Building teams is hard. How do you balance depth and top-end talent? How do you calculate fit, and when do you throw caution to the wind on a big move? What do you do when you are out of obvious avenues for improvement but need to find them anyway?
Few things make those decisions easier than surprise breakouts and undervalued contracts. Those undervalued contracts usually come in the form of draft picks outperforming their rookie-scale deals, but the Indiana Pacers have put themselves in a situation where that would somehow be worse.
Let me explain.
The butterfly effect of the 2023 draft
The last remaining draft picks of the Pacers rebuild are Jarace Walker and Ben Sheppard. Both are useful players to have off the bench who are set to be free agents next summer. While a breakout from either or both could help Indiana reach new heights, due to poorly balanced cap books, the team would be largely unable to retain them in free agency.
The Pacers sit just 2.2 million under the first apron for this season, but have very little money coming off the books for next year. That leaves them with only 18 million in space below the first apron to resign either or both.
A breakout for either player would immediately result in them making Indiana choose between an all-in run this year or pursuing future flexibility in trading a player they cannot afford to resign.
Even worse than that, losing Walker and/or Sheppard would mean even less flexibility for the summer of 2027-28, when things get really bad.
The snowball effect of losing talent
Following the questions this summer with the pair of 2023 draft picks, Indiana will have an even more dire situation on their hands.
Of the Pacers' eight expected rotation players (and not including Walker or Sheppard), all but three of them are unrestricted free agents by the time the 2027-28 season ends. When you account for the fact that TJ McConnell will be 37 as a 6'1 guard with only a partial guarantee, that number likely becomes two.
With only Tyrese Haliburton and Aaron Nesmith set to stick around, all of Ivica Zubac, Pascal Siakam, Andrew Nembhard, Obi Toppin, and Kelly Oubre will be free agents. With the four starters listed needing big new deals, how many could the Pacers feasibly retain?
Losing Walker would mean a massive dearth of forward depth. Could the Pacers really afford to lose Obi Toppin too in that situation?
If Tyrese Haliburton is the best player on the team, does it make sense to resign another playmaking, shot-chasing guard?
Within those two questions, two things become clear: the Pacers can't afford to pay everyone, and they can't be stuck letting talent walk without any way to replace it.
Indiana has never been a luxury tax team. However, in the new era of the NBA, being a contender without shelling out money seems impossible. With so many financial questions on the horizon, it seems like this Pacers' era has a shelf life that is rapidly approaching.
Ben Sheppard and Jarace Walker are simply the first dominoes to fall in what will be a miserable situation to navigate.
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