It's hard to be a young player on a good team. Playing time is a dream that often feels far away, and punishments for mistakes are far more extreme than those on a young, rebuilding team. Losing minutes means a career death, instead of a short term impediment.
Ultimately, good teams will play good players, and young teams will play players who could be good one day, in hopes that they can become good players and good teams, respectively.
Jarace Walker and Ben Sheppard may be the face of the Indiana Pacers' school for failed draft picks who can't earn playing time. Both were drafted in the 2023 draft, right before Indiana as a team took a massive step forward.
Just as the Pacers wished they could've been picking eighth and 26th in a different class, Walker and Sheppard likely wish they'd gone to a different team where they could've worked their way into being difference-makers.
Maybe they'll have the chance to do that soon, whether it's at the deadline or after the season, when both will be restricted free agents.
However, when we discuss an expansion draft for the franchises likely coming to the NBA in Las Vegas and Seattle, it's clear they offer an opportunity that many young players, from the 2023 class to the deep bench youngsters Indiana currently harbors, would love to be in an opportunity with no expectations and lots of space to spread their wings.
Indiana, for their part, likely wouldn't mind seeing them go.
The weightlessness of expectation-lessness
It's fun being an underdog. When no one expects anything but failure, any successes are massive celebrations instead of the status quo. When the world expects you to win, anything less is a decision on your inadequacies.
Player development is similar in this regard. There's a theory in the NFL world that a modern Peyton Manning could never happen, because no one who was that bad for three years, no matter the supporting cast, would be allowed to continue starting long enough to figure everything out the way Manning did.
Every young player not named Aaron Nesmith, Andrew Nembhard, or Tyrese Haliburton (and that is really stretching the definition of what a young player is) is in that exact position. They simply do not see the court enough to experiment, to learn, or to grow. They are left trying not to fail more than they are trying to succeed.
Being on an awful team would be a respite from that. If players want to maximize their careers, and with it, their earning potential, then they want as many minutes to prove themselves.
As it stands, all of Kobe Brown, Jarace Walker, Ben Sheppard, Quenton Jackson, and whoever else you want to include are on a slow and sad descent to being out of the league. Realistically, only Walker ever had a chance in Indiana, and he was rapidly superseded by Pascal Siakam's arrival.
The Pacers do not offer young players what they need to survive the churn of the NBA.
At least on an expansion team, they would be out of the league because of their own inadequacies, not because they were forced to wait out their careers.
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