The Indiana Pacers have a backup center problem, or so many fans would tell you. Despite the fact that basketball is not played in shifts and is instead built on a substitution system that requires starters to play with backups and vice versa, everyone is worried about how the Pacers will manage their center minutes.
Ivica Zubac will be the starter after a trade deadline move with the Clippers brought the Croatian big man to Indiana. Considering that trade eventually proved to include the fifth overall pick in this past draft after a gap-year 19-win season, he will need to play at a very high level to justify that move.
With Zubac in place, the bulk of the center minutes are already accounted for. However, due to that aforementioned misconception, many are wondering if the Pacers will be forced to play a lesser option despite having other players that badly need those minutes.
That curiosity is pretty easily answered already, however.
The Pacers will not be investing any real time or effort in their backup center spot. They don't have to. You don't invest heavily in a 10-minute-per-game player.
Colts head coach Tom Moore was once asked why he was giving Peyton Manning the bulk of the preseason touches instead of checking out his backup QB options. He laughed, stared down the reporter who asked, and offered an iconic answer – one that we cannot properly quote here.
A backup center will only really matter if Zubac misses a significant amount of time. In the same way that there's no reason for the Pacers to go get a player to replace Tyrese Haliburton's role, if Zubac is lost for significant stretches, Indiana will be in a bigger hole than a backup five can solve.
Even then, if they wanted to, there's already a better in house option than an arbitrary positional replacement.
Pascal Siakam is the backup center
Indiana's identity during its Finals run in 2024-25 was one of speedy play in the open court. To that point, even when Myles Turner played, he was frequently left behind as a trailer on the fast break. Turner was still effective, but the true revelation came from someone else.
Pascal Siakam is the ultimate Swiss Army knife. He can do anything and everything at a good enough level that the Pacers can frequently rely on him to bail them out of any situation they find themselves in.
The skills to highlight here are his rebounding, his defense – including his ability to box out effectively (shout out high school coaches, they were vindicated) – and his strength. Siakam came very capably pull off a decent chunk of minutes playing small-ball five and effectively solve the backup center question.
Good teams don't artificially play bad players just because they can't do better. They either maximize their own rosters to prevent boxing themselves in, or they make a trade.
Indiana doesn't have the pieces for an aggressive move after the Zubac trade. They'll have to make things work with what they have.
And making things work does not mean extending the rotation to 10 players.
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