Per Shams Charania on Twitter, the Kawhi Leonard trade has been completed. After an Aspiration scandal-sized delay, the Los Angeles Clippers have moved on from the player they once called the new king of LA, bringing back two unprotected first-round picks, forward Brandon Ingram, and sharpshooter Gradey Dick from the Toronto Raptors.
It's worth noting that the return will have to fill the void of the five first-rounders that the Clippers had stripped by the league, including the 2029 Indiana Pacers pick that they had gotten as part of the package for Croatian big man Ivica Zubac.
With Leonard heading to an Eastern Conference that has already added LeBron James and Karl-Anthony Towns in the past few years, along with Giannis Antetokounmpo and Jaylen Brown joining already potent teams, the conference that has been much maligned over the years is now back on top.
Much to the chagrin of the Pacers.
Indiana, which made a Finals run in 2024-25, was likely hoping to bounce back to the top of the East, only to watch it improve rapidly around them. While they took a gap year, their rivals, the New York Knicks, immediately reached the mountaintop.
It won't be as easy as the franchise had initially hoped. Even with an improved front-court rotation and a new bench piece in tow, it'll be hard to regain the form that had the Pacers pushing the eventual champion Oklahoma City Thunder to a Game 7. No matter how good they think they are, they cannot argue that their opposition is also far better now.
Even worse, barring a major divorce from expectations, they are a full tier below the true contenders in the East.
Can you win a title without a top-10 player?
A lot has been said (on this site, in fact) about the Pacers' bench being their biggest weakness. While that may be true from a roster construction perspective, it fails to consider the one golden rule of NBA contention.
You must have a top-10 player on your roster if you want to win a title.
The last time that didn't happen was during the 2004 Finals, when the infamous underdog Detroit Pistons defeated the Shaq and Kobe Los Angeles Lakers. Since then, every title-winning team has had one of the best players in the world in their prime.
To many, the question of whether Indiana has that caliber of player relies solely on whether Tyrese Haliburton returns to form, but that may be ambitious for a player who has never made an All-NBA second or first team.
If the answer is not Haliburton, though, then the answer must lie off the roster. As good as Pascal Siakam is, he is already in his mid-30s and will not improve beyond his top-20 player peak. Siakam is forever underrated but that is a step too far.
That leaves just one solution. The Pacers must become the modern version of the '04 Pistons.
The only way Indiana can escape this competition in the East is by simply being the best, most well-rounded, most mistake-free team in the NBA.
Anything less and they'll be swallowed up by teams with greater talent who already represent nearly a third of the conference.
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