith, who I will potentially talk about in a future piece. Indiana as it stands, has a lot of cap space and used some of that to re-sign Myles Turner to an extension. The Pacers know that Indiana is not a tantalizing free-agent destination like New York or Miami and they would end up having to offer worse players more money to get a chance at signing them, although hopefully, Tyrese Haliburton can change those fortunes soon.
I’m going to keep this part short because there really isn’t a whole lot that Indiana can do to mess up what they currently have going with their team, and with 4 picks in the top 31 of the draft, they are pretty well set for the future, barring the Pacers injury bug striking again.